Originally intended as a concept album, only a few of the finished tracks on their brilliant 1979 LP related to the proposed theme of three close friends growing apart. The ferocious, blunt Thick As Thieves perhaps best captures that painful drift apart. Elsewhere Weller emerges the vitriolic political commentator on the anti war polemic, Little Boy Soldiers and the class war cry of hit single The Eton Rifles.

The Jam exploded onto the punk scene in 1977. Led by guitarist/singer Paul Weller, a young, sharp suited mod, who was inspired by Otis Redding, Dr Feelgood, The Who and the Sex Pistols in equal measure, with bassist Bruce Foxton and drummer Rick Buckler they delivered their ferocious mission statement – In The City. The song hit the Top 40 and fanfared the arrival of a three piece that would over the next five years produce six studio albums and 18 singles including four Number 1s. While their punk contemporaries faded away - The Jam went out with a bang, at the very, very top. Such was the enormity of their split that it even made the TV news. 

And their influence is still as strong today, 30 years after that thrilling debut. After spawning the mod revival with bands like The Chords and The Purple Hearts, they laid the foundations for Britpop (bands like Blur and Oasis crowned Weller the Modfather) and their music can now be heard in the sounds of Arctic Monkeys, Graham Coxon, Dirty Pretty Things, Babyshambles, The Ordinary Boys and Hard Fi. Even hip hop producer Mark Ronson has just covered Pretty Green (from Sound Affects).