With a classic red Polydor paper label, Snap, by The Jam, is a reminder of the transition period for pre-recorded audio cassettes in the UK. By the time of this tape’s 1983 release, some manufacturers had dumped trad labels and were screening the relevant details directly onto the plastic casing. Good to see that this release had retained the far more attractive red stick-ons.
The actual product was an almost obligatory summary of a recently split or otherwise exhausted band’s lifetime works. In The Jam’s case, recently split.
The concept of milking a volume of entirely pre-existing material was a bit cynical – especially when the cassette inlay was also used to excerpt and plug A Beat Concerto, the band biography. But the kind of people who would buy these compilations were a different market from the core fans, so you can see why stuff like this was put together.
Often the purchasers would be passively amenable to the artist, but not really avid fanatics. The kind of folks who would consider £4.99 a bit much for an album of ten or so songs, only one or two of which they’d heard – but not too much for thirty songs, all of which were either chart hits or fan favourites.
The songs are set out chronologically from the first single – In the City – to the last – Beat Surrender. And the inlay makes for a good read, packed as it is with Beat Concerto anecdote, and a highly stylised potting of the group’s rise, which just reeks of the trendiest late ’70s music journalism. You might need your reading glasses, because the print is phenomenally small, but they had to squeeze it onto eight sides of cassette-sized paper, along with the marathon track listing and the cover.
It’s not the best quality tape in the world, but if you have a cassette player handy it’s a very convenient way to revisit the phenomenon that was The Jam in a very compact package. And if you remember that era, you’ll probably enjoy the reading as much as the fast, furious and vital musical content.
Tape Tardis 