Tom Dunne: The Jam and a glorious era of scathing gig reviews

I kind of miss the mean spirited, hateful bile that some journalists used to dish out to us musicians

Fri, 25 Mar, 2022 - 08:30

Tom Dunne is a music-lover extraordinaire who, as well as presenting radio and TV shows, can also be seen in the wild as the lead singer with Something Happens.

The art of the scathing music review is dead. This damascene revelation came to me as I lay in a Covid haze on the eve of what would have been my first ever solo show. Was this linked I wonder? If the show had gone ahead would the ‘scathing music review’ tradition have been revived?

These thoughts came to mind as I read a truly hateful review of a show by The Jam in NYC from 1980. “It might as well have been Deep Purple up there,” said the reviewer, Jim Farber. Even 40 years on, that hits hard.