This is the Modern World!

Weller fanboy Hewitt pens a panegyric to his hero that at least covers the basic history of the Jam. Hewitt trys to be objective but usually comes off as insincere when he is negative. His opinions follow those of Weller, particularly at the time this was written, too closely to be considered truly objective. His dismissal of The Who and Pete Townsend for instance, certainly reflects a later Weller view and seems mainly due to the fact that The Who still played their old songs in concert. Always the idealist, I'm sure if he was honest Weller would cringe if he went back and honestly looked at some of the things he said over the years as he has matured. He doesn't seem to mind throwing old Jam numbers into his shows now.

On top of this Hewitt's classification of the great, good, mediocre, and bad Jam songs is all wrong and his review outtakes from the trendy and fickle music papers panders to the same sort of meaningless hyperbole that these rags are known for, which has little or nothing to do with the music and all about what is "cool" at the time. There is far too little of the Jam and far too much of just Paul Weller as well.

Still it's a fun read with lots of photos (again too many of Weller and too few of The Jam) and gets the basic history up until the breakup right. ( )