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lift emher, IV7V
Pop-
Punk with
Reggae
Pools
bv Byron Laursen
Kurland, ihc dreary naval
shipping town south of London,
spawned the prodigious novelist (diaries
Dickens in IHI2 and lost him to London
very soon thereafter. Joe Jackson,
25, another Portsmoutnian-turned-
Londoner, might easily pass for a Dickens*
creation. Thin, of working-class stock, well
over six feet tall, dyspeptic, his rubbery,
high-crowned visage topped with tufty
reddish-blond hair, Jackson's a dour ap
parition in the blue-gray November light
of a Vancouver, British Columbia after
noon. But on the same night, singing like a
loon at Vancouver's turn-of-the-century
Commodore Ballroom, backed by a
scrappy, economical, reggaefied three-
piece Lnglish rin k band and hopping to
the !>eat like a semaphoring scarecrow,
Jackson transforms himself into the center
of enormous fun Had Dickens ever
sketched a new wave rock star, an angular,
impiohable guy blessed more with convic
tion than good looks, that rocker might lie
Joe Jackson.
“I just want to come across as sincere,
just doing what I want to do,” Jackson says
before the show. “It's a mixture of ‘Let’s
have a good time' and ’Listen to this lie-
cause I’ve got something to say to you.’" His
lop twenty single “Is She Really (.mug out
with Him," oil Look Sharp, a gold-selling
debut released bv AlcM Records in Feb
ruary 1979, established Jackson in some
circles as among the most listenablc and
engaging of the new wavers, but others call
him a less luminescent follower of paths
cut by such Lnglish rockers as Llvis Cos
tello and Graham Parker. All three lace
pop, K&H and leggae influences with
spiteful lyric s, tin nigh Jackson comes oil as
the least complex and demanding of the
group. One critic assumed his ambition
was “to lie the life of the party."
"That’s a bit froostrating," Jackson re
sponds. Clad entirely in black from his
socks to the buttoned cuffs of his shirt, he
sits cross-legged at the foot of his Van
couver hotel bed, self-consciously rubbing
an itchy wrist against a skinny kneecap.
There’s just as much anger in my music
as Costello's. It's just that with him, that's all
he can do. That might sound arrogant on
my part. I suppose. But most of the writers
I respect —and there’s very few of
them —seem to like* me."
Arrogance might lie forgiven one who
escaped a terminal gig like musical direc
tor of the Portsmouth Playboy Club, as
Jackson did, and the embittering breakup
of an incompetently-managed little pub-
rock outfit called Arms and Legs. Wari
ness, too, suffuses Jackson's manner. His
lyrics, acc ordingly, pass a cautious eye over
relationships, crappy pop culture and
contemporary loss of innocence. I'm thr
Man, Jackson's recently released second
album, entered the charts in the top 1(H)
and has climlied steadily. But the single-
release, “It's Different for Cirls," has not
c aught on so quic kly. Usually it takes a hit
single to put an album in gloryland. While
Jac kson fiad wanted the new album's title-
track released first, as it was in Lngland
and Canada, AfcM said that American
radio stations wouldn't touch the satiric,
frenzied rocker with a ten-foot tonearm.
Though extravagantly opinionated,
Jackson acquiesced. "I’m probably the
worst pet son to pick a single,*' he says.
Which among his songs does he like* best,
then? “Well, all the songs that went on the
album, I suppose. They’re all important."
Though he studied music at laindon's
Royal Academy, there’s none of art-rock's
c lassical pilfering on Jackson's cleverly,
spaiely arranged albums. “Basically, ev
erything I've learned about music that's of
importance to me has been what I've
found out for myself,’’ he says. “And I’ve
always ended up doing things my own way.
whatever was happening" Reggae, long
popular in Lngland and currently gaining
a wider American audience thanks largely
to the works of apostles like Jackson,
fttrker and Costello, is an inseparable part
of Jackson’s way with music. Blues and
R&B are much less prominent in the
stylistic blend. Bac kstage, while his tape of
little-known reggae musicians entertains
the waiting audience, Jackson says he
plans to open his next tour with a Jamaican
band.
^P'ousan"j”' '"‘*<1. well m<. r a
rani as when you came in* Guitarist
Sanford, a visual mix of Roger Dallry am
llarpo Marx who mastered reggae
rhythm chops while ieachin K guitar t<
Jamaican students in south London
titea"while scratches out the chords to
laxik Sharp-Jackson’s epispastic advise
incut ,,n Mr. Alternately half-swallowing
the round microphone and dancing a
floppy-limbed pogo, Jackson leads them
sentble ihro U |(h a thirteen-song set of
mostly reggae-tinged pop rockers, fans
jammed up at stagelront tu K mindlessly at
monitors and electrical leads until San
fords Lcs Paul Gibson is silenced. Frus
trated, he lofts it neck first in a thirty foot
arc. grabbing his weathered blond Tele-
caster from a stand as head-shaking
roadies retrieve the Gibson's splintered
corpse, -l isten,- bawls Jackson, suddenly
every inch a fed-up schoolmaster, “if you
can ' 'x-have like reasonable mature len-
yearailds we ll stop playing.' Nonetheless,
the band answers a lusty encore call with
ihree wings, oneol them a ouirkv Jackson
solo on -file Js Just a Bowl of Chernes’
Vancouver is among the last stops on a
[our that winds up in lais Angeles, to he
followed by a British lour. -Then it'll be
Lhnstmas and we'll all get drunk.* Jackson
says. Dickens, always happy to see a poor
boy make good, lond of lively working-
class types, would probably approve