From The Jam + Nine Below Zero
A curious hybrid of heritage and tribute acts has emerged over the last few years – bands made up of departed personnel from groups no longer with us. There are more than one UB40, Beat, and Wishbone Ash, Nik Turner’s Space Ritual contains more Hawkwind than Hawkwind, while the Kast Off Kinks are essentially the real thing without the Davies brothers. Foremost among these acts is arguably Bruce Foxton’s outfit, still playing music From the Jam, his distinctive bass playing complemented by Weller sound-alike Russell Hastings, Mike Randon on drums and Andy Fairclough on Hammond. I’m still not sure if this amounts to a tribute act, and feel more than a little ambivalent about the whole enterprise, but I never got to see the real thing (I did have a ticket back in the day, but to my eternal regret I flogged it to buy groceries) so this is now the only way to see, and more importantly hear, All Mod Cons played live, and in its entirety.
In any case, there’s someone else on the bill that are worth the price of admission alone. Nine Below Zero, fronted by Dennis Greaves and Mark Feltham, started up around about the same time as All Mod Cons was recorded, and have chugged away ever since. Mostly under the radar and inexplicably underappreciated, this south London crew were never truly part of the Thames Delta music scene, but it felt as if they should have been, and were certainly indebted to a sound that had crawled up the A127 from South East Essex in the late seventies to reinvent itself as Pub Rock. Tonight, perhaps in deference to the modish crowd, we get an unusually large quota of post punk originals, elbowing out the blues staples that regulars have come to expect. John Mayall gets a name check early on, and Otis Rush’s Homework is squeezed in through peer pressure, but Got My Mojo Working and Wooly Bully are noticeable by their absence. Curiously, we instead got Stone Fox Chase’s Old Grey Whistle Test theme – a great showcase for Feltman’s harmonica, but an odd inclusion for so brief a set that otherwise revealed an eclectic mix of influences and styles. Dog House tipped a hat to Chuck Berry while Three Times is Enough had the whiff of Chas and Dave about it, while Glenn Tilbrook’s evident help in writing Do We Roll offered a pleasing contrast to a barnstorming Eleven plus Eleven finish. This was a band completely at ease with itself and its place in the universe. Dennis Greaves and Mark Feltham are grounded, consummate entertainers I could have happily watched and listened to all night. I look forward to them returning to Norwich in their rightful place at the top of the bill.
Open’s cavernous auditorium had been packed from the outset of Nine Below Zero’s set, something that an appreciative Greaves seemed genuinely touched by, so much so I’m guessing that for some of the audience they were the main draw. There certainly seemed to be something akin to a shift change by the time From the Jam took the stage. Having stoically stood my ground up close and personal, I found myself surrounded by unfamiliar faces, as those who been dancing away merrily to Greaves’s band melted away. Things got a tad rumbustious from the start, as without ceremony, the band attacked All Mod Cons with gusto, as an increasingly bellicose crowd bluffed their way through the verses before belting out the chorus of the rarely played To Be Someone and Mr Clean. While I’ve always had a soft spot for David Watts (despite being taunted in my teens by a bastardised version – trust me, it stops being funny after a while) this first big hitter off the album set a hare running and things all got a bit much down front. Frankly, there’s only so long you can be jostled by jolly, but fairly tanked up, blokes sloshing their beer as they bounce about and into you.
Following a swift retreat to safer ground, I was in any case better placed to appreciate how good Bruce Foxton still is, bashing away at his bass, driving the music forward with enthusiasm and energy, and complemented by what is undoubtedly a tight and pretty convincing facsimile of the real thing. Russell Hastings is a decent enough singer, and while he lacked the pathos Weller lent to Down in the Tube Station, I don’t suppose it was missed by a crowd singing along, but not listening, to the words. Aside from a misjudged seated acoustic interlude, there is no denying this was a crowd pleasing show, with all the hits dutifully ticked off once the album was out the way. A Town Called Malice, That's Entertainment and Start are unquestionably brilliant songs, and while I do still wonder at the point of a band playing very old songs written by someone else, the encore of In the City, The Eton Rifles and (my personal favourite) Going Underground, very nearly won me over.
If that sounds like damning with faint praise, then it’s because it is. Stuart is right – notwithstanding Foxton’s presence, From the Jam turned out to be, in attitude and scope, a tribute act, and how much you are able to enjoy them depends on a preparedness to accept that fact. Snobs such as I have decided that tribute acts are a bad thing, and yet, confusingly, isn’t it in tribute that Nine Below Zero sing an Ann Cole or Freddie King number? Paul Weller wrote great songs that were now being played by his mate, and enjoyed by an audience who had clearly had the greatest of times. Is that really such a terrible thing?
