THE JAM – “Going Underground” / “The Dreams Of Children” (Polydor POSP 113) March 1980

The Jam “Going Underground” – had been planned as a double A-side, coupled with this more experimental track, which mined the same faintly psychedelic seam and oblique lyrics of earlier songs like “In The Crowd”.

The intro was taken from an earlier song, “Thick As Thieves”. “When we finished of Setting Sons,” Paul explained, “I got the engineer to play the album backwards and there was just one little piece of backward vocal I liked. “The Dreams Of Children” was built around that, more-or-less made up on the spot.”

The technique reflected Paul’s growing love of British psychedelia, especially ’66 era Beatles and early Pink Floyd (I’ll tell you a guitarist I really do like and that’s Syd Barrett.” Paul proffered in 1981). (John Reed)

A perfect summation of Paul Weller’s progress to date. There’s the usual strident vocals, the staccato chords, smooth chorus and slippery key changes and still no concessions to accessibility.

The Jam are working now with more finesse than anyone around at the moment.

The first 100,000 copies have a live EP of ‘Away From The Numbers’, ‘This Is The Modern World’ and ‘Down In The Tube Station At Midnight’ – as if you needed any encouragement to buy. (Record Mirror)