He looks his 64 years, still a little like Tim without Tintin. He grew up very poor in Portsmouth, studied piano and composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London, and has funded the training with drunken performances in Pubs, which he describes in “A Cure for Gravity”, with his witty, brilliantly written autobiography. Joe Jackson has become known with a sharply contoured, intelligently written pop songs and wants to be perceived as a serious artist.
His styles range from New Wave, Reggae, Symphonic, and film sound tracks to tributes to Duke Ellington and the Jump Blues. He has four decades of on-the-go, has radically taken a different music , and it celebrates both in a tour, which presents the Extreme of his career. He can be difficult and elitist to do and is only a great entertainer, if he wants it. He has brought out recently with the “Fool” is an Album that all of his talents, and that’s saying something.
It goes like los
This is the starting location, as Joe Jackson and his Trio play in the Zurich merchants to the concert. It has, in other words, the highest expectations. Because, as always, when an artist has a long career, a good new Album, comes around to the shabby feeling that one has returned to his past ways, and the new pieces just accepts. Five new Songs he will play on his two-hour concert, most of the work.
It’s great up with three Songs, the Jacksons stylistic variety show. The concert continues with “Alchemy” from the new Album, a padded ballad on which Jackson shows how good he is at voice, how precise his phrasing, his sense of big feelings without the risk of sentimentality. As the third Song he plays the “Is She Really Going out with Him”, his first Hit, forty years old, and of all the merchants singing along. If all goes well, you have joy.
How to explain it to us later, he has collected these forty years long career, the leitmotif of his new tour, he will focus on four of his plate, from any decade. The advantage of this is that the first of the four “Night and Day” is from 1982, Jackson’s hymn to New York, and today might be the most beautiful Album, gastric electronically arranged melody with waste, a melancholy held in the melodies. Each piece from this Album puts a highlight on this evening, at the most, “Stepping Out”, he is the first addition of the same presents as the Original.
to Be unnecessary, in Spite of
The direct comparison between these and other older pieces, and excerpts from his middle Phase, however, are unhappy – to the extent that these Songs are less convincing, and the concert by. No coincidence that the best song from this Phase of the concert is a cover version of “from these talented songwriters,” as Jackson calls them. Then he plays with his excellent Band and a bold Version of “Rain”, John Lennon’s vertontem LSD noise from the “Revolver”-period.
But Jackson was always on his Version of things, and he can be defiant. That he wants to have understood the fool from “Fool”, the title track of the new album, immediately in the sense of Shakespeare’s Jester, the allegedly foolish, but in reality highly-clever fun makers, is typical for him. Joe Jackson has a sense of Humor, but he takes himself to seriously.
towards the end, he is catching up again, at best the only piece succeeds from the great Album “Body and Soul”, it means “You Can’t Get What You Want (Til You Know What You Want)” and is a little bit for the opposition this evening between his demands and our Wishes. He knows exactly what he wants, but we know it also – and not always we agree.
(editing Tamedia)
Created: 26.03.2019, 08:15 PM
