From The Jam

The Hawth, Crawley

Thursday, January 23

THE band, fronted by Russell Hastings and featuring Bruce Foxton, are an off-shoot of Seventies’ mod icons The Jam and are touring in celebration of the predecessor’s 1979 album Setting Sons.

The evening features support from The Vapours, a band of similar ilk, most famous for their songs News At Ten and Turning Japanese.

They warm the crowd up nicely, with a short set of their most recognisable songs and one or two new ones from their forthcoming album.

A great way to start the evening.

From The Jam walk on stage to polite applause and the beginning of their set seems a little flat with neither the band, nor the crowd really fired up.

This seems to continue until half way when they launch into Eton Rifles to which both crowd and band begin to get into the swing of things.

From here on, the gig finally gets a bit of life.

Playing through more of the hits, the band show energy and the crowd reacts with mass sing-a-longs to That’s Entertainment and A Town Called Malice.

The gap between the encore seems long and, although the crowd stick around, there is definitely restlessness among some who begin to wonder if they will return to the stage.

Hastings, Foxton and the rest of the band do finally return to play a three-song encore of Kinks cover David Watts, In The City and Going Underground.

All three songs receive the crowd reaction and volume that they deserve.

To those who are true Jam fans, it’s a fantastic evening of nostalgia and of truly singing your heat out to the songs that serve as vivid reminders of teenage years.

To casual Jam fans, it’s fun.

The classics are done well and it’s certainly an enjoyable evening, but nothing that will necessarily going to draw you back.

Matt Cousins