Saturday, May 14, 2011

All Mod Cons

All Mod Cons is a 1978 album by the British punk rock/mod revival band The Jam, their third full-length LP. The title, a British idiom one might find in housing advertisements, is short for "all modern conveniences" and is a pun on the band's association with the mod revival.
The album was more commercially successful than The Jam's previous album, This Is the Modern World. The single "Down in the Tube Station at Midnight" was one of the band's most successful chart hits up to that point, peaking at #15 on the UK charts. In 2000, Q magazine placed All Mod Cons at number 50 in its list of the 100 Greatest British Albums Ever.
British Invasion pop influences run through the album, most obviously in the cover of The Kinks' "David Watts". The song "Down in the Tube Station at Midnight" is a first-person narrative of a young man who walks into a tube station on the way home to his wife, and is beaten by far right thugs. The lyrics of the song "All Mod Cons" criticise fickle people who attach themselves to people who enjoy success and leave them once that is over. Neither the title nor lyrics of the song "English Rose" were printed on the original vinyl release of All Mod Cons due to Weller's feeling that the song's lyrics were too personal. The song English Rose later inspired the name of The Stone Roses.
Paul Weller admitted to a lack of interest during the writing/recording process, and had to completely re-record a new set of songs for the album after producer Chris Parry rejected the first batch as being sub-standard.
The album was released in the US in 1979, with the song "The Butterfly Collector" replacing "Billy Hunt".

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