The Jam
That's Entertainment

For "Rolling Stone," the 306th song in the ranking of the 500 greatest of all time.

For me, one of the most beautiful, poetically profound, sincere, and moving lyrics in the entire history of contemporary Rock and Pop. A text decidedly above average, simply extraordinary; a text to pause on, reflect, ponder (and for a long time).

I'd begin by introducing you to the unique splendor of a song like "That's Entertainment", which appeared almost in a minor tone, semi-hidden and without particular fanfare, at the end of the first side of "Sound Affects," the fifth album by the Jam dated 1980, and then also released as a single on February 7 of the following year (with, on the back, a rare but not essential live version of "Down In The Tube Station At Midnight"). A very unusual song to release as a single, without any or almost any of the characteristic signs that one would expect from a single of the era (acoustic arrangement, sparse sound, spontaneous execution are what is heard, defying the production excesses that the new decade would impose as standard practice). A song of social commitment, but far from political proclamations and devoid of impactful or ideologically characterized phrases. A fundamentally sad, subdued, melancholic song, but capable of hiding the (real) drama it narrates under the veil of a biting, fine British sarcasm. A song of denunciation without being a protest song.

I admit it, I have always liked the Jam, I have adored them, I even have Paul Weller's photo in my room, next to those (which I equally cherish) of Paul McCartney and George Best: they are my undisputed idols, even if excessive fanaticism has never been my thing. And I loved (and still love) the Jam for their being different, unique in a period of "sheep," of youths conformed and subdued to the emerging Punk fashions. Punk that raged loudly, destructively, inexorably, and that should have wiped out everything that came before. And seeing these guys, these three provincials from Surrey presenting themselves at the Marquee or some other temple of the London Punksters in suit and tie, with clothes tailored, well, for me it was a pleasure. They who had frequented the Punk environments indeed, but more for convenience than out of a sense of belonging. They who had had enough of the Clash and Pistols since '77, the golden year of new trends, when amid general clamor they deserted the White Riot Tour.

They who had style to sell, genuinely "snobbish" because it was needed, in those cases, while the furious (and largely record label-bribed) critics threw mud at the three and defined them as "right-wing," even "neo-fascists" because they were light-years away from the fake facade anarchism of the Pistols, because they were retrograde and anachronistic, because they looked to Who and Kinks instead of following the trends in force. Some luminaries of the criticism said, paraphrasing their words: but where do these guys ever show up, with those pathetic and dated Mod hairstyles and that tacky Union Jack displayed here and there just to show off? These three antiques, who at most are good for '60s revival evenings awaited by mediocre crowds still expecting guitar riffs (and jumps) à la Pete Townshend, and infantile extravagances worthy of the worst Keith Moon...

That's what they said, yes, and meanwhile, our guys, while other "new-model" formations barely made it to their first album, were recording pearls like "All Mod Cons" and "Setting Sons," reaching a maturity to compose lyrical jewels like "That's Entertainment". One of those songs that come to you once in a lifetime or maybe don't come at all because writing great songs is for the few; one of those masterpieces born in the spontaneous chance of an ordinary day: they say that Paul Weller, to jot down those lyrics on those chords, took no more than ten minutes, as he returned home after a dreary day, without color, without emotion. An apathetic day when there's no desire to do anything except sit there, in total solitude, to write; and to write creating something great, something that when I first heard it (several years ago) left me speechless, and reading the lyrics made me want to cry as I never did with Dylan, Young, Simon, with all the greatest ones.

What I read was the portrait of desolate suburban scenarios, of squalid environments filled with sadness and depression, as well as the account of the typical day of any British working-class member, among sirens and deafening noise of machines, trains, and buses moving in the alienating context of the classic industrial city across the channel, the one with landscapes marked by chimneys and row houses made of bricks. Inside hallucinated scenes of domestic life, among crying children and nervously devoured cigarettes, waking from troubled sleep at the noise of the TV without even being able to finish a cup of tea, hurled outside to breathe the pungent smell of gasoline at 6 in the morning, thinking of distant countries and vacations. Among bare walls and the grayness of skies merging with the asphalt of battered roads, inhabited only by stray dogs and cats. Without even realizing what time it is, time that stretches and compresses between Mondays that never pass and the boredom of a rainy, soulless Wednesday. Life as automata, petrified, denuded, hollowed out by the unnatural rhythm of mass production that never stops and will never stop, of a perpetual and obsessive assembly line, of machines that won't cease moving and resonating even at the end of a shift, because then the cycle will start again. 

Elliptical, suspended, hermetic phrases follow like a nightmare through five verses that exude despair, genuine despair. Verses interspersed with the caustic, bitterly ironic comment on the described situation: "That's Entertainment," or "this is entertainment," this is THE entertainment (of real life, not of variety) offered by a city like any other, on a day like any other. With Weller's acoustic holding the piece accompanied by Bruce Foxton's very rough bass and a few uncertain, sporadic snare drum hits from a detached Rick Buckler; in a more than ever essential, minimal sound context, with a brief concession to some splash of electric guitar that even calls to mind the Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows." Even the promotional video was shot in an aseptic, semi-dark, impalpable studio, with Weller and Foxton even sitting.

But fortunately, the sixth and final verse arrives to tell us that we are still human beings with a heart, not completely subservient to a sequential mechanic. Two lovers kissing under the starry backdrop of midnight tell us that loneliness can be defeated, a connection can be reestablished, humanity can be breathed again. It can be understood that there is still life within us, however trampled, ignored, and mortified by the rhythms of an unnatural and tyrannical post-modernity. 

Dedicated to all those who have loved and love the Jam.