Though due to to time, place, and sound, the Jam are closely associated with the London punk explosion of the late ‘70s, their musical and extra-musical ethos were often directly contrary to punk’s year-zero outlook, paying open obeisance to ‘60s groups that punk sought to outright reject. Though they shared punk’s focused anger and political engagement, the band embraced the posh fashions, R&B influence, and speed-freak energy of the mod movement which, having peaked and ebbed a dozen years earlier, was tremendously passé even to non-cognoscenti, and singer/guitarist Paul Weller’s schoolgirl crush on the Who couldn’t have been more blatant.
 

Case in point.

So unpunk were the Jam considered in some circles that no less a Godhead than Joe Strummer of the Clash called them out as frauds in one of his band’s greatest songs, “White Man in Hammersmith Palais.” In the song’s second half, Strummer addresses disillusionment with punk’s direction, and the verse

The new groups are not concerned
with what there is to be learned
They got Burton suits, you think it’s funny
turning rebellion into money

has long been considered a direct stab at the Jam, who at the time had recently made a point of proclaiming a baffling loyalty to the Tories. (In later years, Weller would refer to Margaret Thatcher as “absolute fucking scum” and “a traitor to the people,” so don’t hold that early Conservative support against him.) Strummer demurely claimed he was taking aim at power-pop more generally, but the “Burton suits” line seemed mighty specific.
 

Strummer & Weller. Evidently there was a truce?

But by dint of sheer awesomeness, the Jam prevailed over their contemporaries’ contempt, and are regarded as a crucial expression of that musical revolution. Old footage reveals why—in concert, the band played with ferocious, dervish-like energy. One of two 1977 shows at Manchester’s Electric Circus club was preserved on film—couldn’t tell you which, I’m afraid, as many online sources say August, but an impressive gigography lists no Electric Circus show in that month—and while the entire show isn’t online, the highlight reel below will do. Some of this footage was broadcast in November of 1977 on Tony Wilson’s Granada TV show So It Goes, and all of it is included in the 2003 DVD The Complete Jam. It features “In the City”—the main riff of which was lifted wholesale by the Sex Pistols’ for “Holiday in the Sun,” so evidently not all the A-listers disrespected the band—the anti-developer protest anthem “Bricks and Mortar,” “Carnaby Street,” and “Slow Down,” a classic tune by a Little Richard manqué named Larry Williams that’s been covered by the Beatles, Golden Earring, Smithereens, and even Queen’s Brian May. The Jam’s take on it here is absolutely incendiary. Enjoy.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
The Jam deliver two scorching songs on ABC’s ‘Fridays,’ 1980
‘The Kids are United’: Footage from Reading Festival 1978 featuring The Jam, Sham 69, Ultravox