TIM HUGHES meets a born-again Mod, doing his best to keep alive the sound of the suburbs.

AS a young man Pete Jensko got his kicks from heavy metal. A ferocious guitarist from one of the country’s toughest housing estates his band Masque acquired a reputation for searing hard rock, and appeared on the same bills as Motorhead, Iron Maiden and Queensryche.

Now living in sleepy Witney, he sports a tailored suit, expensive shoes and takes his cue from suburban heroes The Jam.

He is, quite bluntly, a born-again mod. So what happened?

“I went to New Zealand,” he laughs. “I got a job out there and started to feel very homesick, so got into that whole Jam thing. Then, when I came back to the UK, I wanted to get a mod band together.

“I got on the plane to Auckland in combats and an Iron Maiden T-shirt, and came back four years later in a Fred Perry and winkle pickers.”

Pete is once again a player on the live music circuit – but instead of doling out thrash metal, this time he is keeping alive the spirit of Paul Weller’s iconic three-piece – first with tribute band called The Collector, and now with new band The Start!

Together with his bandmates drummer Teena Gee (formerly with metal band Girlschool) and bass player Andy Salt, also from Witney, he combines self-written slabs of new wave pop with covers of such classics as Eton Rifles, Down in the Tube Station at Midnight, Beat Surrender and Town Called Malice. And it’s going down very well.

Tonight Pete, a computer games artist, originally from Leicester’s vast Braunstone council estate, and his band, play at Witney’s Fat Lil’s bar, supporting and sharing the stage with Russell Barker, frontman of From the Jam – a kind of Weller-less ‘Continuity Jam’-style project set up by original Jam bassist Bruce Foxton and drummer Rick Butler.

Like Pete, Russell makes a convincing Weller substitute, throwing himself into each song with passion and raw energy.

“Once you play live, it gets into your blood and you can’t stop. I’ve been playing music since the age of 15, when we were appearing in working men’s clubs. If I hadn’t got into music, I’d have got into drugs.

“This band formed around the songs of The Jam, but I am writing more and more of my own stuff.

“We sing about the real world – homelessness, life on estates, social injustice, and things which are going on around us. What Weller started, we are carrying on.”

They play Fat Lil’s tonight. Tickets are £6.50. Doors open at 8pm, and the show is followed by an after-show party until 2am.The band also play the Blue Boar in Newbury Street, Wantage, on May 16.