J Is For...

My personal alphabet of artists, from A to Z. 

Joe Jackson / "So You Say"

Just to prove that I do listen to new releases -- a devastating track from my longtime musical love Joe Jackson's 2015 album Fast Forward. Which, y'know, if you don't have, you should. Because this guy is one of those who just keep on getting better and better.

I saw Joe at the legendary Apollo Theater in Harlem this past July. I was transported: every song he sang was gold.

First of all -- a tango!  Who does tangoes anymore? But it's a brilliant choice, because the tautly circumscribed sexuality of the tango is just what this song is about.

We Joe-ites know this territory well, from tracks like "Blue Flame" and "Not Here, Not Now." Joe Jackson excels at scenarios where love is NOT easy, where inhibitions cramp desire. "So you say," he begins, launching us into the middle of a conversation that's probably been torturously waging for a while. "And I agree," he replies, but then adds -- zing! -- "You're a prize, but / Not for me." I love the confidential curl of that next melodic phrase: "There'll be no more lies now / So you say."

Oh, he'll take the passive aggressive route: "I'm a fool / You're a sage / Yes, I'll try to / Act my age." (Cue the Joe-ite footnote to "Awkward Age.")

But because this is Joe Jackson, the bridge unleashes a higher-register burst of emotion: "And I thought I knew what went on in my heart / Till you taught me I would never have been smart / Enough to leave you." Oh, that crafty turn at the end of the phrase.

Because this guy has reached his limit. "Tell me once / Not again / Take a breath and / Count to ten / Time to say goodbye now / So you say." WAIT! Wha-?

So who's doing the leaving?

And there's our reality check: How often do lovers get so inside their own heads, they think they're driving the course of the affair? When in fact...

THURSDAY REDUX

There are two artists in my archives who regularly reduce me to tears:  Joe Jackson and Ben Folds. I don't know why that is, although the fact that both are stellar pianists may have something to do with it.   I've had Ben mightily on my mind recently, having just received his new retrospective box set, The Best Imitation of Myself (Jesus, this guy is good.)  But for some reason it was this already-covered Joe Jackson song that dominated my brain today.  Who knows why -- like the Wizard of Oz, I don't know how it works.

Friday, August 10, 2007

Blue Flame / Joe Jackson

Volume 4 is such a superb album. I’m not just talking musically, though it's an exquisite fusion of rock and jazz and Latin music and cabaret and everything else. But what really takes my breath away is how Joe Jackson's songwriting has matured – those melancholy melodies, the poetic imagery of the lyrics, the psychological depth of the storytelling. Music for grown-ups, again -- and you know how I love that.

I realize I’ve already worked over “Awkward Age” and “Love At First Light”; now add “Blue Flame” to the list of songs from this 2003 album that completely wrench my heart.

He wastes no time, but plunges right in, mid-conversation: “I’ve got some walls around me too / But they’re not much, compared to your house / Fifty feet high, with barbed wire / Guards on the top, aiming rifles at your lovers one by one / And friends too.” Don’t you just know people like that? And the way that melody meanders in and out of minor keys, piano chords hanging unresolved, the drumbeat clicking along – it’s so wistful, so sorrowful, you have to take it seriously.  Maybe this is the secret of Joe Jackson's emotional power: those risk-taking melodies, leaping all over the keyboard.  Who can resist?

“I’ve come with hands above my head,” he declares, carrying on the metaphor, but he’s honest about his own hang-ups: “But I’m damned if I’ll try to break your door down / If you ever come out, just call me / I’ll still be armed with the memory of one evening when you smiled / At something.” It’s so little to go on, but at a certain point in our lives we realize that may be all there is. Taking a risk gets so damn hard – but NOT taking the risk, that’s death.

Yes, this hoped-for lover is a hard case – “You tell me women get you down / And as for men, well they’re all bastards / I wonder what world you call home,” he mutters, shaking his head. Later, he can’t resist an edgy snipe: “Yes, it was nice to see you too / Although I’m never sure you mean it.” Yes, he can see  his would-be lover’s faults, perfectly clearly. Leading into the second chorus, he’s talking as much to himself as to his lover when he remarks, “Bitterness is a black hole.” But somebody has to bend.

So why is this lover worth pursuing? In the chorus, he shifts gears to confess that there is another side: “There’s a blue flame inside of you, so beautiful and rare / Love’s not something we decide to do / You’d be so hard to love / If love was not just . . . there.” There's the heartbreaking nub of it.  Of course; they're already entangled, more than either of them can afford to admit. Who ever said love was easy?

And we have NO idea how this affair will turn out. If a happy ending is what you’re hanging around for, prepare to be disappointed. The romantic and the realist in Joe Jackson are always locked in their hopeless dance; neither one will ever win. That’s the world according to Joe Jackson . . . and it pierces my heart, every time.

Friday Shuffle

I'm thoroughly bummed that the Amazon widget doesn't seem to work anymore.  In cases like this I tend to assume that Blogger/Google and Amazon are having a hissy fit with each other (did Google steal Amazon's boyfriend?) and Google has decided not to play with Amazon ever again.  Took me ages to find another way to slip those links in here. Hope it works! 

1. Moments Like This / Maria Muldaur
From A Woman Alone With the Blues (2003)
Nice little bit of jazz from Maria Muldaur, in her best kittenish-sultry voice. I've been a fan of Maria's ever since the Jim Kweskin Jug Band days, though my favorite album of hers is definitely Waitress in a Donut Shop.  If all you know of her is "Midnight At The Oasis," please investigate further.

