The Style Council: Café Bleu

The Style Council: Café Bleu – Special Edition

(Polydor)

3 x Vinyl / 6 CD Set

Available from 30th January

Buy Here

The Style Council’s 1984 debut album gets the boxset treatment, providing fans with a comprehensive collection of the bands first couple of years.

This deluxe version of Café Bleu has been on the cards for many years, with many rumours on social media and on forums over the last decade or so. Finally, it’s here, a few weeks shy of the albums 41st anniversary. A triple vinyl or 6CD set offering a complete, warts and all time capsule containing what was released by The Style Council along with unreleased live tracks, alternative versions, radio sessions and live gigs from 1983 and 1984.

Many still criticise Weller for splitting up The Jam and deride The Style Council, but I think this set will force even the harshest of critics to reconsider, especially as what was the essential ‘Jam Sound’ had actually been changing arguably since the release of Going Underground in 1980. You could argue that Weller had been trying different things before then with tracks such as English Rose and The Butterfly Collector too. The Woking trio had been experimenting on Sound Affects, with influences from the likes of post punk, including Gang Of Four and Joy Division, and on The Gift dominated by Northern Soul and funk. The final couple of The Jam’s studio albums are a far cry from In The City and All Mod Cons.

I’ll be honest, as soon as I heard this set was coming out, I wanted to review it. Partly because of nostalgia, the period around the original Café Bleu was the time I was first discovering my love of music. I’d got into The Jam in early 1982 via The Gift. I was 12 years old. My elder sister had All Mod Cons and Setting Sons on vinyl, but this was my first introduction to ‘new’ Weller material. I loved (and still love) The Bitterest Pill and also Beat Surrender. That Christmas, I received the live compilation Dig The New Breed on vinyl and still play it today, despite the annoying skip (on my copy) on Standards.

Come March 1983, with the release of their debut single, Speak Like A Child, The Style Council became my band… their singles that year seemed to mark the different seasons. Although not quite enjoying the funk sound of Money-Go-Round at first, but enjoyed the variation in their sound. Long Hot Summer landed perfectly in August, given that the previous month had been one of the warmest on record, and then the tremendous, Solid Bond In Your Heart, a candidate for The Jam’s farewell single, saw the light of day in November. 9As a side note, I was enraged when buying the latter in my shop of choice, Boots in Redditch’s Kingfisher Shopping Centre, that the price for a 7” had risen from 75p to £1.05!)

The Dutch Import. ‘Introducing’ compiling the first 3 singles came out in late 1983, which was great, but when the official ‘debut’ Café Bleu, arrived early in 1984… I’ll be honest, I didn’t expect what we got. It certainly wasn’t what I needed at the time. I wanted wall-to-wall bangers. There had been experimentation on the B-Sides, but this felt alien, with four instrumentals and a jazz version of The Paris Match amongst the tracks on the first side alone… As the saying goes, though, you don’t always get what you want; you get what you need, as it led me to seeking out Everything But The Girl, which led me to the indie scene that I hadn’t known existed. (I had just turned 14 and not yet discovered the NME!) Over the years, my love of Café Bleu has grown, and I can appreciate it now as the melting pot of ideas it is with Weller, Talbot and White at the core of the band, joined by a number of ‘guest councillors’.

The draw for many people buying this set won’t be the original album, which isn’t the first ‘act’ in either the vinyl or CD sets; that honour belongs to the newly expanded ‘Introducing’ set, which means you’re getting things in a chronological order, which may help put things into context. Following the album, there is a disc, or a selection of post-album releases including single versions of a number of tracks, B-sides, edits and remixes. The real gold here however, most of which is missing from the vinyl version and is almost exclusively on the CD, is the wealth of previously unheard material, including early demos, alternate takes, and unreleased songs that showcase the band’s restless drive for experimentation and evolution in the studio and in concert.

Of the demos, the ‘pre-TSC demo’ of Long Hot Summer, recorded in mid 1982, is the one which draws attention initially; however, it bears very little resemblance to the single of the same name, which would be a hit the following year. It does offer an indication of where Weller’s head was… Such was the band’s prolificness during the time that there are a number of demos that may be familiar to long-term fans, for example, performed live but never released, such as the studio version of Up For Grabs, and others which were given to other artists, as in The Boy Hairdresser which would be recorded by Tracie! I wouldn’t say there are any tracks on this disc, many of them instrumentals, which could be classed as ‘unreleased gems’, but the 6:30 version of Tracey Thorn’s take on The Paris Match is pretty special.

The first dozen tracks on the fifth CD are all ‘live’ recordings from sessions recorded in 1983, bookending the first year. The first being a BBC Session recorded in May, in-between the debut single and Money Go Round, but only including one of the tracks from those releases, the evergreen Headstart For Happiness. All of the sessions include the track, which is still featured in Weller’s live set today, as is The Paris Match (although the last version here features D C Lee on vocals). The first couple also include Here’s One That Got Away. Despite the repetition, there are some subtle changes throughout.

The second half of the fifth disc and all of the sixth is covered by a live concerts, both recorded by the BBC, from Dominion Theatre and at Goldiggers Chippenham. Both are from March 1984 recorded shortly before Café Bleu hit the racks. Long-term fans will remember the latter as part of the Sight & Sound In Concert series, broadcast simultaneously on Radio 1 and BBC2. I can still remember patiently waiting with my fingers poised over the buttons of my trusty Binatone tape recorder. Despite the gigs being close together in date, there is still a bit of variety in the tracks performed. Amongst the singles and album tracks are B-Sides such as It Just Came To Pieces In My Hands and Party Chambers; as well as tracks never committed to vinyl, Meeting Over Yonder, the cover of Chairman Of The Board’s Hanging On To A Memory and the aforementioned Up For Grabs.

I think casual fans or those that have discovered Paul over more recent years will be tempted by the vinyl version rather than the CD, the price being difference being more than double, but for fans of a certain age then I’d recommend the latter. This Special Edition of Café Bleu has been eagerly anticipated by many and I don’t think it will disappoint. I’m pretty sure it’s as comprehensive as it can be. I know that some may have hoped that their of version of Harvest For The World would be included but apparently the mastertapes from the BBC TV show it was broadcast on have vanished and the band didn’t record it in the studio. It may have been interesting to have the one of the Japanese gigs from 1984 included, but…

Let’s hope the Special Edition of Our Favourite Shop is already being planned.

NB: The set does include sleevenotes from Gary Crowley and the CD Set includes a hardback book. Unfortuantely these were not available to review in advance.

All words by Iain Key. See his author profile here or find him via his LinkTree