The show was terrific: muscular, lively, energetic. I'd missed him in Chicago the last several years, but-via the generosity of my friend Jay, who scored VIP tickets and asked me along-I went to see Weller last night, at The Vic. (OK, these days, too.) By the end of the 1980s, I was through with Weller, and didn't reacquaint myself with him until several years ago when I began methodically going through his large solo catalog, surprised and deeply pleased at what I found. And Weller had turned his back on the guitar, a grave sin in my book those days. Rising to the surface when I do listen is the inescapable fact that, after 1985 or so, I was stubbornly determined to like them (and ape their fashion sense) even as their work grew wan and boring, having little to do with my life. These decades later, my enthusiasm for the Style Council embarrasses me, though my fandom was a sincere element of my early-twenties "scanning." I rarely listen to their music now, as most of it's ghastly, dated, and painfully self-conscious, especially from their later career. In college I followed Weller into The Style Council, buying every single, twelve-inch, and album at Yesterday and Today Records-at import prices-and hopeful to catch a video on MTV or Friday Night Videos late at night. I came close to seeing them: for my sixteenth birthday my brother chose to buy me the Dance Craze album rather than go with his other idea, tickets to The Jam show at University of Maryland's Ritchie Coliseum. Trouser Press or a rare weeks-old issue of Melody Maker or NME, but mostly the very-British Jam lived for me in their stirring, passionate songs. Were, in those days, far and few between: I might see an interview in Other than the Beatles, there was no band more important to me in my teen years then The Jam, whose albums and singles I devoured and whose news sightings DOWN AT THE ROCK & ROLL CLUB-I did something last night that I've wanted to do since I was fifteen: see Paul Weller.