2. The Good Old Days / The Lodger
From Life Is Sweet (2008). 
Catchy indie pop number from this Leeds trio -- "Could it be the start of something? / Could it be the end of a phase? / Could it be the start of the future? / Could it be the good old days?"  Way too upbeat for the break-up subject matter, but I'll never turn down bouncy hooks like this.

3. One to One / Joe Jackson
From Beat Crazy (1980)
Joe Jackson may have started out wearing a New Wave suitcoat, but it never really fit. By the time of Beat Crazy he was already skewing toward jazz  -- we shouldn't have been so surprised by the next year's Jumpin' Jive, though who could have predicted the Latinized glory of Night and Day?  The metronomic drum tick of this track is downright hypnotic.  

4.  I Don't Wanna Talk About Love No More / Amy Rigby
From Little Fugitive (2005)
"I'm tired of emotional discussions / I'm tired of repercussions...."  Amy Rigby's such a hoot; she really tells it like it is, our most reliable guide to spunky chick desire.

5. Redneck Friend / Dave Alvin
From West of the West (2006)
Nice cover of a Jackson Browne tune, on Alvin's album-long salute to various of his fellow native California rockers.  Alvin's gravelly voice adds a sexy intimacy to this tune, perfectly complemented by a slouchy jazz arrangement. More people should cover Jackson Browne, IMHO.  

6. Rush Across the Road / Joe Jackson
From Rain (2008)
Joe again!  And 28 years after Beat Crazy, listen to his muse in full flower on this riveting album, one of the best of the past decade.  On the track before this, he rips our hearts out with "Solo (So Low)" -- only to let joy burst in again with "Rush Across the Road," a soaring paean to how love can take you completely by surprise.

7. Stick To Me / Graham Parker & the Rumour
From Stick To Me (1977)
Early GP, and great stuff -- dig those edgy rhythms and driving energy.  I swear, this song just crackles out of the speakers.    

8.  Hate to Say I Told You So / The Hives
From Veni Vidi Vicious (2000)
Well, talk about edgy rhythms and driving energy -- it's the Hives' turn, dialing up the punk with those grating guitars and pounding beat, sweetened with just a dollop of playfulness.    

9. Say Yes / Elliott Smith
From Either / Or (1997)
I know very little about Elliott Smith, but the handful of folky tracks that somehow landed on my iTunes always make me wistful. Was this song in the movie Garden State?  Sounds like it should have been.

10. You Are A Tourist  / Death Cab for Cutie
From Codes and Keys (2011)
"When there's a burning in your heart / An endless yearning in your heart..."  I love the layered textures of this track, with its incantatory chorus, spooling guitar riff, and plinging echoes.  Even endless radio play this summer couldn't spoil this number for me.

WEDNESDAY SHUFFLE

All things considered, I've decided that Amazon is not really so evil -- which is why I'm adding a widget for you to sample, or even buy, the music I'm writing about here.  (Always looking for a way to post mp3s easily without ripping off the artists.)  Let me know what you think...

1.  No Baby I / The Old 97s 
From Blame It On Gravity (2008)
The twangy roots of this alt.country band keep drifting closer and closer to pop -- an intersection I love.  Rhett Miller has that husky good-boyfriend earnestness down just right. "Blame it on gravity, yeah / Blame it on being a girl" -- ooh, we ladies LOVE a man who understands. 

2.  "In My Life" / The Beatles
From Rubber Soul (Remastered) (1965)
This is one song I often forget to add to my Favorite Beatles Songs list -- why? Tender nostalgia for "people and friends that went before" might seem odd, coming from musicians in their early 20s -- but I bet their Liverpool past truly seemed like another lifetime by the time of this masterpiece album. Love that Bach-like twiddle in the middle eight!

3. "Ram On" / Paul McCartney
From Ram (1971)
Not more Beatles, but pretty damn close. I do love the lounging, slightly scruffy vibe of this song. Despite the naif mandolin strumming (or is a uke?), this song is layered, jazzy, hazy -- stoned, man. 

4. She Gets Me Where I Live / Al Kooper
From Easy Does It (1970)
This spangly, synthy soul-rock track swims in its own psychedelic haze, with some seriously cool-cat horns spinning out of control (not to mention oceans of strings, sometimes with spiky little plucked notes).  When Kooper was on his game -- and he was really on his game with this album -- he was like a painter, slapping sounds onto his canvas.  

5.  "Mr. Reporter" / The Kinks
From The Great Lost Kinks Album(1973)
Dave Davies' early stab at satire (the Kinks never did have an easy relationship with the press).  On this album of bootleg tracks, the tinny quality of this song -- not to mention Dave's quavery vocals -- are more like a demo, but it's still a spunky bit of fun.  

6. Elizabeth Jade  / Robyn Hitchcock
From Jewels for Sophia (1999)
Talk about music as painting -- sometimes Robyn Hitchcock's lyrics are almost like Cubist art, layering cryptic fragments of description onto a boppy track of bouncy punk-pop that is way too danceably fun to resist.

7. Steppin' Out / Joe Jackson
From Night And Day (1982)
Jeez, I love this album. Joe Jackson steered New Wave music daringly far in the direction of George Gershwin and Cole Porter. A gorgeous champagne cocktail tribute to Manhattan, and just about as far from punk music as you could get.

