The Jam - Town Called Malice

It's Up to Us

1. No one is coming to save us. We are our own rescue team. Those daydreams about an idyllic life in the Cotswolds just ain’t in the cards for people like me. I am not going to despair - Paul Weller and Joe Strummer trained me better. What I am going to do is figure out a solution, because the future belongs to those of us still willing to get our hands dirty. Life certainly can be cruel, so the burden falls on each of us to put some joy back on the shelf. I never understood those poor, soulless bastards who don’t want to make something better for the next ones to come. Those joyless cretins really are from a town called Malice. It’s too easy to be a pessimist. It takes no effort, no forethought, no measure of self-control. I’m not impressed by fountains of misanthropy. I support a reckless, savage tenderness in its place.

   And stop apologizing for the things you've never done
   'Cos time is short and life is cruel
   But it's up to us to change
   This town called Malice

2. The BBC broadcast in 1982 may as well have gone like this: In a daring pre-dawn heist, British Mod rockers The Jam have purloined what appears to be the Motown recording studio’s entire rhythm section. No comment yet from Motown label head Berry Gordy, but the kids in Britain sure do seem to love that Detroit sound.” Bruce Foxton’s Town Called Malice bassline is wholly informed by the James Jamerson chapter in the Book of Motown, and drummer Rick Buckler straight-up hijacked the beat from The Supremes’ You Can’t Hurry Love. The Jam were always thoroughly obsessed with prime ‘60s soul, and Jamerson’s playing is on a metric ton of it. While there are plenty of examples of The Jam’s love affair, none are better than this Foxton/Buckler effort. The Jam didn’t attempt to clumsily or violently shove the entirety of popular music from their era forward (Looking DIRECTLY at the Sex Pistols). The Jam were bold enough to look backward for inspiration. In their native England, it worked in fine style. Defiantly British, The Jam were almost singularly responsible for a Mod revival in their native land but made little to no headway in the States - Americans being often pessimistic fountains of misanthropy.

   Listen to the entire isolated bass line here.

3. The kids in the street can’t be fooled (Bowie told us on Changes in ‘72). They always know when the Big Dick of Bureacracy is fucking them, even if they’re not sure why. Jam chief songwriter and guitarist Paul Weller himself was just 24 at the time, which means he was aware enough to know precisely why. Town Called Malice is Weller looking directly at Margaret Thatcher’s Britain, then listening to the kids and his own intuition, and then looking back at his hometown of Woking.

   Struggle after struggle, year after year
   The atmosphere's a fine blend of ice
   I'm almost stone cold dead
   In a town called Malice

   Government machinations and bureaucracy want the kids divided. They want us all divided, but especially the youth. The hip-hop heads writing lyrics in their journals and the punks trying to learn those three crucial chords are connected in ways they don’t understand just yet. (Maybe they are aware. I haven’t been young in several years.) They’re each crafting a similar message with different tools to create the same weapon. Use that weapon properly, and one can blow a hole in the machinations and bureaucracy. Town Called Malice was the most accurate weapon The Jam ever built.