“We are the mods! We are the mods! We are the mods! We are, we are, we are the mods!” Or rather you were. But it doesn’t seem to matter to the middle aged men, many dressed like cabbies, out for their first gig since the early eighties, watching a group of men up on stage, all of whom look like cabbies, and indeed Rick Buckler was one until recently.

Then From the Jam kick off, in a perfect an tight set, and the gentlemen around me surge towards the stage in Tripod, then seem to remember themselves, and share slight smiles and half laughs with others around them. Foxton is brilliant, charismatic and utterly unchanged from when Weller walked out of the best looking band ever, and up his own arse. But then Foxton never stopped gigging, he moonlights with the Stiff Little Fingers, and genuinely seems to enjoy being on stage. When he does one of trademark little jumps, one leg forward, the other back, everyone holds their breathe, its one of rocks great moments, and another crossed off the list of must see before I die list.

Weller refused to come back, what with him being unable to answer the Frog Princes questions, so they got someone who sounds just like him, and off they went, to the sounds of unironic “We are the mods!”

The Jams reformation has been a quiet and low key affair, compared to some. Cheap too. And for so many thatís what the lure is. Mounds of cash. They look at the big beasts of rock, the Rolling Stones, at their never ending tours, with their sacks of cash littering up the place and think to themselves thats something I could deal with. Their own original cash is gone, largely spunked up the wall or down the taxmanís greedy throat. And so we get to our current situation, up to the balls in big band heroes getting together again to pass round the begging bowl.

Although some may think the wide spread fleecing of the fans to go to big stadium concerts for the same amount of money I have to live on for a week is the worst of it. It isn’t though, its the little corporate parties the heroes of my youth play. The Specials reformed to play Simon “Don’t look at me” Jordans birthday party and Christina Aguilera singing at a Russian business man’s wedding.

There’s another side though. I never caught the Jam in their pomp first time round, what with me not being born yet, or the Smashing Pumpkins, what with me being utterly uninterested in their terrible music, or the Police, for both reasons. I have am delighted that I get the chance to see them before they fall off the face of the earth all together (although with Sting this cannot happen soon enough), but I’m not sure how happy I am about doing it at cripplingly high prices, to fund the cocaine lifestyle of a wrinkling legend, holding out his hand for one last pay day, singing songs decades old, wringing out a finished talent.

Andrew Booth is an intercontinental dandy. He is co-writing his first novel Jackdaw Fool.
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