8. Stop / Lizz Wright
From Dreaming Wide Awake (2005)
A beautifully languid, deeply sexy track. Wright's voice has an almost Nina Simone-like richness, with all those dark tones underscoring the desire that simply saturates this song.

9. Hit The Road Jack / Ray Charles
From Genius -- The Ultimate Ray Charles Collection (2009)
Soon as you hear that descending riff from the horns, you know it's this sassy bit of R&B. Those finger-wagging back-up singers are half the show; I love their saucy interplay with Ray, his slightly craggy vocals full of exasperated pleading. 

10. This Is How I Know / Ron Sexsmith
From Exit Strategy of the Soul (2008)
With every album, Ron Sexsmith dares to get more and more explicitly spiritual, while his folk pop takes on more jazz tinges.  I suppose this track doesn't have to be about sensing God's presence (are you kidding?  that would be pop suicide), but that's the level where it works best for me.

WEDNESDAY SHUFFLE

Okay, so it's late AGAIN. But give me a break -- I was out listening to rock and roll all evening. Hey, I have my priorities straight!

1. "Cruel To Be Kind" / Marshall Crenshaw
From Labour of Love: The Music of Nick Lowe (2001)
Too perfect -- because it was Marshall Crenshaw I went out to see tonight, at a Gulf Coast benefit tribute concert to Alex Chilton (how's that for mashing together causes?). I'll say this right now: I prefer Marshall's version of Nick's big hit record to Nick's own -- MC just nails the plaintive, wounded, clueless quality of Nick's persona here. He just sounds like a guy who'd let this chick walk all over him, and then buy her excuses.

2. "I Take It On Home" / Charlie Rich
From Behind Closed Doors (1973)
Another country artist I just don't know enough about. I grew up knowing his two big hits, the coy "Behind Closed Doors" and the smarmy "Most Beautiful Girl in the World," so I never gave him a chance. I recently started to trawl through his back catalog, however, and -- HELLO! This song is even on the same album as those two; it was written by Kenny O'Dell, who also penned "Behind Closed Doors." Go figure. It's a honey.

3. "Summer Song" / Chad and Jeremy
From Yesterday's Gone (1964)
Mushy sentimental pop-folk -- but it was British mushy pop-folk, which made it all okay to my little pre-teen heart in 1964. These guys were so darn cute . . .

4. "Wonderful Feeling" / Lulu and Alan Price
From Shout!: The Decca Years (compilation)
Now here's some sassy British pop, circa 1964, with the gritty edge of Lulu's powerful girl voice matched by Alan Price's own Geordie gruffness. Alan had quit the Animals by then and was forging a more mainstream pop course with the Alan Price Set; how perfect to match him up with Lulu, who was treading her own fine line between pop and R&B. Alan wrote this song; produced the track, too. It's completely infectious pop, swinging horn section and all.

5. "Jenny Wren" / Paul McCartney
From Chaos and Creation in the Backyard (2005)
Paul trying to find his inner folkie. I've got to love it, because it's Paul (who by the way tonight received the Gershwin Award for Contemporary Music at the White House -- toss it in the drawer with all the other citations and medals, Pauly!). If I didn't harbor a sneaking suspicion he was just trying to re-do "Mother Nature's Son" . . .

6. "Moving the Goalposts" / Billy Bragg
From Don't Try This At Home (1991)
I feel a Billy Bragg post coming on. Bragg's deft political satire (which comes off extra-spiky in those Cockney vowels) sometimes overshadows his brilliant relationship songs. Here we've got both in one song, as he name-checks Gennady Gerasimov (former Soviet ambassador to Afghanistan), then side shifts into a tender, and incredibly sexy, depiction of him and his girl, occupying new territory in their own love affair. He draws this little vignette with so few details; we have to connect the dots . . . but it's all there. Stunning, really.

7. "It's Not Hard" / Alan Price
From Based on a True Story (2002)
And now here's Alan Price much later in his career -- on this obscure self-released album that contains some of his finest stuff in years. Who knew?

8. "Now's the Time" / Brinsley Schwarz
From The New Favourites of Brinsley Schwarz (1974)
Because there always must be something by Nick Lowe, even if it's a completely callow throwaway track -- not even a Nick composition, but an old Hollies song, written by' Graham Nash and Gene Clarke, issued as the B-side to their 1963 hit "Stay." Nick's not even singing the lead (is that Ian Gomm instead? or Brinsley?). And yet it's on my iTunes, and it's adorable.

9. "Holly Would" / Jackie DeShannon
From Laurel Canyon (1969)
Did I download this track because it has my name in it? Oh, probably. A little character study of a sort of free spirit, very post-Summer of Love Southern California.

10. "A Slow Song" / Joe Jackson
From Night and Day (1982)
There are only a few albums that I have loaded in their entirety onto my iTunes. (Make that only a few non-Nick Lowe albums.) Night and Day is one of them. I just love how desperately Joe throws his earnest, cracking voice into this plaintive waltz. This entire album seems to me to dance on the knife edge of a love affair that could go down the tubes at any minute. So why not dance real close while you still can?

The 100 Best Singles In My Head
Nos. 36-40

By coincidence, all of today's songs were from late 70s or early 80s New Wave. I had just moved to New York, I had money to go to clubs and concerts, and I proceeded to do so with total abandon. These aren't just singles for me -- I bought the artists' albums too, I saw them perform live, and my associations run a lot deeper than the Obvious Hits.

