A-Side: Down In The Tube Station At Midnight
B-Side: So Sad About Us | The Night
Record label: Polydor POSP 8
Producer: Vic Coppersmith-Heaven
Released: 13/10/78
Purchased: 24/01/81
A fabulously terrifying of ordinary, everyday violence. If Eisenstein made 45s they’d sound like this. (Record Mirror, 07/10/78)
Handsome! At last some rock singles after last week’s pitiful turnout against the ever-present, effervescent spears of Disco. Hardly any of the ‘soldiers’ of 77 now have anything near a 100% vinyl record success but this band is the exception.
This is THE JAM . . . “All Around The World”, “In The City”, “David Watts” and now (so soon!), a new screamer, incisive and tear-arse, tempered and taught.
Like “Wardour Street” it’s a shout against the cowardly scuttling creep, mob-handed random assault. Anyone who’s ever stood waiting for the last one – be it at Whitechapel or Wood Green – knows the tightening of the chest when that rabble of football thugs start howling in from the station stairs. You’re on your jack, and all the trains are going the other way.
They simmer through the verses but screech through the choruses until the violence is whirling around, taking the song to exhilarating peaks and never letting up on the terror of the lyric.
“Hey boy, they shout, have you got any money?
I said I’ve got a little money and a takeaway curry
I’m on my way home to my wife.
She’ll be lining out the cutlery,
You know that she’s expecting me
Polishing the glasses and pulling out the cork.
BUT, I’M DAHN IN THE TUBE STATION AT MIDNIGHT!!”
The track is coupled with The Who’s “So Sad About Us” and also “The Night” but I find it hard to turn this over just yet. It’s stuck fast to my deck. (NME, 07/10/78)
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