JAMMED UP, JELLY TIGHT
The keen political eye that punk brought to pop, even when it sounded its most nihilistic or anarchistic, has not been the main ingredient on the agenda for a while now. Dance and nostalgia; arch technostrut and pop ballads, individualism and lyrics to effect a pose, not affect a generation...this was beginning to sound de rigueur for the 80’s.
LETTER FROM BRITAIN
JAMMED UP, JELLY TIGHT
by
Penny Valentine
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.
—“Town Called Malice,” the Jam.
The keen political eye that punk brought to pop, even when it sounded its most nihilistic or anarchistic, has not been the main ingredient on the agenda for a while now.
Dance and nostalgia; arch technostrut and pop ballads, individualism and lyrics to effect a pose, not affect a generation...this was beginning to sound de rigueur for the 80’s.
This month the Jam came up with “Town Called Malice” which, apart from a clever play on words, reflects an urban despair all the worse for its evocation of the current climate of political impotence; the grinding down of active dissent; the cruelty of a politics which relies, across Europe arid America, on millions of unemployed to frighten the rest of the community into submission.