[Click on the highlighted links to read my earlier posts on those songs]

36. "Steppin' Out" / Joe Jackson (1982)
Oh, Joe, Joe, Joe. We'd heard his earlier hits, pleasing pop tracks like "Is She Really Going Out With Him?", but when Night and Day came out, I realized we were in the presence of An Important Artist.

37. "Psycho Killer" / The Talking Heads (1977)
Having moved to Manhattan, I settled into a pack of music-loving friends -- all editorial peons at various magazines in Midtown -- who'd meet up after work on summer evenings and head for Central Park and the Dr. Pepper Music Festival at Wollman Rink. On August 16, 1979, we were dying to see the Talking Heads perform their geeky brand of art-school rock. More Songs About Buildings and Food had just dropped; we were mad for it, especially their herky-jerky cover of Al Green's "Take Me To the River." That night, however, it was this song -- their 1977 debut single -- that really riveted me (the Summer of Sam was only two years past; it still touched a nerve). Though there were three other band members on stage -- Chris on drums, Jerry on organ, waiflike Tina on bass -- you really couldn't tear your gaze away from David Byrne, like a stick-figure in brown trousers and short-sleeved plaid shirt. It wasn't so much that he had stage presence; it was more the utter lack of stage presence, as he clutched the mike stand, stared at the crowd with his enormous Seth Brundle eyes, scrubbed a few harsh notes out of his guitar, and yelped these strange lyrics in a strangulated voice. "Psycho killer!" he gasped, "qu'est-ce que c'est?" (I'd be lying if I said that David Byrne's French was as enticing as Paul McCartney's in "Michelle"). Then, over nothing but persistent drum thuds, he stammered like Otis Redding on angel dust, "Fa-fa-fa fa fa-fa fa-fa-fa fa, better / Run run run run run run run away." Who had any idea what it meant? But that didn't stop us from singing along like mad, and flinging our heads up and down in ritual New Wave spastic dance jerks.

38. "Love Shack" / The B-52s (1989)
I always associate these two bands, though on the surface they were total opposites -- uptight arty intellectuals (Talking Heads) versus giddy drama queens (the B-52's). Maybe it's because we saw them both in the same week in 1980, again at the Dr. Pepper Festival in Central Park (and me with a completely different boyfriend). One thing you have to say for the B-52s, they're always fun to watch, with Fred Schneider doing his lounge lizard act in front, beehived Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson bouncing around madly on either side. I always felt somehow that they were my friends, kindred spirits, like so many of us outsiders who came to New York to have fun as much as to make good. I too grieved in 1985, when Cindy's brother Ricky Wilson -- whose dynamic guitar work supplied most of the band's instrumentals -- died of AIDS-related illness. The B-52s could have packed it in after that; they'd pretty much done the novelty act to death. But wonder of wonders, they didn't; Keith Strickland just moved from drums to guitar and the carnival kept on going. Instead of high-concept songs about outer space, novelty dances, and crustaceans, they just relaxed into their Southern dance groove. Although the album Cosmic Thing came along much later, to me it's the fullest expression of who my friends the B-52s really are. In "Deadbeat Club" we joined the girls as they danced in the garden in torn sheets in the rain; in "Love Shack" we jumped in the back of Fred's car ("Hop in my Chrysler, it's as big as a whale / And it's about to set sail!") and cruised down some back country Georgia road to a dilapidated juke joint. There's no story, just impressionistic details flung around (if this were a film, it'd be shot with a handheld camera) -- there's a line outside, a secret knock at the door, and everybody inside is peeling off their clothes and dancing with total abandon. A tinny surf guitar jangles, and there's party glitter everywhere -- mattress, highway, front porch, hallway. Fred, Kate, and Cindy hand the vocal duties back and forth, their overlapping phrases really more percussion than anything. "The whole shack shimmies!" Fred exclaims; "Everybody's movin', everybody's groovin' baby," Kate and Cindy croon in harmony; "funky little shack, FUNK-y little shack," Fred raps out. They begin to tap quietly on the door, but the tom-toms build and build, and they're knocking louder and louder ("bang, bang, bang, on the door baby"), until Fred cries, "You're WHAT" and Cindy sasses back, "Tin RROOOFF, rusted!" And no, that phrase didn't mean she was pregnant -- Cindy claims she just made it up, picturing the rusty roof of the original cabin. It's all delirious nonsense, but sung with deep affection. "Love Shack" turned out to be their one big mainstream hit. But even in 1980, the band we saw in Central Park was the same whacked-out crew of kids from the love shack, cruising north in the Chrysler. The party still hasn't stopped.

39. "Whip It" / Devo (1980)
The term "novelty song" should have applied to this out-of-left-field 1980s hit -- but we New Wave insiders knew that its high-concept kitsch was the Next Big Thing.

40. "Roadrunner (Once)" / Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers (1976)
Funny that I had to go all the way to England to hear this eccentric, magical record by Boston's own Jonathan Richman. The nascent New Wave scene in London went mad for this single in 1977; being the only person in the room who'd actually driven on Route 128 and gone to the Stop and Shop gave me major cachet. It was like some eerie late-night connection . . . .

"Rush Across the Road" /
Joe Jackson

I'm not big on end-of-year "best of" lists. Imagine lumping together two such different albums as Vampire Weekend's debut album and Ray Davies' Working Man's Cafe, just because they were released in the same year -- what's the point?

