CARBONA YOUR ENTHUSIASM (2)

By: James Parker
August 2, 2020

One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of our favorite punk songs, c. 1974–1983.

“GOING UNDERGROUND” | THE JAM | 1980

When I try to recall how it felt, the first breaking-upon-my-ears of this song, I turn into old Wordsworth sitting above Tintern Abbey: “I cannot paint / What then I was. The sounding cataract / Haunted me like a passion…” It was March 1980; I was 11; I was at an all-boys boarding school in Suffolk, England; I was not particularly a Jam fan — I preferred Adam and the Ants. But “Going Underground,” in the week of its release, was the biggest-selling single in the country — “straight in at Number One!”, like a pitch invasion or a coup. Now, of course, 52-year-old me can learnedly listen, noddingly appreciate, admiringly deconstruct, for example, the rhythmic complexity of the song: the brilliant staccato accents of Rick Butler’s hi-hat, the stunning abbreviated slashes of Paul Weller’s guitar. I can see, discern, from this distance, how beautifully the Jam combined the Sex Pistols’ bitten-off syllables with the cosmic rumble of the Who. But when I first heard “Going Underground,” as superbly organized a piece of music as it is, I barely heard it as music at all: it was a rush, a roar, an overwhelming, full of shouts and chants and muscular mood-shifts. I couldn’t process it. The voice of the young Paul Weller — passionate, urban, sardonic, riot-starting, impossibly tough-sounding — turned upside-down, in an instant, my world of short trousers and heavily policed bedtimes. Now what was I supposed to do?

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CARBONA YOUR ENTHUSIASM (2020): Series introduction by Josh Glenn | Mimi Lipson on Flipper’s “Sex Bomb” | James Parker on The Jam’s “Going Underground” | Dan Fox on The Cramps’ “Human Fly” | Adrienne Crew on Bad Brains’ “I and I Survive” | Devin McKinney on Romeo Void’s “Never Say Never” | Deb Chachra on The Buzzcocks’ “Ever Fallen in Love” | Mark Kingwell on The Demics’ “New York City” | Jessamyn West on Dead Kennedys’ “Kill the Poor” | Douglas Wolk on The Homosexuals’ “Soft South Africans” | Josh Glenn on The Freeze’s “This is Boston, Not L.A.” | Stephanie Burt on Sorry’s “Imaginary Friend” | Luc Sante on Public Image Ltd.’s “Public Image” | Miranda Mellis on X-Ray Spex’s “Oh Bondage! Up Yours!” | Adam McGovern on The Clash’s “Washington Bullets” | Mandy Keifetz on Germs’ “Forming” | Gordon Dahlquist on The Sex Pistols’ “Problems” | Anthony Miller on The Soft Boys’ “I Wanna Destroy You” | Deborah Wassertzug on The Mekons’ “Where Were You?” | Tor Aarestad on Gang of Four’s “Return the Gift” | Marc Weidenbaum on The Pop Rivets’ “Dream of ’63” | David Smay on The Rezillos’ “(My Baby Does) Good Sculptures” | Vanessa Berry on The Cure’s “So What” | Chelsey Johnson on The Slits’ “Typical Girls” | Lynn Peril on Crass’s “Smother Love” | Mike Watt on The Dils’ “You’re Not Blank”.

MORE ENTHUSIASM at HILOBROW

CARBONA YOUR ENTHUSIASM (2)

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