Strange Town

I always felt this was about The Jam Not fitting into the New wave Movement Alien from there peers 4 4 time, Maybe The Buzzcocks. The refrian uses the wooho from what do i get ? Manchester maybe.

Speaking as a Londoner who has now moved up north, I can see how inhospitable London is to new comers.

Weller must have been visiting all the wrong places as a kid, or else he was a mouthy bugger. Killer baseline, and love those harmony vocals on the chorus!

Sums up the feelings of anyone going into/moving to a new place. The whole sense of isolation and how everything seems alien to you, and how oyu seem alien to those around you.

I found London to be a jolly good place with the friendliest people

I think this song is the first sign of Weller entering his imperial phase, moving beyond Clash style songwriting into a maturer style on a par with The Beatles. Weller said this was about the disappearance of the punk ideals, how the movement had all dissolved very quickly, and the new terrain was completely alien to him. The Clash had signed to a major label, the Sex Pistols had crumbled. What was left was a kind of tidied up stage school version of punk, Hazel O Connor The Boomtown Rats, and Billy Idol, all people from good middle class backgrounds. The loss of identity theme also crops up a lot with Weller in other Jam songs, like, Dreamtime, & In The Crowd. The ending of this song is one of the best exits in punk rock, or any rock. It's like the tension he feels in the strange town has finally erupted in bloody violence.

This song is a lot like the spooky traditional song Nottamun Town, which has been done by many folksingers and groups like Fairport Convention, except it leaves out the best part, which says that 10,000 people who just stood around gawking at the newcomer without offering help got drowned before they were born.

Great single with some excellent advice about fitting in somewhere that's new to you. Don't be weird!