by Jim McGuinn, Program Director and Host, Y-Rock on XPN

I was a sophomore in high school, just starting to hang around WDGC, our little radio station. I had a crush on Nell Lundy, a senior girl who was the only girl in the entire high school at that time that one might call ‘new wave’ – in that she had short hair, was really smart and cynical, and didn’t subscribe to the REO Speedwagon = good music philosophy that was going around the ‘burbs in 1982. I was a sophomore jock who knew a lot about classic rock, and one day I wandered into the station and heard the GREATEST SONG EVER (that week), “A Town Called Malice,” by English rockers The Jam. I’d never heard anything quite like it – yet the ingredients were all familiar – bouncy Motown bassline, a bit of the propulsion a la the Who, and something more going on lyrically than we were getting from Foreigner and Lionel Ritchie. I was hooked. I said to Nell, “How come this isn’t played on the Loop?” (note: the Loop was Chicago’s version of WMMR at that time)… to which she replied, “Because commercial radio sucks.” She was right, and still is. She took me under her wing, feeding me with vinyl by The Jam, Clash, Costello, Buzzcocks, Ramones – and within weeks my life’s course was determined – I was going to spend my life surrounded by rock and roll. I didn’t know if that meant making it, writing about it, playing it on the radio, selling it at a record shop, or producing it, but over the past 25 years I’ve done a little of all of the above, and it can be traced back to hearing Paul Weller and The Jam that fateful day in January 1982.

The Jam’s vid for “Town Called Malice,” 1982