Customer Reviews

Direction Reaction Creation

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Amazon's UK site has this same box set selling for £28.97. Under the current exchange rate that's about half what it sells for here, so even with the overseas shipping charge it's still a lot less money for the same product. Shop smart!

The Jam were one of the greatest rock and roll groups in history. Their entire catalogue, from "In the City" all the way through to "Beat Surrender" is fresh, vibrant, urgent, and real. They were a band whose B-sides (such as "Smithers-Jones") could be the top A-sides of lesser groups. Nothing in their catalogue is worthless...not even their cover of the "Batman" theme! And they didn't just stay in one place after finding success. "In the City", their debut single, is rough-hewn, Who-derived punk rock. A million sounds and fusions of pop, punk, and soul later (the crunching "All Around the World", the bright but alienated "Strange Town", the driving, hard-hitting "Eton Rifles", the gorgeous anthem "Going Underground", the wistful Motown rave "Town Called Malice") we get "Beat Surrender", their bow, an uptempo, horn-and-piano-driven sophisticated soul scorcher. Along with The Buzzcocks, The Jam are at the top of the stack when it comes to singles bands of their era. And ANY era, really.

That said...there is one tiny fault. This is a fault only a completist fanatic would quibble about, but anyone willing to spend $100 on just one band is probably, like me, a completist fanatic.

The problem is this: one of the most acclaimed entries in The Jam's catalogue, and my personal favorite, "That's Entertainment", does not appear in its ideal form. The version from "Snap!" (known in CD release as "Compact Snap!") is nowhere to be heard. They include the psychedelic-tinged version that graces "Sound Affects", and they include some bizarre up-tempo demo on the "rarities" disc. But for some strange reason, they don't include their greatest rendition of "That's Entertainment". The version is minimal but has a fiery intensity that the somewhat muffled album version just doesn't have. There's a note written muttering about "another version available on the 'Snap!' compilation", but would it really have been that hard to include it?

Like I said...it's just one song on a collection of a hundred, and it might seem petty. But for someone hoping to capture The Jam's entire catalogue on CD with this purchase (ESPECIALLY my personal favorites), the disappointment was palpable.

But that's the only problem. Everything else is aces. If you're new to The Jam, I suggest you buy "Compact Snap!" anyway just to get acquainted with them. But if you've heard some of Weller, Foxton, and Buckler already and think this is the way to go, then it almost definitely is. I certainly don't regret my purchase. But it's just not quite perfect!

Collecting the Jam can be a frustrating thing. They cut some good material on EP's and singles that didn't make it to any of their six LPs, and there is no organized way to collate all of their material. This box looks on casual inspection as if it will do that job, but is actually not entirely complete. This contains the 45 versions of some songs, not the cut-later-for-LP and generally sharper versions - for example, the better version of "Start!", one of their best songs, is not present. It would have been easy for Polydor to include that handful of songs, and make this really complete. But they didn't.

It's worth going through the effort to collect these guys, because they were sometimes really great. Paul Weller was a gifted songwriter, engaging singer, and talented rock guitarist. Rick Buckler was a really gifted drummer, bursting with energy and precision, and Bruce Foxton held the bass slot down well. The material on this set, i.e. 95%+ of their legacy, is a mixed bag with a lot of mediocre patches. But the highs go very high; the band at their best were making timeless music. They go from a hard and fast punk band (with some soulful traction) to a blue-eyed soul band (with a bit of punk traction) over the course of the 6 years documented here. Weller's politics also seemed to change, from a conservative approach early on to a kind of knee-jerk liberalism. Both of these trends anticipate his future work with The Style Council.

My advice is to check out the greatness of this band via "Snap!" and/or "Greatest Hits", and then consider purchase of this set depending on your financial circumstances. There is definitely some timeless material present here.

I've been a fan of this band forever, but kind of stopped listening to my old albums for a while. This box set brought them back to heavy rotation on my CD player.... this is brilliant stuff, and this set is the complete collection. All the best, as well as a lot of marginal stuff (and I love how the book is really honest about it - it will call a bad song a bad song).

If you were ever interested in the Jam, even as a passing fan a long time ago, this set will help you rediscover one of the greatest rock bands ever.

I had every Jam album and most of their singles and EPs back in the early 80s when they were still recording and performing. I saw them play the Palladium in NY in 1982 and couldn't hear out of my right ear for a week. Now it's been about 20 years since I've seriously listened to a Jam album. Then I got this box set as a gift this Christmas. A week later, I started listening to the discs, one after the other. I was up until 3:00 in the morning listening to all these great songs I hadn't heard in two decades. They sounded even better than I remember and I have an entirely new respect for Paul Weller and The Jam as musicians and composers. They were truly a great band. Even the 5th disc, containing previously unreleased songs and alternative versions of Jam classics is completely worth listening to. The booklet, photographs, and other historical material within the set are terrific. Every old or new Jam fan should have this set.

