The Jam - About the Young Idea exhibition - currently in Liverpool

[Jan McNulty]

My friend and I spent a very happy couple of hours going around this exhibition today.

 

I would say that you don't have to be a fan of The Jam to enjoy the exhibition (my friend isn't).  Apart from some fantastic items such as the guitars and suits on display and lots of private photographs and memorabilia what I really liked about the exhibition is the way the context is set up.

 

There are television screens placed in the rooms showing news items from the period 1976-1982 and newspapers and suchlike.  It was also fascinating for my friend and I (we used to work in the record department in Rushworth and Dreaper - a famous Liverpool music shop) was seeing the vinyl records and the album covers (we have lost a lot with CDs and downloads!).  It really is a fascinating picture of the social history of the time.  I also hadn't realised what a huge fan of the Beatles that Paul Weller is.

 

There are a couple of places where you can sit down and watch film of the band in performance.

 

This is a wonderfully well curated exhibition (curated by Paul Weller's sister) and is most definitely worth a couple of hours of your time if you are in Liverpool between now and the end of September.  It is on at the Cunard Building on the Pier Head so is very handy for all the other waterfront attractions.

 

Liverpool Echo preview:   http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/sneak-peek-jam-exhibition-cunard-11546839

 

Ticket details:  http://www.nicetimeinc.co.uk/tickets/

 

You can pre-book for a time slot but we just turned up at the venue and had no problem getting in.  It's big enough that although there seemed to be a lot of people there we didn't feel crowded.

[trog]

I visited this exhibition yesterday and I agree with Janet - it is very good and well worth a visit. For me, the most interesting thing was the early demos that you can listen to - the sound that was to be come The Jam is definitely there. If you want to see this, you'll have to go to Liverpool. The staff said that there was a chance it might go to Japan but no other UK venues. It needs a huge amount of space and there aren't suitable venues to accomodate it.