Still, if I did do a Best Records of 2008 list, I know one album that would be on it: Joe Jackson's Rain. The first time I played it, I was shattered by its searing emotions, and it only goes deeper every time I've listened since. The song cycle traces the downward spiral of a flawed love affair; and then suddenly, on track eight, comes this totally joyous song about finding new love, just when you least expect it.

Joe Jackson's never fit easily into the rock mold; he's always veering off into jazz and classical and Latin music, even old-fashioned lush movie scores (gotta love the reference to Casablanca in this song's first line: "Of all the streets in the world / You walk down this one.") It's wonderfully cinematic, as he pans the urban wideshot then zooms in for a close-up: "And I see three hundred girls / But just want to kiss one." But this is no love at first sight -- it's an old love rediscovered, like a gift from God ("I never thought you'd floor me again"), an appropriate fit for the complex midlife emotions Jackson's wrestling with.

Ever noticed what great melodies Joe Jackson writes? Partly I think it's because he's a pianist; he doesn't get hung up on chord progressions, he just flows all over the keyboard, and with his wide vocal range he can soar and dive at will. Still, even for Joe Jackson this is an achingly lovely tune. The chorus flings notes around with joyous abandon, pouncing eagerly on love as he sings, "Rush across the road /Leave my heavy load behind." He flies upward ecstatically on "It just takes a second / To know your mind," then pushes it even farther, shifting keys upward, for "And do what you've got to do." You can almost hear him bestilling his heart as he concludes, "I'll rush across the road / To catch up with you," then adds, almost in dazed wonder, "Catch up with you."

In verse two, he mulls over why this relationship never took off in the past ("Some things come to an end / Before they're done with") and you suspect he's been fretting over this lost love for years. He can only dimly recall the fights they used to have -- "And I've had enough of tears anyway" (yeah, we've seen that in tracks one through seven). But ripeness is all, as Shakespeare says; maybe it wasn't until this moment that he was ready for this love to take off.

It almost goes into movie slow-mo in verse three -- "Funny how the blink of an eye / Can last forever" -- I find myself rooting for him to get the timing right at last. He trembles suspensefully on the brink for another few lines: "And how we think ourselves dry / When it's now or never / If I wait for one more sigh / You could turn and see me / Then I'll never know what I would have done . . . " Oh, no, Joe, don't blow it this time -- you need this love so badly now.

And of course, you know what he does; he leaps into that chasm of love again, rushing across the road to catch up with her. Scarred and battered as he is, he's still going for it. This is, after all, the same guy who thirty years ago sang "Fools in love / Are there any other kinds of lovers?" He's never been able to put the brakes on his heart -- why should he start now?

The arrangement feels like a whole orchestra; it's amazing to realize it's just Joe on piano and Dave Houghton's drums, then a little touch of Graham Maby's bass in the middle eight. Joe Jackson always gets more notes out of the piano than you'd think humanly possible; this song couldn't feel more exuberant. It just bursts out of the CD, blowing inside-out all the heart-wringing of the earlier tracks. Gorgeous as this song is on its own, it's even more gorgeous as part of the CD's dramatic flow. Shocking, really -- an album that was made to be listened to as a whole, in this age of single-track downloads. But then, when did Joe Jackson ever really fit into modern times?

Rush Across the Road sample

"Solo (So Low)" / Joe Jackson

Joe Jackson's breaking my heart. Again.

I popped his new CD Rain into my car stereo for the first time yesterday, and it shook me to the roots. I wasn't prepared for such naked emotion (though I suppose I should have been, after his previous Volume 4). But here it came, song after song, about foundering affairs with thorny lovers; and it's not just the heartbreak, it's the midlife heartbreak that's so acutely described that it sucked me right in.

Well, I won't go into the whole sequence right now, although Rain is that rare outmoded thing, a record album where song follows song with deliberate purpose. But by the time he gets to track 7, we're deeply commiserating with our dear friend Joe, so unlucky in love. And then he goes into this majestic piece and lets it all hang out.

As the title suggests (did nobody ever think of that play on "solo" before?), this one's just Joe and his grand piano. Is there anybody else working today who can do such things on the keyboard as Joe Jackson? On this song, it's like Chopin mashed up with Keith Jarrett, with a little Erik Satie thrown in for good measure. Even those driving repeated chords, crescendoing and decrescendoing, are so suffused with hurt and longing, they simply kill me.

This a song about hitting rock-bottom, and it feels so real, like we're watching Joe sitting alone in his flat in Berlin, bashing miserably around on his piano. The details are so evocative -- "It's just what it seems / An empty thing / Waiting on somebody who never calls / Listening / In the night to something scratching round behind the walls" (all those vague "somebodies" and "somethings", the terror you can't name). In the next verse he sketches more details: "The cupboards are bare / So now to dine / On three stale crackers and a fifth of gin." It's literal and it's metaphorical -- he's so overwhelmed by self-pity and loneliness he can't tell the difference any more.

The third verse is the killer: "Scared to find / Someone in the mirror who you can't recall / Pale and lined / Talking to himself and saying 'Fuck 'em all.'" The scathing way Joe spits out that last phrase is so hurt and human, it scares me. You've really got to hear this with the melody, though; those alternating short, aimless lines with the long rushed-together ones is marvelous. The way some lines hang wistfully on a high note, others slide hopelessly down the scale -- well, this is the work of a songwriter who really knows what he's doing.

