Discovering The Jam

So last week, I spent an unhealthy amount of time talking about how The Smiths played an important role in my my early adolescent identity and how that indirectly led me to the Mod thing. I figure I should probably follow that up with how I discovered the band that would replace The Smiths at that stage in my  life.

In the 8th grade, after I was put on the correct path towards Modtopia (a story for a future blog post), what little I knew about Mods was all I talked about to anyone who would listen. (And as you can tell, things haven't changed since.) I felt like I had discovered something that NO ONE else in the world knew about... well, at least no one at Giano Intermediate School.

So imagine my surprise when, after blathering on and on about how Mods wore army jackets before punks to this kid in home room, he responded that his older brother was a Mod! At first, I thought that this guy was completely lost on what I was talking about. How could his older brother be a Mod? They were extinct as far as I knew. Then, he went on to tell me that his older brother was even fan of a band called The Jam. THE JAM?? Now I knew this kid was mixed up!

Now, let's journey back to the late '80s when this conversation took place. Ahh... the late '80s, a time when guys wanted the Richard Marx hairstyle, 'bad' still meant 'good', and this song was a hit:

In addition to this song, the term 'jam' could also be used in the following contexts: "Hey man, I wanna mack on those girls. Let's jam!" and "Have you heard the new Pebbles song, Mercedes Boy? That jam is bad!" Also, Lisa Lisa and the Cult JAM were HUGE. So, this kid talking about his alleged Mod older brother who liked a band called The Jam just didn't sit right with me.

The following week, this same kid showed up in his older brother's red sweatshirt with the following logo in puffy white lettering:

How on earth could this 'tagged' logo be 'Mod'? I just didn't buy it. This guy just did not know what he was talking about... The 'Jam' being Mod? Pssh! (Now, you want to know the sad fate of this Jam sweatshirt? The kid ended up CUTTING THE SLEEVES OFF and using it as a P.E./gym shirt!)

The next time I came across The Jam was almost a year later, when I was a freshman in high school. I was record shopping at Aron's Records on Melrose, when I came across The Jam's This is the Modern World LP.

I was still very skeptical about this band so I had to study the record a bit. Let's see... they weren't wearing suits... but one of the guys did have a pin of The Who on his sweater. Hmm... the album was called This is the Modern World... hmm... no graffiti art on the cover... then I turned the record over and oh my god they were actually wearing suits just like the Mods used to!

So, I bought it, along with my first Specials LP and first Madness LP (but I'll save those for a future ska post) and brought it to my grandmother's where I was staying. Early in the 9th grade, I still associated Mod music with a more punky/new wave sound, so when I heard those first chords and Paul Weller shouting, "THIS IS THE MAW-UN WOOLD," I was sold!

Mod Gone Wrong: My New Wave Roots

Okay, quiz time! 

Take a moment and try to guess what's wrong in the following photo:

Having a hard time? Seriously?? Okay then, let me give you a hint:

Yup, you guessed it! The Smiths poster in the background.* Not that there's anything wrong with liking The Smiths. In fact, I was a HUGE Smiths fan back in the day. They were the very first band that I felt understood my 13-year-old adolescent angst.

And yes, that's me  in the photo above, acne and all. When this photo was taken (about a month after I moved to the Bay Area to start school), I was proud to display my 'counter-cultural' roots (The Smiths) to all who walked past our dorm room. But see, little did I realize, I was probably contributing to one of my pet peeves and the reason for this post: people's confusion of 'Mod' with 'New Wave'. 

I'm guessing that this started in the '80s when people who were into punk, new wave, new romantic, post-punk, or (fill in the blank) started moving on to a Mod look or just started banding together with what few Mod types were around at school or in social circles. It's easy to see why people from differing subcultures, back then, would have come together in the face of overwhelming OP shirts and upturned polo collars. We experienced the same thing in my time, only we were trying to get away from all the spiked-hair mullets and NKOTB groupies.

Yeah, I can see why people would get confused. And yes, Blondie are lookin' pretty rockin' right here!

In the '90s, 'Mod' often got grouped together with 'New Wave' and 'Indie,' thanks to all those indie (and britty-pop) bands appropriating '60s touches. I'm sure shaggy hair, Fred Perrys, and name-dropping The Kinks helped blur any lines dividing these different styles.

Today, the general public is a bit more savvy, but I still get a sense that people think dressing like The Libertines or The Horrors somehow makes one Mod(!).

Wait, did Poison and Love & Rockets form a super group?

Now before I go on, let's get something straight: I think diggin' on New Wave, indie, alternative, or whatever you want to call it is really, really great. Seriously. We all have different tastes in music and I'm all down with celebrating diversity. (Heck, some of you would probably cringe at the fact that there's a Snoop Doggy Dogg record in the ol' Mod Male record vaults!) That said, New Wave/indie/alt-whatever does not equal Mod. I understand how it can be confusing, but they are totally different things.

Granted, if it wasn't for this confusion in the first place, I wouldn't be Mod-bloggin' today. Heck, I'd probably be writing about which Morrissey solo album is best (I wouldn't know since I stopped at the first one) or who would win in a lightsaber fight, Han Solo or Boba Fett.  Instead, it's the Mod thing that became the #1 target of my obsession, all thanks to my cousin calling me a 'Mod' because I liked The Smiths. So for that, let me stand up and thank New Wave music!

Of course, these days my Smiths records get played maybe about once every 3 years... if I'm feeling nostalgic and Morrissey bugs the living daylights out of me. But there was a time when they were on my turntable, on average, 4-5 hours a day. Whenever I felt the world was against me (which was daily for me as an average 13/14-year-old), I could get lost in pretty much any of their songs. If I didn't feel like eating my mom's corned beef, I could just say my political position that evening was "Meat is Murder." And if I couldn't find a date to the school dance, I could just say I was celibate like Morrissey. These reasons are why that band will always hold some significance for me.

And if I want to get defensive about my past tastes, I'll have you know that not only did The Smiths grace their record covers with awesome '60s imagery, they also covered a Twinkle song. Oh yeah, and did you know that Johnny Marr was a huge Small Faces, Who, and Motown fan (according to one of my Smiths quote books that, yes, I still have)? Plus, he rocked a huge back-comb at various points in his Smiths career.

Johnny Marr with back-comb and desert boots.

So there... take your Smiths-hatin' elsewhere! By the way, are The Smiths even considered New Wave?

*BONUS POINTS if you said 'Sunglasses being worn indoors' or 'Posing in a dirty dorm room.'