The Jam cared about what they released and cared about their fans. They routinely released non album singles (“All Around The World”, “News Of The World”, “Strange Town”, “When You’re Young”, “Going Underground”, “Absolute Beginners”, “Funeral Pyre”, “The Bitterest Pill…” and “Beat Surrender” were not lifted from or included on albums, that's 9 of their 16 UK singles) and the versions of singles that did appear on albums were usually different in some subtle way, they wanted to give their fans value for their hard earned.

“Snap!” is a 2 LP “career retrospective”. If you are unfamiliar with The Jam (and if so where have you been ?) then this should be one of the starting points for you. I’m sure Polydor just wanted to whack out a singles collection but “Snap!” isn’t that. Yes it includes all of their singles (well, the vinyl version does, when it was issued on CD it became “Compact Snap!” and didn’t include all the tracks from the LP’s) and those singles, where different from the album versions, are included in their 7” incarnations. It also includes some of the B-sides ("The Butterfly Collector”, “Smithers-Jones” in it’s B-side, band version, "Dreams of Children" in a form edited for the US and "Tales From The Riverbank”) and key album tracks ("Away From The Numbers”, “Billy Hunt”, "Mr. Clean”, "English Rose”, "Thick As Thieves”, "Man In The Corner Shop”).

And then there were the things that made it worth buying for those of us that already had everything. The recording of “That’s Entertainment” is a previously unreleased demo of Paul Weller’s and initial copies of the album included a 4 track 7” EP of songs recorded at Wembley Arena on their farewell tour. It’s a fantastic compilation. Stephen Thomas Erlewine, strangely an America journalist (America, in the main, didn’t get The Jam) who writes for the AllMusic website has described it as "one of the greatest greatest-hits albums of all time”.

The Jam cared…

That’s Entertainment (Demo) - https://youtu.be/djLKEiitumg?si=8kL2v8pT9IVlY3xz