All Mod Cons is a 1978 album by the British punk rock/mod revival band The Jam. The album was released in the US in 1979, with the song "Billy Hunt" replaced by "The Butterfly Collector."
The album received more critical praise and commercial success than The Jam's second album, This Is the Modern World. The single "Down in the Tube Station at Midnight" was one of the band's most successful chart hits, peaking at #15 on the UK charts. That was their biggest hit since "All Around the World", a non-LP single released between the band's first and second albums. In 2000, Q magazine placed All Mod Cons at number 50 in its list of the 100 Greatest British Albums Ever.
This album, which is the band's third full-length LP, represents a transition from the relatively straightforward mod/punk music that dominated the first two albums, and the band's later artistic endeavours. Strong undercurrents of British 1960s pop influences, particularly The Kinks, run throughout the album. Most obvious is the cover of The Kinks song "David Watts".
The song "Down in the Tube Station at Midnight" is a first-person narrative of a young man who walks into a tube station on the way home to his wife, and is beaten to death by far right thugs.
The lyrics of the song "All Mod Cons" features Weller attacking the fact that many of the benefits of fame fall with a lack of commercial success (something he suffered when the Jam's second album This Is the Modern World failed to be as commercially success as their debut). The lyrics criticize fickle people who attach themselves to people who enjoy success and leave them once that is over. The phrase "all mod cons", short for "all modern conveniences", is a British idiom one might find in housing advertisements. The title is a play on the word mod, in reference to the band being part of the mod revival. |