w/David Mead
Sat Aug 23, Showbox, 8 pm, $29.50.
I proudly possess a deadly stink-eye, which I have Joe Jackson to thank for. Just before his band did an in-store performance of "Is She Really Going Out with Him?" in 1979, I made some snotty remark from the side of the stage and Jackson whipped around, lunged in my direction, and unleashed a glance so knifelike that I had to bend down and check to see if my legs were still attached to my ankles. For that, as well as the brilliant Look Sharp!, he remains one of my heroes.
Look Sharp! is an album that, along with Elvis Costello's My Aim Is True, defines new-wave pop punk. Its acerbic lyrics and tense energy have lost none of their relevance over the years, and the self-deprecating romanticism tempered with humorous frustration still makes for great listening, especially if you're soured on love: "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 because this fool's in love again" ("Fools in Love"); "People say I'm too damn fussy/when it comes to girls/Happy couples say I must live/in a lonely world" ("Happy Loving Couples"). And as far as awesome opening lines go, "Pretty women out walking with gorillas down my street" is damn near unbeatable.
I'm the Man and Beat Crazy followed, before Jackson jettisoned his band to go off into every musical direction under the sun: jump jazz, show tunes, classical, and back to pop with the acclaimed Night and Day. (The three-sided Big World is my personal fave because of the scathing anti-Reagan stance.) Twenty-three years later, the Joe Jackson Band has reunited for Volume 4, and though it's not exactly Look Sharp!, it's close. The energy is the same, and the songs are caustic and cruelly romantic. He consoles a teenage girl who has "a scowl like a Klingon beauty queen" in "Awkward Age," addresses the transformation of gays into ultra-masculine gym heads in "Fairy Dust," and in "Thugz 'R' Us," pokes fun at suburban kids "wearing hoods and baggy trousers on the bus."
I've gotta say it: He's still the man.