Being such a kid of the early 80's, I'm a bit embarrassed by the fact that I really hadn't heard of The Jam while they were actually a living band.

I ran across them only because "Town Called Malice" was on an 80's compilation I had. I slowly but surely started buying the odd and end collection until I graduated to this -- the Holy Grail of the New Wave era.

This is definitely worth the money -- I can not even begin to tell you what you are missing if you do not own this set. Songs like "Wasteland," "Smithers-Jones," "Ghosts" "Town Called Malice" and "The Bitterest Pill" are merely among the greatest pop songs ever recorded.

The amazing thing about The Jam is how varied they sound. If I were a radio listener in England during their heyday, I'm not sure I would have always been able to pick them out. This is really all you will ever need to buy from them, since it's everything they did except live sets.

God Save The King (Paul Weller)!

While many people would only consider this a purchase for completists, I disagree. Listening to the first four discs, representing a complete chronology of their catalog, you discover a band, and a writer, displaying tremendous growth over a short period of time. It's really exciting to see.
They begin kinda punky with "In The City", and spit out the occasional killer single. Three albums into their career, they pull off mature, consistent works like "All Mod Cons", "Setting Sons" and "Sound Affects", dropping unbelievably good singles in between. Stax/Motown influences become more prominent by their sixth album, containing the tune probably most familiar to US listeners, "Town Called Malice".
After five years and six albums, they were gone; only a footnote here in America but rightly beloved in the UK.
I found this box hugely enjoyable and occasionally revelatory. You'll immediately want to make your own Jam Greatest Hits compilation.

The Jam emerged in the UK in 1977 at the height of punk and the same time as the Sex Pistols, the Clash, and Elvis Costello were making an impact on the British music scene. While the Jam was a commercial success in the UK and Europe, they never made much of a dent with American listeners (Paul Weller's post-Jam band, the Style Council, was somewhat more successful in the USA but the music was far inferior). That being said, the five discs in this set should probably be considered a must for die-hard Jam fans, and although I do not consider myself in that category, I purchased this because, as most Jam fans know, a considerable amount of their music was not released on any of the six LPs issued during the band's existence (1977-82). Someone at the Jam's record label was asleep at the switch when the group's LP's were issued on CD, as no bonus tracks were included on any of the discs. Furthermore, greatest-hits compilations only offered one or two singles not available on the LP releases (the available greatest hits collections also, in my opinion, lean too heavily on the Jam's later, post-"Sound Affects" releases at the expense of more deserving earlier material). The only alternative available for Jam fans who want a truly comprehensive retrospective is this box set, which offers just about all of the band's studio releases as well as flip sides of singles that were released abroad but not in the USA. The selection cannot be considered truly complete, however, as no live tracks (including some early flip-sides) are contained in this set. Many tracks from the 1991 "Extras" compilation are also excluded. For anyone wanting to own all the Jam's LP's on CD as well as songs from EP's and singles, this compilation would fit the bill. A comprehensive essay detailing the band's history is also included in this set.

I won't repeat all the lavish praise of previous reviews, but rather emphasize a couple of things. First, the sound quality on this set is *much* better than the previous Polydor (U.S.) individual album masters I own. This really helps recapture the impact of the Jam's crunchy power-trio sound that I remember from the original 45's. Second, a lot of the non-album material that I haven't heard for a while sounds quite good and fresh -- not just "Going Underground" but also singles like "Beat Surrender" that back in the early 80s seemed not quite up to standards.

An excellent 5 CD collection (if you take the CDs out of their tight cardboard sleeves and put them in normal cases on your shelves). You also get a book documenting the Jam with photos etc.
Here's the break-up:
CD1: Albums in full: In the City & This is the Modern World (plus loads of singles released around the same time).
CD2: Albums: All Mod Cons (I still bought the All Mod Cons deluxe edition for the demo versions), and loads of singles from the same time.
CD3: Albums: Setting Sons (in full), and "Sound Affects" (excludes the album version of Start! Does provide the single version though). Other singles from that time period also included.
CD4: Albums: The Gift (replaces the album version of Precious with the 12" version). Also singles from the same period, and The Beat Surrender (EP with 4 other songs).
CD5: Alternate versions of earlier songs, and some other singles and b-sides, and some songs I'd never heard in my addictive Jam collecting days of the 1980s-90s: "Rain" "Dead end street" "Stand by me" "Every little bit hurts" "Walking in Heavens Sunshine".

The exclusions of album versions of Start! and "Precious" are annoying, but don't let that put you off. You can always order "The Gift" and "Sound Affects" as well, or keep your old vinyl.