Melvins - 2015 - A Tribute to the Jam

 

Amphetamine Reptile Records – Scale 137

The Melvins’ tribute to The Jam begins by removing nearly everything polite, stylish, and sharply tailored from “Art School.” Paul Weller’s original was a compact declaration of independence, driven by youthful impatience and the belief that creativity mattered more than institutional approval. The Melvins retain the song’s sneer but replace its clean mod velocity with distorted mass. Buzz Osborne’s guitar does not slash through the arrangement so much as occupy the entire room, turning a two-minute punk challenge into something heavier, slower, and more sarcastic.
The choice makes sense because The Jam and the Melvins share more than their sounds initially reveal. Both bands understood that a short song could carry aggression without becoming shapeless. Both distrusted fashionable scenes even while becoming central to them. Weller attacked empty art-school posturing from inside punk’s first wave; Buzz spent decades treating underground orthodoxy as something to mock, bend, or flatten beneath a riff.
“Art School” therefore survives the transformation because its central irritation remains intact. The Melvins do not reproduce The Jam’s crisp guitar or youthful urgency. They make the song sound older, heavier, and less convinced that rebellion will produce a useful future. The complaint remains, but the optimism hidden inside the original has been bruised.
“The Modern World” receives a similarly thickened treatment. The Jam’s version moved quickly, announcing the present tense with the confidence of a young band demanding recognition. In the Melvins’ hands, modernity sounds less exciting than stupidly persistent. The riff drags its weight behind it, while the vocal delivery emphasizes contempt over celebration.
HAZE XXL’s involvement makes the single feel inseparable from Amphetamine Reptile rather than merely another Melvins covers exercise. His voice and guitar add a rough communal edge, turning the performances into a collision between British punk history and the abrasive American underground that AmRep helped cultivate. Dale Crover keeps the songs moving without cleaning them up, hitting with enough snap to preserve the originals’ compact structures beneath the distortion.
Then comes “Batman,” the tiny curveball that prevents the tribute from becoming overly respectful. Neal Hefti’s famous television theme has been covered endlessly, but the Melvins understand its primitive perfection: one riff, one word, repetition, impact. It is practically a garage-rock blueprint and therefore fits naturally beside early Jam material.
The band treats it as blunt comic relief without making it disposable. “Batman” becomes a reminder that punk, surf music, television themes, novelty records, and heavy riffs have always shared secret tunnels. The Melvins have spent their career crawling through those tunnels with a flashlight and a damaged amplifier.
The seven-inch format keeps everything properly concentrated. Three quick songs, splattered vinyl, clown artwork by HAZE XXL and Mackie Osborne, and no attempt to present the tribute as an authoritative interpretation of The Jam. This is affection expressed through vandalism.
The Melvins do not dress like mods, reproduce Weller’s tone, or pretend to recover 1977. They take the songs’ impatience, hooks, and refusal of approval, then force them through their own machinery. The suits are gone. The scooters are gone. The melodies remain underneath several tons of fuzz.