MY HIT LIST: WITH EVERYTHING TO LOSE
Fans of Paul Weller, of which I am one, Love The Jam and dig his solo work, The Style Council is what divides fans. Their output was sprinkled with some pretty good stuff. Weller tried to create a Jazz/Pop/Soul hybrid as if to emulate all those great 7” singles that came out of Detroit, New York and Philadelphia.
My favourite of there’s is With Everything to Lose a dinner Jazz pastry with a filling of eighties left wing political observation. It's taken from their best album Our favourite Shop. This is an album that contains some great songs like The Lodgers, All gone away, Walls come tumbling down and Come to Milton Keynes and is very much the accessible face of the growing dissatisfaction amongst the country's music listeners who had gotten into ' a little bit of politics'.It's nearest comparable content was The Specials' In The Studio album released the following year.
With Everything to Lose was an alternative take of their hit Have you ever had it Blue which was ostensibly a love song.
Blue
From the playground to the wasteground
Hope ends at 17 -
Sweeping floors and filling shelves
Forced into government schemes -
11 years spent to dig out ditches,
Forget your school day dreams -
Guarantees and lie-filled speeches,
But nothings what it seems -
Qualified and patronised and with everything to lose.
No choice or chance for the future
The rich enjoy less tax -
Dress the girls in pretty pink
The shit goes to the blacks
A generation’s heart torn out
And covered up the facts
The only thing they’ll understand
Is a wall against their backs
The only hope now left for those - with everything to lose.
In desperation empty eyes,
Signed up and thrown away -
There’s drugs replacing dignity,
The short sharp shock repaid -
There’ll be no money if you dare to question
Working the Tory way -
The truth is up there carved in stone,
Where 21 dead now lay -
A family’s loss for a few pounds saved -
With everything to lose.
Hope ends at 17 -
Sweeping floors and filling shelves
Forced into government schemes -
11 years spent to dig out ditches,
Forget your school day dreams -
Guarantees and lie-filled speeches,
But nothings what it seems -
Qualified and patronised and with everything to lose.
No choice or chance for the future
The rich enjoy less tax -
Dress the girls in pretty pink
The shit goes to the blacks
A generation’s heart torn out
And covered up the facts
The only thing they’ll understand
Is a wall against their backs
The only hope now left for those - with everything to lose.
In desperation empty eyes,
Signed up and thrown away -
There’s drugs replacing dignity,
The short sharp shock repaid -
There’ll be no money if you dare to question
Working the Tory way -
The truth is up there carved in stone,
Where 21 dead now lay -
A family’s loss for a few pounds saved -
With everything to lose.
With everything...
© Paul Weller
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having said that;