Between the lines, you guess that they've already broken up ("after storms" he says in one bridge, and "peace at last" in the final one, though both phrases dangle awkwardly on dissonant chords). That's why the next-to-last bit is such a heartbreaker: "Though one must admit / Chances are few / To try to be / Someone new." It's that exhausting effort, to start over again again (and AGAIN), that makes this a midlife song. When you're young, you think the end of one love is the end of everything. When you're in your 40s (or 50s), you know it isn't--but that's no consolation when you know you'll just have to go back out there again, bruised and scarred, with less hope than ever that it'll work this time.

See what I mean about heartbreaking?

Now here's the beauty part: tracks 8 and 10 turn it all around. But don't let me spoil it for you; go get this album and find out for yourself.

Solo (So Low) sample

“Blue Flame” / Joe Jackson

Volume 4 is such a superb album, it justifies all the bends in the road that brought Joe Jackson here. I’m not just talking musically, though it's an exquisite fusion of rock and jazz and Latin music and cabaret and everything else. But what really takes my breath away is how his songwriting has matured – those melancholy melodies, the poetic imagery of the lyrics, the psychological depth of the storytelling. Music for grown-ups, again -- and you know how I love that.

I realize I’ve already worked over “Awkward Age” and “Love At First Light”; now add “Blue Flame” to the list of songs from this 2003 album that completely wrench my heart.

It wastes no time, but plunges right in, mid-conversation: “I’ve got some walls around me too / But they’re not much, compared to your house / Fifty feet high, with barbed wire / Guards on the top, aiming rifles at your lovers one by one / And friends too.” Don’t you just know people like that? And the way that melody meanders in and out of minor keys, piano chords hanging unresolved, the drumbeat clicking along like a ticking clock – it’s so wistful, so sorrowful, you have to take it seriously.

“I’ve come with hands above my head,” he declares, carrying on the metaphor, but he’s brutally honest about his own hang-ups: “But I’m damned if I’ll try to break your door down / If you ever come out, just call me / I’ll still be armed with the memory of one evening when you smiled / At something.” It’s so little to go on, but at a certain point in our lives we realize that may be all there is. Taking a risk gets so damn hard – but NOT taking the risk, that’s death.

Yes, this hoped-for lover is a hard case – “You tell me women get you down / And as for men, well they’re all bastards / I wonder what world you call home,” he mutters, shaking his head. Later, he can’t resist an edgy snipe: “Yes, it was nice to see you too / Although I’m never sure you mean it.” Yes, he can see perfectly clearly his would-be lover’s faults. Leading into the second chorus, he’s talking as much to himself as to his lover when he remarks, “Bitterness is a black hole.” But somebody has to bend.

So why is this lover worth pursuing? He lays it bare in the chorus: “There’s a blue flame inside of you, so beautiful and rare / Love’s not something we decide to do / You’d be so hard to love / If love was not just . . . there.” Of course; they're already entangled, more than either of them can afford to admit. Who ever said love was easy?

Here’s the kicker – we have NO idea how this affair will turn out. If a happy ending is what you’re hanging around for, prepare to be disappointed. The romantic and the realist in Joe Jackson are always locked in their hopeless dance; neither one will ever win. That’s the world according to Joe Jackson . . . and I for one can’t get enough of it.

"Jack, You're Dead!" / Joe Jackson

I guess a lot of people were baffled, even turned off, by the directions (jazz, classical, movie soundtracks) Joe Jackson went after his big mid-80s success. Not me -- because I knew he'd also recorded Jumpin' Jive in 1981. Although I didn't discover it until a few years later, Jumpin' Jive connected the dots for me; it completely explains how he got from Look Sharp! to the jazziness of Night and Day.

The story, as Jackson tells it, makes complete sense; his original band broke up and Jackson needed a break after a few years of non-stop touring; then he was ill with glandular fever (mononucleosis, for us Yankees). He revived his spirits by listening to a lot of old jump-blues and swing records and eventually put a band together to work up a few gigs. Which of course turned into complete tours and an LP.

Even though these aren't Jackson original compositions, even though it was recorded earlier, for me this album represents Joe Jackson's "lost" years -- "lost" only if you have no taste for anything but rock and roll. I happen to love jazz and classical music too, so for me Joe was never lost. In the late 80s and 90s, he was just expanding his repertoire, and when he finally came back to rock 'n' roll, his music was all the richer for it.

Wry hepcat humor is a big part of all these jump-blues numbers (so that's why it runs through Joe's rock songs too) and "Jack, You're Dead" is ripe with it. Just dig the first verse: "When you've got no more assurance / Than a great big hunk of lead / You don't respond to romance -- / Jack, you're dead! / When a chick is smiling at you / Even though there's nothing said / You stand there like a statue -- / Jack, you're dead!" Bopping along brightly, with a sizzling horn section going nuts, this is the antithesis of Rat Pack cool. You feel like you should be wearing a porkpie hat just to listen to this stuff.

Clearly this is NOT drawn from the English suburban experience -- "You been always kickin' / But you stub your toes / When you ups and kicks the bucket / Just like old man Mose." On one hand, it's not about the language of the lyrics anyway, it's about those whaling horn solos and Joe's enthusiastic vocals. But on the other hand, it IS about the lyrics, and about that jaundiced, rueful frame of mind they express -- a frame of mind that seems to fit Joe Jackson like a glove. "When you get no kicks from lovin' / And the news begin to spread / All the cats will holler 'Murder!' / Jack, you dead" -- how different is this, really, from "It's Different For Girls" or "Take It Like A Man"?

