For anyone having trouble identifying just where their inspiration lay, the trio answered the question with its follow-up, a raucous cover of the Small Faces' Whatcha Gonna Do About It. But while Eddie the Hot Rods were having success with an RB-punk crossover sound, the Jolt decidedly weren't. Third time lucky? I Can't Wait, released in June 1978, completed the hat trick of flops, although the song is a classic combo of spitting punk fury and Who-esque power chords. It boded badly for the Jolt's eponymous self-titled album, which arrived the following month. More diverse in sound than their singles had suggested was possible, the album still didn't jolt the public out of its lethargy or the press away from the Jam comparisons, even if the Buzzcocks and the Undertones were much more apt. The group made one last valiant attempt to shake up its fortunes, enlarging to a quartet with the arrival of guitarist Kevin Key a few months later. The Jolt continued gigging, and in the new year, the rising tide of mod seemed likely to carry the Jolt chartward with it.
At which point the group handed the British press the bullet that would finish the band off -- See Saw, a then unreleased Jam number gifted to them by Paul Weller for inclusion on the Jolt's forthcoming Maybe Tonight EP. The press obliged with a predictable pasting. The A-side deserved it; both songs were weak. But the flip -- See Saw and Stop Look -- were everything a mod could desire. The EP arrived in the shops in June 1979, and stayed there. And as mod burst into full flower, the Jolt's members called it a day, thus harvesting none of the rewards from the new genre they had helped engender. The Jolt might have been no more than a footnote in most people's musical archives, but the U.K. label Captain Mod reissued their album and all their singles on CD in 2002, providing a vivid reminder of the group's groundbreaking and underappreciated glory. ~ Jo-Ann Greene, Rovi