15.1.22 And they didn't teach me this at school...
This was one of the first albums I bought when working for Kwik Save. My Saturday (and Thursday & Friday evenings) job. 16 years old. Possibly the first one I bought with an actual pay-packet (that wasn't from a paper round).
But I started working for the Kwiky in the summer and this was released on the 28th of November (1980 if you didn't realise). So it wasn't one of the first I bought. And I wasn't sixteen.
What else do I remember?
There was a girl who worked there who I was deeply in love with (she had very little idea, I don't think she even realised when I asked her out). This isn't a secret. Anybody who knew me at that age can name her (please don't). J can name her. I had a 'mixtape' (we didn't really call them that at the time) playing in the staff room one day. And on it, amongst other things (like The Sound's fantastic 'Heyday'), I'd included 'Monday' from this album. She thought it was really good. I took that as a sign. It wasn't.
It was the album where The Jam - or basically Weller - started to look psychedelic, the album where they really chimed with me. I kind of got The jam in this order - Going Underground, Start!, Sound Affects
None of which is important.
(BTW- playing this at the moment from my original, 41 year old vinyl copy, slightly fraying at the edge but otherwise perfect. Not the point.)
None of the above is the point.
Here's the point. Here's some of the point.
I was reading an interview with Weller this morning. In this month's Uncut. It's about to be last month's Uncut, I've basically spent the last few months a month behind on my magazine reading - even though I now mostly skip the reviews of albums that I'm sure I'll never listen to - and it mentioned that when he wrote the line "I will never be embarrassed about love again" (possibly a rebuke to how he'd felt at the time he decided that he couldn't possibly list English Rose on the sleeve for the previous album, Setting Sons) he was 21.
And I kind of knew that. It wasn't hard to figure out. I knew that he'd split The Jam at 23 (just as George Harrison had recorded Sgt Pepper at 23) so, this album that had been released two years previously would have been recorded when he was 21. Maths and that.
And that idea blew me away. Man In The Corner Shop, That's Entertainment, Scrape Away, Dream Time, Set The House Ablaze: all written by a lad of 21.
Another thought followed. And we'll come to that momentarily.
Because, when I pointed out to J all of the above and the talent it took, she said exactly what I thought - "Well, look at the lyrics our Matty's writing at the moment."
Which is spot on. He's rapping, he's telling the story of his life in lyric form. And they're thought about, they're considered. He's studied the shape of beats, the way you need to weave a line through the beat, the syllables you need in a hip hop beat compared to a grime beat.
And I'm not comparing our Matt to Paul Weller, obviously. Different spheres, different worlds. But they come from the same place - a fan of the form who wants to add something to it.
Because you're never too young to have a stance, to have something to say.
(Or, to have a world view that introduces others to art they may otherwise have missed - the album sleeve for Sound Affects is where I first discovered Shelley: "Rise like lions after slumber in unvanquishable number, shake your chains to earth like dew which in sleep had fallen on you, ye are many, they are few." Not that I had any idea yet who Shelley was or what The Mask (or Masque) Of Anarchy was about. But this is where you find the details you need in your youth:
Create something popular to put your message out.
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