The main thing, though, is that these guys seem to having a GREAT time playing this music, and you can't help but have a great time yourself listening to them. They're not working it with hipster irony; they're just excellent musicians happily exploring new territory. So maybe, in the end, Joe Jackson isn't Cab Calloway or Louis Jordan. Who cares? He's still a skinny English white guy, but he's a skinny English white guy in a porkpie hat, and he can play the piano like nobody's business. Gotta love it.

Jack, You're Dead sample

"Steppin' Out" / Joe Jackson

Night and Day was the first Joe Jackson album I fell in love with, and I mean IN LOVE -- I played it night and day, indeed. The Cole Porter reference in the title always seemed particularly appropriate; there's a certain champagne-cocktail sophistication here that was new for a Joe Jackson album. I had just moved to New York and I loved the downtown elegance of this record, a quirky thing in 1982 when all the other New Wave types were going for downtown grit and squalor. Yes, it does have that techno-synth pulsing like traffic in the rhythm track -- a very 80s touch -- but it feels totally different here; it just makes the tone sparkle even more. And that vibraphone chattering away, like street lights glinting off chrome taxi bumpers -- perfect.

Joe Jackson must have absolutely huge hands; these are big chords he's playing here, pounding out octave spans in rapid-fire succession. All those key shifts make me think of a car shifting gears, or perhaps the way a synchronized series of traffic lights down the avenues change color in tandem (the electric piano makes this even more metallic and glittery). It gives this song a sweep and majesty that's truly thrilling.

Playing against all of this comes the tender poetry of these lyrics: "Now -- the mist across the window hides the lines / But nothing hides the colour of the lights that shine / Electricity so fine / Look and dry your eyes." So there's been a fight, or some sort of upset, and this whole foray is meant to cheer her up -- how sweet. He coaxes her gently, "We, so tired of all the darkness in our lives / With no more angry words to say, can come alive, / Get into a car and drive / To the other side." Will they really get to the other side just by driving? Maybe not, but the way those chords keep fighting upward makes me root for them (for us) with all my heart.

"We are young but getting old before our time," he admits, and I love that rueful line, that world-weary note which makes the retro feel of this album so perfect. "We'll leave the TV and the radio behind / Don't you wonder what we'll find / Steppin' out tonight?" It's an adventure, and old as they feel, they CAN be young again: "You can dress in pink and blue just like a child / And in a yellow taxi turn to me and smile/ We'll be there in just a while / If you follow me." I think of John Hiatt's "Have A Little Faith In Me," which holds out its hand with the same sort of determined we-can-make-it trust. It's a transforming, life-affirming song with no false promises.

The chorus, with its soaring short phrases, says it all: "Me babe / Steppin' out / Into the night / Into the light / You babe / Steppin' out / Into the night / Into the light." Two people, heading into darkness, staking everything on finding something brighter and better.

In 1982 I wasn't much of a grown-up yet myself, but I could tell this was music for grown-ups -- I could tell it was a song I would never outgrow. Twenty-five years later, it sounds as fresh and modern as it did the day it was recorded. I knew then that Joe Jackson was the real deal . . . and that I'd just have to wait and see how he'd surprise me next.

"Fools In Love" / Joe Jackson

This coming Saturday, August 11, is Joe Jackson's birthday (he'll be 53), so I'm declaring the rest of this week Joe Jackson Week. And what a pleasure it will be to write about Joe Jackson; he's one of those wonderful artists I never listen to as much as I could. I forget how much I like him, until a song comes up on my shuffle and is just so glorious it stops me in my tracks.

Like this one, from his 1979 album Look Sharp! -- as soon as that slouching ska intro begins, I sit up and grin. That ska accent is a dead New Wave giveaway, but Joe was never a knee-jerk New Waver, and soon this song sidles into jazz territory, where Joe's pianistic skills can really shine. "Fools in love," he starts off, confidingly, as though shaking his head -- "Are there any other kind of lovers?" Dropping his voice lower, he rattles off a list of the annoying symptoms, in finger-wagging tempo: "Everything you do / Everywhere you go, now / Everything you touch, / Everything you feel / Everything you see, / Everything you know, now / Everything you do, you do it for your lady love / Your lady love, your lady love," repeated fiercely with big twanging strums on the guitar. Tsk-tsk. "Fools in love," he sings, returning to the verse, "are there any creatures more pathetic?" flinging off that last adjective with such fastidious scorn, you can't help but agree.

But in the chorus, a little more earnestness creeps into his voice and he rises to a higher register, almost yelping: "Fools in love, they think they're heroes / Cause they get to feel no pain / I say fools in love are zeroes / I should know" -- then, with a dramatic pause, he caustically turns the whole thing on its head. "I should know because this fool's in love." Just by sticking in an apostrophe, he changes the whole meaning of the title. Brilliant.

Self-hatred is an underexplored emotion in rock 'n' roll, and nobody expresses self-hatred with as much delicious flair as Joe Jackson. It sits very well on him -- tall, gawky, bony, pale, balding, he looks like a guy who just might have self-esteem issues. Whether he actually does or not is totally irrelevant; somebody in pop music needs to speak for the sensitive geeks among us. He never buys us off cheap by pretending it's going to be all right, either. And as he rips off that cathartic, elegant piano solo in the middle eight, he absolutely vindicates himself. Man, I'll listen to this fool in love any day.

