What a catalyst you turned out to be, loaded the guns then you run off home for your tea

Continuing my trip back through the 1979 album charts.

09/12/79 : Setting Sons - The Jam

I don't think I've ever heard a Jam album except for Snap!, their exceptionally decent best-of - which feels like a bad omission on my part which I will ensure I address immediately.

So this has got "Eton Rifles" and "Smithers-Jones" from Snap! on it, so I obviously recognised them and, for the most part, the rest of the album doesn't stray too far from that formula - except that "Smithers-Jones" does because it isn't the version from Snap!, being quite an interesting strings-only version.  I have to say I wasn't convinced by the use of the recorder on "Wasteland" and quite what they thought they were doing covering Martha & The Vandella's "Heat Wave" is unclear - it's a throwaway live cover at best. But apart from that, I quite liked it on first listen - I also feel it would be a grower once you worked out the words Paul was singing.

We're even further down the charts this week at #18 on their fourth week of a thirteen week run, with it having peaked at #4 in its debut week. The top five this were were Rod Stewart and ABBA best-ofs, Pink Floyd, The Police and an Elvis best-of and the highest new entry was a Hot Chocolate best-of (#11) which I reckon is probably quite good. Amusingly, the highest any of their studio albums has managed was #24 for Mystery in '92 but they've had four top ten albums which have all been greatest hits album - the last two of which got to #1, so maybe I'll bend the rules in '87 or '93 when we get there. 

Wikipedia tells me this is their fourth album and has a harder sound than their "pop-oriented predecessor" (really?). Apparently it was originally envisaged to be a concept album but they kinda ran out of time to make it work - and they also ran out of tracks, hence the inclusion of "Smithers-Jones" (which was previously a b-side) and "Heat Wave". Apparently, the album cover is a photograph of Benjamin Clemens' bronze sculpture The St John's Ambulance Bearers, which is in the Imperial War Museum - but I'm sure you knew that already. Critically, it was well received but only really did anything commercially here and in New Zealand, getting to #14 - it stalled at #137 in the US (and it's a very non-US kinda sound).

discogs.com tells us we can pick up a decent version of the album for £4, but if you want one signed by Paul then you need to stump up £300 - quite why anyone would buy a "signed by the artist" album online (or, in fact, anywhere) is beyond me. But, continuing the trend of positive reviews, I quite liked this album - so far 1979 is doing well!

02/12/79 - An interesting album that didn't quite work for me
16/12/79 - Much more enjoyable than expected

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