Track This: The Jam-Down in the Tube Station at Midnight
The Jam's "Down in the Tube Station at Midnight" has been one of my favorite Jam tracks since I first purchased Greatest Hits in 1995. Long before I listened to all their records, and just when I was beginning to dip my toe, into Paul Weller's increasingly lengthy catalog, I would play the track on my beatdown boom box. Sequestered among rock posters and stacks of comic books, I marveled at Weller's detailed songwriting that told of another side of British culture different from what I got from The Clash, my favorite British band at the time. While I loved early Jam tracks like "Eton Rifles" and "The Modern World" and later got heavily into the later soulful tracks, especially "Town Called Malice" and the ballad "The Bitterest Pill (I Ever Had to Swallow)," "Down in the Tube Station" grabbed hold of my teenage imagination and would not let go. The imagery and story-telling alone sucked me in, but the music seal...
