My Top 20 albums for 1978 No 3

ALL MOD CONS
Year Of Release: 1978
Graduation from Junior Punk School.
Best song: IN THE CROWD
Track listing: 1) All Mod Cons; 2) To Be Someone (Didn't We Have A Nice Time); 3) Mr Clean; 4) David Watts; 5) English Rose; 6) In The Crowd; 7) Billy Hunt; 8) It's Too Bad; 9) Fly; 10) The Place I Love; 11) 'A' Bomb In Wardour Street; 12) Down In The Tube Station At Midnight.
This is so much better I almost find it hard to believe this was created by the very same band, and at first only the never-changin' adenoid-troubled growl from Mr Weller serves as the necessary link from the past to the present. But apparently, this is not so hard to believe once you realize the main difference is that Weller finally dropped all of his desires to be a fiery punk rocker and instead decided to pursue his heart's desire, to be a true Mod sympathizer without the obligatory Seventies punk sheen. It's not like there's no energetic rockers on the album, of course - it's just that they aren't really punkish (in form, I mean: spiritually, The Jam were always a pretty pissed-off bunch of guys). All Mod Cons sounds pretty lightweight and easy flowing, without the strained, pumped out, insincere anger of 'This Is The Modern World' or any other faux-punk shite like that. And now that Weller pays his homage to Ray Davies as well as the ever-present Pete Townshend, the music becomes more diverse, not to mention better produced and better arranged. All Mod Cons? Great pun, but essentially not true - with all the navel-gazing on this record, including endless quotations from the Who, the Kinks, and the Beatles, there's not too many "modern conditions" present.
But, once again, the Jam weren't innovators, they were songwriters, and by 1978, Weller has tremendously grown as a songwriter. Whether it was just gradual maturation or the fact that discarding the punk sheen gave him more ground for true creativity, all the songs here are at least a notch higher in quality than on the previous albums; even the filler isn't annoying, rather just less memorable than the other songs. The lyrics become better as well, as Weller progresses from mere teen angst to romanticism, social portraying and relatively profound introspection. In short, nothing short of a miraculous - yet somewhat predictable - metamorphosis. All Mod Cons is not without its problems; no matter how much raving Jam fanatics would try to convince me that the album hits just as hard or even harder as all those Who and Kinks albums it's been influenced by, all I can say is, Paul Weller doesn't say a single thing that hasn't been said before, and improves on nothing that hasn't been done better before. But that doesn't excuse me from not noticing the talent herein, or not recognizing how well the songs in question are written.
Or how they are performed, for that matter. The fact that the Jam managed to turn their version of the Kinks' 'David Watts' into a British hit can only be compared to Todd Rundgren hitting big with his version of 'Good Vibrations', I guess - an immaculate recreation of a golden classic by a newer act. But where Todd hit his own 'big' by achieving the technically impossible, that is taking an incredibly complex song and carefully reproducing it bit by bit, Weller hits his own by recreating the very spirit of the song - it's not the exact sonic details that are important, it's the jerkiness and the shakiness and the Britishness and the dedicated character impersonation thing. I still have my doubts on whether Paul Weller was really into the punk thing at all; I have virtually no doubts that Paul Weller was, soul and body, into the Britpop thing of the Sixties. He lived out that schtick, if ye pardon my French.
When he tries to be Ray Davies himself, he doesn't do nearly as well - 'Mr Clean' is no 'Mr Pleasant', after all, but it's still a very neat little pop-rocker with a charming, almost seducing, sly little paranoid guitar riff stealing the show and lyrics that are a bit too straightforward for the post-modern epoch, I guess, but still biting and, uh, exciting. 'In The Crowd' is even better, a stark pro-individualism anthem with a magnificent squeaky echoey guitar line reflecting Paul's vocals on the chorus ('...when I'm in the crowd, I don't see anything') - although one could question the necessity of the lengthy jamming coda to the song, with the backwards soloing and all. My guess is Weller is trying to imitate the effects of 'Australia' on that one. It still sounds pretty cool to hear this artsy 'psychedelic' ending on an album by a band that was concentrating on strained three-minute punk rocking stuff less than a year ago.
Weller even goes as far as to have a couple friggin' ballads on the album, including one purely acoustic showcase, 'English Rose' - and you know if a guy can write a touching acoustic ballad, the guy's got talent. And this one is sure touching, with its funny dialectal chorus ("for nothing can ever tempt me from she") and tricky jazz chord sequences that occasionally sound not unlike Pete Townshend's gymnastics on his 1968 ballad 'Sunrise'. Likewise, the chorus of 'Fly', with its soaring slide guitars, which appears out of nowhere and disappears in an instant as well, is near gorgeous.
I'm not going to name every song on here - just for short, 'Billy Hunt' is catchy as hell, and 'It's Too Bad', as everybody and his grandmother has already noticed, steals some chord sequences from the Who's 'So Sad About Us' (and the guitar jangle from the Beatles), but is still charming - but there ain't a single real duffer, apart maybe from the opening minute-and-a-half of the title track which is just a few scorching lyrical lines over an angry sounding nothing (hey, I've just described 70% of This Is The Modern World). Not a single song hit me like a ton o' bricks, though, not on first listen at least: if you're well-versed in Weller's influences, it'll take you a long time to get rid of the notion that Paul just rips off his idols. Well, I mean, he does rip off his idols, there's no denying that. But I guess the punk period did have its use, because there's a certain sharpness and loud primal minimalistic punch here that you won't find on any Sixties albums. So I can easily understand how some people would prefer All Mod Cons to, say, The Who Sell Out or Face To Face - even if these people are wrong, because every little aardvark on this planet knows the Sixties had it all and everything else was just a load of derivative garbage. At least, until Mick Jagger came along and showed everybody the way with his revolutionary, mind-expanding classic Goddess In The Doorway. It's been getting better since then.
In The Crowd Lyrics
When I'm in the crowd, I don't see anything
My mind goes a blank, in the humid sunshine
when I'm in the crowd I don't see anything
I fall into a trance, at the supermarket
the noise flows me along, as I catch falling cans
of baked beans on toast, technology is the most.
and everyone seems just like me,
they struggle hard to set themselves free
and their waiting for the change
When I'm in the crowd, I can't remember my name
and my only link is a pint of Wall's ice cream
when I'm in the crowd - I don't see anything
Sometimes I think that it's a plot,
an equilibrium melting pot
The government sponsors underhand
When I'm in the crowd
When I'm in the crowd
When I'm in the crowd
And everyone seems that they're acting a dream
'cause they're just not thinking about each other
and they're taking orders, which are media spawned
and they should know better, now you have been warned
and don't forget you saw it here first
When I'm in the crowd
When I'm in the crowd
When I'm in the crowd
And life just simply moves along
in simple houses, simple jobs
and no ones wanting for the change
When I'm in the crowd
When I'm in the crowd
When I'm in the crowd