80’s at 8- December 12, 2022: The Jam And The Ramones
On tonight’s 80’s at 8, it was a punk rock theme and I started off with the English Mod Revival/Punk Rock band from the 70’s and 80’s called The Jam. The Band shared the “angry young man” outlook and fast tempo of the mid-1970s British punk rock movement, even though they wore tailored suits reminiscent of English pop bands in the early 1960s and incorporated mainstream 1960s rock and R&B influences into its sound, particularly from the Who’s work of that time and they were also influenced by the Kinks and the music of American Motown.
This put them at the forefront of the 70’s and 80’s Mod Revival Movement which was a subculture that started in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s . It was an effort to go back to the 60’s style and presentation. The Jam’s “Going Underground” song was not released on any of the band’s six studio albums, although it has appeared on many compilations and re-releases since the 1980s. The song was released as a double A-side with “Dreams of Children”, which originally had been intended to be the sole A-side.
Due to a mix-up at the pressing plant, the single became a double A-side, and radio stations back then tended to choose the more melodic “Going Underground” to play on the radio. “Going Underground” is about social issues of the time such as political corruption, voter apathy, and Thatcherism which is a form of British conservative ideology named after Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher that relates to not just her political platform and particular policies but also her personal character and general style of management while in office.
It was the 15th best-selling single in the UK in 1980 and was ranked number 2 among the “Tracks of the Year” for 1980 by NME. The Jam released two other double A-side singles: “David Watts”/”‘A’ Bomb in Wardour Street” and “Town Called Malice”/”Precious”. Check out the video provided for Going Underground by The Jam.
The other track in the Punk Rock-themed 80’s at 8 is from The Ramones’ 1983 album Subterranean Jungle. It is their seventh album which was released on Sire Records in February of 83 and featured a somewhat return to their more hard Punk style. This direction was encouraged by guitarist Johnny Ramone. The recording sessions saw disputes between band members, mainly due to struggles with alcohol addiction by Joey Ramone and Marky Ramone, and the drug addiction of Dee Dee Ramone.
The album begins with two cover songs and features a third on side two. The band’s signature punk rock is supplemented by touches of hard rock, and psychedelic rock.. The album received mostly positive reviews from music critics and peaked at number 83 on the US Billboard 200 album chart.
The singles released from the album did not chart. This is the last album by the band to feature Marky Ramone on drums until the 1989 album Brain Drain and it’s the first album by the band to feature Dee Dee Ramone singing lead vocals. Dee Dee sings lead on “Time Bomb”, as well as the bridge of “Outsider”.
The artwork for Subterranean Jungle features an image of the band inside a subway car. The photograph was taken by George DuBose at the subway station on 57th Street and Sixth Avenue in Manhattan. This cover concept was designed by Dubose, who suggested that the B Sixth Avenue Express train stopped at the empty station for about 20 minutes.[8] In the photograph, Marky is featured peering out the subway window—Marky was positioned this way after Johnny asked DuBose to do so, because “they were kicking him out of the band, but he didn’t know it yet. Marky recalled that he “liked that shot, but he knew something was up.
The internal conflicts during recording sessions would cause band members to fire Marky during the album’s recording, consequently substituting him with drummer Billy Rogers on “Time has Come Today which was their cover of the Chambers brother’s 1967 hit.
In a retrospective review for AllMusic, author Stephen Thomas Erlewine called Subterranean Jungle the band’s “most enjoyable record since Rocket to Russia,” and said that the producers “steered the Ramones back toward the ’60s pop infatuation that provided the foundation for their early records.”[19] He ended his review by stating that it may not be defined as the “strictest sense” of punk rock; however, he strongly suggested that the band had not sounded so “alive” since their earlier days.
Check out the Music video for the first single that was released by the Ramones Subterranean Jungle provided here:
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