Tuesday, July 3, 2018

The Jam - Acoustic Demos, 1978-1982

Fans of the Jam have been lucky in that the group has been very well covered with archival releases. Most of the albums have been re-released in deluxe or even super deluxe versions with tons of bonus tracks, and an excellent and comprehensive box set has been released too.

Out of all those bonus tracks, many of them are demo versions of some sort. I went through all the bonus tracks I could find and categorized the demos as band demos or acoustic demos. I sorted them and found there was one album worth of acoustic demos and two albums worth of band demos. This is the acoustic album.

The Jam were a very rocking band that sometimes even got lumped into the punk rock movement. That said, they had an acoustic side almost from the very beginning, and that's what this is all about. Most of these tracks are of Paul Weller alone on the acoustic guitar. But some songs, such as the first one, have a light touch from one or both of the other two band members.

It's highly unlikely the Jam will ever reunite, and if it does, even more unlikely they'd play acoustically. So this is the closest we'll ever get to the Jam "unplugged."

I'll post the two  albums later if there's vocal interest. I'm not sure if I should since the songs aren't done that differently from the final released versions.

By the way, the songs below are sorted chronologically.

01 Worlds Apart [Demo] (Jam)
02 Along the Grove [Demo] (Jam)
03 Burning Sky [Demo] (Jam)
04 The Eton Rifles [Demo] (Jam)
05 Hey Mister [Demo] (Jam)
06 Saturday's Kids [Demo] (Jam)
07 Thick as Thieves [Demo] (Jam)
08 Little Boy Soldiers [Demo] (Jam)
09 Wasteland [Demo] (Jam)
10 That's Entertainment [Acoustic Version] (Jam)
11 Dream Time [Demo] (Jam)
12 Liza Radley [Demo] (Jam)
13 No One in the World [Demo] (Jam)
14 Dead End Street [Demo] (Jam)
15 Pity Poor Alfie [Demo] (Jam)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700763/TJAMM1978-1982_AcusticDmos_atse.zip.html

The cover art shows Paul Weller up close playing acoustic guitar with bassist Bruce Foxton in the background. I added the text. I'm not sure where the picture is from.

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