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Nick Morgan and crew
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Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
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CONCERT
REVIEW
JOE JACKSON AND HIS BAND
Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London, March 2nd
2008 |
| Joe
Jackson first came to my attention
in 1979 following the release of his first album,
Look Sharp, a collection of punchy, spiky and often
misogynistic songs driven by Jackson’s piano,
and his distinctive voice – somewhere between
Elvis Costello and Graham Parker. It was released
by A&M,
who at the time were also promoting the Police,
whose first album had largely been ignored when
it came out in the previous year but was now motoring
due to the success of the re-released single ‘Roxanne’.
And? Well at the time I was working in a record
shop that had a deal with A&M so these records
were played to death during peak play list hours.
Somehow I managed to escape with some degree of
affection for Jackson, which is more than can be
said for you-know-who. Jackson followed up his initial
success with albums in quick succession, his songs
becoming gradually more lyrical and thoughtful,
and musically increasingly jazz orientated. But
at some point in the mid 80s he fell out of my consideration
zone, not that that stopped him from releasing more
albums, relocating to New York and then back to
the UK (Portsmouth of all places) and picking up
a Grammy for 1999’s Symphony No 1, which was
a big hit in the Billboard Classical Music charts.
But thirty years on from signing for A&M he’s
almost turned full circle, and is back with a new
album, Rain, and a tour with two of his original
band, Graham Maby on bass, and Dave Houghton on
drums. |
| Tonight
he’s also wearing a very smart suit, made
from cloth, he tells us, the colour of a Martini,
“my very favourite drink”. I suspect
he’s actually drinking some sort of throat-cure
from the cup that stands on his piano, as his voice
is quite throaty, far from perfect. It could of
course be the fags – Mr Jackson is a committed
smoker, and an ambassador and apologist for the
cause. He left New York, apparently as a result
of the smoking ban there, and has recently moved
to Berlin where he can both smoke in peace and enjoy
the beer, another of his enthusiasms (as befits
someone born in Burton-on-Trent).
And I commend you to read his essay “Smoke
Lies, and the Nanny State” which you download
from his website – it’s a reasoned,
well-informed and entertaining polemic, whatever
you think about smoking. And it’s obvious
that in the sold out and all-seated Shepherd’s
Bush Empire he has fans who admire his music, and
others who are there to celebrate his love of the
weed. Hence the obnoxious, malodorous and frankly
ugly pair behind us who were only silent when they
left (as thankfully they frequently did) for a quick
spit and a draw outside on the pavement. |
| For
all that it’s an entertaining enough evening
- as a three-piece the band are pretty good, Maby’s
bass particularly impressive, Houghton’s largely
electric drum kit less so, as it puts me constantly
in mind of the BBC’s East Enders theme tune.
The mix of songs rests appropriately heavily on
Rain – some are pretty good, like ‘So
Low’, played solo, and ‘A place in the
rain’ which ends the main set. In between
the new stuff we get songs from the past thirty
years – an overly jazzy ‘Steppin’
out’ (during which the band frankly seemed
to get lost) starts the set, and is followed (in
no particular order) by ‘It’s different
for girls’, ‘Dirty Martini’ (a
celebration of both the drink and New Orleans, the
best place to drink one, according to Mr Jackson),
the pretty awful ‘Chinatown’ and during
the encores ‘Is she really going out with
him’, sung largely by the audience. |
| We
also get a couple of gratuitous covers, Abba’s
‘Knowing me knowing you’ and Bowie’s
‘Scary monsters’, the less said about
which the better. And the evening ends with the
very nice ‘Slow song’, from Jackson’s
only top-ten album, 1982’s Night and Day. |
|
It’s an altogether satisfactory Sunday night
(apart from the uglies behind us), and I’ve
been surprised since the gig to go back and rediscover
how many really good songs Jackson has written –
I can only suggest you do the same yourself, or
go and see him on this extensive tour (he’s
even playing St
Kilda!). But sadly there are no photographs
to share as the security guards prowled the aisles
pouncing on anyone who so much as glanced at a mobile
‘phone. Discretion, said the Photographer,
was the better part of valour on this occasion.
- Nick Morgan |
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