The Jam - The Gift Super Deluxe Edition

Not much info but yes please..

http://store.universal-music.co.uk/...ok&utm_medium=AddThis&utm_campaign=UMG+Stores

 

Great post. Thanks! It looks like either 2 CDs, a DVD and a 7" single. Or 4 CDs. Or 3 CDs and a DVD. Wonderful looking package. Definitely getting this.

 

cool...want this...but wow, that is pricey....curious whats gonna be in that box...

 

Another site: http://www.thejamthegift.com/

Apparently you can sign up for latest tour news at the link above ;-)

I can't wait for this, it's my favourite Jam album and being the optimist I am it looks like things are being done right.

 

I like The Gift but if they were going to do a big box it should have been either All Mod Cons, Setting Sons or Sound Affects. The Gift is I think universally regarded as not the band's best album so it's odd it's getting this treatment.

 

I guess if you're Paul Weller, it's the gift that keeps on giving.

Me, I'm hoping for an extended dance remix of Bruce Foxton's 'Circus.'
:kidding:

 

That album just isn't worth that kind of money to me..no matter how many extras they find. Decent album but certainly not even close to their best.

It's a little like how they went all out for David Bowies Station To Station while there are other more deserving albums in the artists discography.

 

I know I'm out on a limb but it's my favourite Jam album but I get why people think Sounds Affects or All Mod Cons are more "deserving" for this kind of treatment. Maybe there's a lack of quality out-takes/ demo's in the vaults from other era's (pre Sound Affects anyway)

 

Not to me. I think it's their best. I can see, though, if people grew up liking the band in real time, the shift to a slicker, soul-based approach on The Gift may have seemed like a bit of a sell-out. To me, it's just better music.

 

It strikes me as odd too-maybe they plan on including material from the various EPs like "Bitterest Pill" and "Beat Surrender"... I like the record and even the horn stuff but it was clear Weller was getting a bit itchy with the constraints of a 3 piece band...

 

I get why you like it, Helio. It's a watershed album in Weller's career, in that it caught him branching out towards The Style Council. And much of it is great. The trouble is it falls flat on its face where Weller overreaches.

I'm assuming the extras will include everything from the relevant singles, all the way to Beat Surrender, demos, outtakes and alternate mixes. And some unreleased live stuff too.

 

I was a HUGE Jam fan at the time, and I violently hated it and "The Bitterest Pill" when they came out, so much so that when the news of the Jam's impending break-up was announced, I said, "Good!"

I like the album OK now, but it's not worth buying a deluxe box set.

 

look at that price! who does he think he is paul mccartney?

 

I like the Planners Dream Goes Wrong .

I don't know if the situation has changed but I was told a while ago that it won't include any live stuff.

It's hard to tell from the pic but it looks like 4 discs, so I'm guessing it's the album, a cd of the singles up to beat surrender and either 2 discs of outtakes or 1 disc and a dvd of Bingley Hall because Universal are p*ssed off at all the b**tl*gs around.

 

Thought you might like Planners Dream ... Bet you could persuade me to play it again too.

The complete Bingley Hall show would make sense - including some of the backstage footage too (showing Weller and Dave Wakefield of The Beat chatting away). They'll probably also include the videos too.

Handsome package though. Some of the photos were in the tour programmes from 1982 (which I have somewhere).

Be interesting to hear what the mastering's like. Sound Affects Deluxe was dreadful. Don't know why they didn't clone the MFSL disc for that one.

 

You know you want to Frank, just to hear Weller sing "coitus interrupts cause of next doors' rows"

 

There are? There's a Bowie album better than "Station to Station"? I must've missed that one - and here I thought I owned a complete Bowie discography!

 

Be interesting to see if anything new (Tony Taverner sessions) turns up. A few alternate mixes/demos escaped a couple of years ago thanks to a certain member of The Jam. Looking forward to this I must say.

 

I agree with some others that this isn't the best or most representative Jam album, but that's largely because, in my opinion, it constituted only a fraction of the first-rate Jam material surrounding it. Back in high school, when I was a total Jan fanatic, I sequenced a "double-album" "The Gift" on a Maxwell cassette that for years was my Go To version of the album. Later I made a CD-R of same. In addition to the album's 11tracks, there's also

Funeral Pyre
Disguises
Absolute Beginners
Tales from the Riverbank
The Bitterest Pill
Pity Poor Alfie/Fever
The Great Depression
War
Beat Surrender
Shopping
Move on Up
stoned Out of My Mind

Given all that excellent "extra" material, "The Gift" amply deserves the Deluxe treatment.

 

yes you are right, the whole of this box will be stronger than the Gift itself was....and really its a fine record, just shocking for its time if you were a Jam fanatic...looking forward to this one...just hope the price comes down a tad...

 

I was also a Jam fanatic and just gave this album a lesson for the first time in years. Loved it as a teen but have to agree, it doesn't really hold up that well for me. Most baffling is Trans Global Express. What was the point of writing and recording lyrics if they're so low in the mix that you can barely hear them. I'm not sure what they were trying to do on that one.

Also, Weller's lyrics overall on this album really do verge on silly at times

If people were made to live in boxes
God would have given them string
To tie around their selves at bed time
And stop their dreams falling through the ceiling

What?

 

I've always enjoyed The Gift. But I agree with other members here. There are earlier Jam albums that should ge the Super Deluxe Edition treatment before The Gift.

From what I can see from the display photo of the box set, there doesn't appear to be a whole lot there. There's some photos, a hard cover book, the album on CD, a live CD (if the creators of the box are following the artwork conventions from the original album). The "Town Called Malice" live 12 inch single jacket contained purple and white vertical lines.

There also appears to be a CD single for a "Town Called Malice". Not sure what the 4th disc is. Maybe a DVD of applicable videos and such.

Don't think the package is worth £179,99.

 

At the time my friends and I guessed that he did that to drive people to read the lyrics on the inner sleeve, in order to make sure they got the message.

 

One can never have enough alternate versions/takes/mixes/demos of "Tales From The Riverbank").GREAT song.

 

This has got to be one of the oddest choices for a super deluxe package that I have ever seen. A two disc deluxe edition along the lines of All Mod Cons and Sound Affects would be sufficient.