Anybody wondering whatever happened to the This Is England generation should have got themselves down to the Brighton Centre on Saturday night.

Superannuated skinheads, middle-aged mods, plus the odd teenager who wasn’t even a twinkle in his old man’s eye when Paul Weller was in his pomp, crowded into the venue’s East Wing to relive the bad old days when jobs were scarce and the future looked bleak (what’s new?).

Paul Weller’s best songs matched acute social observation with raw energy. As a live band The Jam had few peers, but the full-on sonic maelstrom was only ever one miscued chord away from chaos.

Just how crucial Weller was to that juggling act was made brutally apparent by this line up: original bassist Bruce Foxton, drummer Mark Brzezicki with Russell Hastings taking care of vocals and guitar. It is no disrespect to say that Hastings is no match for Weller. It’s like expecting Rolf Harris to pull a Picasso out of the bag.

The crowd roared their full-throated approval but to these ears one classic after another was dragged into a corner and given an unforgiving beating. It didn’t help that the sound in the hall resembled an aural version of pea-soup – thick and heavy with an unpleasant aftertaste. Little Boy Soldiers was shorn of subtlety, Eton Rifles was drained of power and by the time the trio got round to bludgeoning This Is The Modern World the irony was almost too much to bear.

You can’t slam what is essentially a tribute band for being irrelevant. But you can ask that they don’t desecrate the songs they aim to celebrate. As Paul Weller put it in When You’re Young: ‘It's so hard to comprehend/ Why you set up your dreams to have them smashed in the end.’