Fools In Love sample

“Awkward Age” / Joe Jackson

Last week I made up some new iPod playlists, lining up fresh tunes to exercise to. (Spring is here; I must eliminate every excuse to avoid the gym.) Well, today in mid-workout this Joe Jackson song (from his 2003 album Volume 4) dialed up -- and right there on the elliptical trainer, I suddenly homed in on what a brilliant track it is. Joe Jackson songs tend to sneak up on you like that.

“I should have known you were only just fifteen,” Joe starts out the song (that’s GOT to be an intentional echo of “Well she was just seventeen, you know what I mean”). But with its frantic pace and octave-jumping melody, this is no simple teenage love song. He sketches in more details: “You had a scowl like a Klingon beauty queen / Old enough to stand out / But too young to stand with pride / So uncomfortable in your messed-up skin.” I see the spotty complexion, the ill-at-ease posture, the defensive glower. I know that girl. I’ve been that girl. And just like Joe says, in a line that soars yearningly upward, “And the cool parties never let you in…” Joe, you’ve been reading my diary again.

“Don't cry,” he consoles her/me in the chorus, “You're just at an awkward age.” But in verse two, Joe really nails my heart, as he brings himself into the scene: “You look at me like I know what's going on.” I visualize Joe Jackson – tall, thin, pale, gawky, balding – and it’s like one of those toys you wiggle it back and forth to make the picture change: I see the teenage Joe lurking under the adult Joe, just like the teenage me always moping around beneath my adult face. “I got a mind that goes out to lunch for days / And a body that sometimes disobeys.” So what has changed now that we’re older? Not a helluva lot, Joe ruefully points out. “I get into the parties / But I hate them 'cos I'm shy / Oh my... / I'm still at an awkward age.”

Now comes the killer bridge, with its jerky punk rhythms and a melody that staggers down the scale: “We're supposed to be happy / Supposed to be tough / Supposed to be flawless / And buy the right stuff.” Joe is absolutely right. Psychologists blather on about adolescent peer pressures, but who do you know who isn’t still vulnerable to them? And Joe can only offer enormous empathy – “It's a scary mountain to climb up without a guide / Besides... / We live in an awkward age.” Just a little few words changed, and suddenly it’s not our fault, it’s the world around us.

When I was in high school, I had a secret weakness for boys like Joe Jackson – the skinny shy nerds with wicked senses of humor. Maybe I knew even then that someday they’d turn out cooler than anybody else.

http://www.joejackson.com/
http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/artist/album/0,,2525724,00.html

"Love At First Light" / Joe Jackson

The first time I ever heard this Joe Jackson song was live in concert last summer (it's from his 2003 album Volume 4, which I went out and bought the very next day). Sitting there in the dark listening to it, I felt absolutely mesmerized. From that first snide inverted cliche -- "It's the crack of noon" -- I knew I was in Joe Jackson Land, which is a pretty damn treacherous landscape -- the shifting sands of bruised feelings and sexual ambivalence and warped romantic reflexes. Throughout this halting waltz, Joe's trademark crashing piano chords uneasily morph and modulate, and his yearning tenor vacillates between earnest passion and biting sarcasm. It completely wrung my heart -- this is the most honest morning-after song I've ever heard.

The narrator is waking up in bed with a stranger (a woman or a man? even that is unspecified) -- "I can't even remember your name / I know that it's written on a matchbook somewhere / So maybe I'll find it -- and maybe I'll care. " (I love the way Joe Jackson sets up the first half of a line and then whacks it in the knees in the second half.) Okay, now I've got it; this is a one-night stand, right? But then the key shifts and Joe spins the situation differently: "So when you awake, I admit I'm relieved / As you flash me a smile like a diamond / And just for a moment I almost believe / In love at first light." (Another killer play on words.) Sure, he qualifies it with those words "just" and "almost," but the hunger for love is there, and it can't -- won't -- be quelled.

He sketches the brief encounter with cinematic details -- the hungover breakfast of coffee and aspirin and raw eggs, the faint morning chill that makes his lover tenderly drape a robe round his shoulders, the casual curiosity as the lover discovers a favorite book on his shelf. But a flashback to last night's passion sets off a frisson of desire: his voice curls lasciviously around the lyrics -- "But oh, was it ever so good being bad /Like a couple of vampires, deliciously mad / Saying 'This is the best blood that we've ever had' / So we drank it all night." There's sexual appetite there, oh yes. But there's also a playful companionship -- and this morning, that's significant enough to make the forgotten name a minor detail.

This is the moment when it could go either way. No matter how many strangers you've slept with in your no-longer-young life, this transition is tricky. You can't be vampires in the daylight, but if "we do something human, like walk in the park / The spark could ignite..." (Love that internal 'park/spark' rhyme.) Maybe, he worries, he's being moonstruck or naive, but the yin and the yang of the universe have to be sorted out: "I know there's a god / And a devil / So maybe I'm crazy enough to believe / In love at first light."

And sitting there in the dark, I let out a sigh of relief. I can tell he's already talked himself into it. Maybe it's not your traditional happy ending -- but in Joe Jackson Land, this is as happy as an ending gets.

www.joejackson.com