Town Called Malice – The Jam

Some time in the mid 80’s there was a Wednesday night ‘roller disco’. For teenagers in the region it was absolutely the place to be.

There I was, with my long hair trailing behind me (usually in front of me because skating forwards is lame), circling the badminton courts with half of Howden Clough. And what did they play, every week without fail? You guessed it.

Town Called Malice is a bitter little song about run down industrial towns and poverty. But hey, what a tune!

Of all the songs we cover, this one is pretty much guaranteed to get people up on their feet.

Lyrics

It’s a lamentation, but not like ‘A Design For Life’, it’s more urban.
It’s not about how capitalism so idiotically wastes resources, or about the death of childhood optimism in the face of a future reality. It’s about the waste of the present, the descent from a possibly better past in which working people at least had dignity if little else.

Anyway, my favourite bit is : Playground kids and creaking swings Lost laughter in the breeze.
I just like the image, and that bit is great to sing.

Music

You do, need a keyboard to cover this, let nobody tell you otherwise.

Paul Weller has a deceptively high voice, parts of this a very hard to reach. The quitar part is relatively easy for a Jam song, but I don’t play it right at all. The key to this is to maintain the sort of ‘iggy pop : lust for life’ groove.

The song is in D
Verses go: iii ii, iii ii, IV iii, V, I Chorus repeats : I, Isus4 Middle 8 (whole streets belief) goes : vii (should be diminished but is minor), vi, vii, vi, V, I