#The style council vinyl movie
#The style council vinyl mod

What happens in the margins of Long Hot Summers makes a difference, though. During their peak early years, the band gravitated toward singles and EPs over LPs, so their most vibrant music happened here, while the scattershot later albums usually are well represented by their hits. In one sense, assembling a Style Council collection isnвЂ™t all that hard, since the high points often occurred on singles.

#The style council vinyl movie

Long Hot Summers differs from the many, many Style Council compilations released over the years by being co-compiled by Weller as part of a Style Council reclamation project that also includes a documentary film for Sky Arts (the movie is rumored to be headed Stateside sometime next year). But Long Hot Summers: The Story of the Style Council underscores that they were a band born of the moment who lived for the moment, and that moment had passed by the time the вЂ™80s were half finished.

Members of the Style Council-Weller and Talbot officially constituted the groupвЂ™s lineup, but they retained a fairly stable set of players through the years-later blamed the bandвЂ™s prominent position on the anti-Thatcher Red Wedge tour in 1986 as halting their momentum. They embraced political activism, fighting against prime minister Margaret Thatcher with such enthusiasm it nearly consumed them. The mysterious, uncredited Cappuccino Kid-widely believed to be Paolo Hewitt, a confidant and biographer of WellerвЂ™s until they had a falling out in the 2000s-penned righteous manifestos for the bandвЂ™s liner notes.

#The style council vinyl mod

They swapped punk and mod for jazz and soul as musical touchstones, and the group expanded this obsession through the вЂ™80s, incorporating house and garage to an extent that their record label rejected their final album for veering too far into the dance-music realm. The groupвЂ™s first single, вЂњSpeak Like a Child,вЂќ shared a title with a 1968 Blue Note LP by Herbie Hancock they designed the album cover of 1985вЂ™s Our Favourite Shop so that it spilled over with the books, fashion, music, and film they cherished most. Signifiers were a big deal for the Style Council. Here, heвЂ™s cavorting shirtless, so carefree heвЂ™s nearly camp, embracing the hint of sexual ambiguity with the same gusto with which he has a beatnik bongo player join their party. Weller scowled through most of the Jam, adopting the look intense young men wear when theyвЂ™re seriously making serious music. In the video for 1983вЂ™s вЂњ Long Hot SummerвЂќ-their third single and the song that lends its title to this new anthology-Talbot spends his time rowing a bare-chested Weller to a riverside picnic later, Tabot would literally carry WellerвЂ™s bags in the clip for вЂњ Boy Who Cried Wolf.вЂќ Absurd as the images may be, thereвЂ™s an endearing playfulness to the videos thatвЂ™s telling. Weller enlisted Mick Talbot, a keyboardist who previously played with Jam disciples the Merton Parkas, as his lieutenant, but it was clear from the outset who was in charge.