The Jam - About The Young Idea: The Very Best of The Jam (June 2015)

CD One
1. In The City (radio ad)
2. In The City
3. Art School
4. Away From The Numbers
5. Takin’ My Love (demo – previously unreleased)
6. All Around The World
7. The Modern World
8. In The Street Today
9. News Of The World
10. David Watts
11. Down In The Tube Station At Midnight
12. Billy Hunt
13. To Be Someone (Didn’t We Have A Nice Time)
14. English Rose
15. In The Crowd
16. ‘A’ Bomb In Wardour St.
17. Strange Town
18. The Butterfly Collector
19. When You’re Young
20. Smithers-Jones
21. The Eton Rifles
22. Thick As Thieves
23. Private Hell
24. Saturday’s Kids
25. The Burning Sky (demo)

CD Two
1. Going Underground
2. Dreams Of Children
3. Start!
4. Liza Radley
5. Pretty Green
6. Monday
7. That’s Entertainment
8. Man In The Cornershop
9. Boy About Town
10. Funeral Pyre
11. Absolute Beginners
12. Tales From The Riverbank
13. Town Called Malice
14. Precious
15. Ghosts
16. Just Who Is The Five O’Clock Hero?
17. Carnation
18. The Bitterest Pill (I Ever Had To Swallow)
19. Beat Surrender
20. Move On Up
21. Shopping
22. Pop Art Poem

Album Information on Amazon

This 47-track anthology, to tie in with the exhibition at Somerset House, includes hits, album tracks and rarities (not so sure about that!), remastered at Abbey Rd. Featuring Down In The Tube Station At Midnight, Strange Town, Going Underground, Town Called Malice, Start! and many others.

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Okay whilst there is no denying that this is a great value for money collection, 47 tracks over 2CDs, and it's released with some good intention (coinciding with the Exhibition), I do have a couple of issues regarding it.

Firstly, when it was first spoken of there were going to be two unreleased songs on the album (Good Wife and Ordinary Man, I think) but on release they are not there. The only unreleased track is a demo (and a pretty poor one as well!) of Takin' My Love (which I already have on a Bootleg called 'Extra Extras: 1975-76 Demos'). The Burning Sky Demo was released on Extras Album and the only other rare thing on the album is a Radio Advert for In The City single!

Secondly, is there actually any great need for yet another Compilation of The Jam? After all there's already plenty of choices of Compilation to chose from (and not all of them are "official releases"):

Snap (1983)

Greatest Hits (1991)

Extras (1992)

The Very Best of The Jam (1997)

The Jam Collection (1997)

Direction Reaction Creation (1997 Boxset)

Beat Surrender (1999)

The Sound of The Jam (2002)

20th Century Masters: The Millenium Collection - The Best of The Jam (2004)

Gold (2005)

That's Entertainment: The Collection (2012)

There's also a few others as well that I can't be bothered listing but I'm sure you'll find on Amazon or another music store online.

Apparently there is also a Career Defining Boxset in the works as well (funny because they already did that with Direction Reaction Creation!).

Regardless of these issues it will be £5.99 well spent over on Amazon to get hold of a copy! Probably make a good gift to give to your kid as an introduction to the band.