Joe Jackson
I skipped the debate last night in favor of Joe Jackson at the Warfield. It was Joe, Graham and the drummer, whose name I can't remember and can't find on the internet (Joe's site is riddled with javascript errors that play havoc with my development machine). Anyway, no electric guitar, which was different.
But not bad at all. The musicianship was magnificent. The evening was filled with quirky arrangements of JJ classics and rousing introductions to Joe's newer material. Opening with "Steppin' Out", they moved on to a couple off the new album Rain, including "Invisible Man", which I recognized from some KFOG exposure. The early highlight was "Fools In Love", with a few verses of the Yardbirds classic "For Your Love" melded in the middle. Joe also covered a Niel Finn tune, and later a rollicking version of Bowie's "Scary Monsters". "We usually don't do two covers in one show," said Joe in introducing the Bowie tune, before acknowledging Bowie as one of his "heros."
The set ended with "One More Time" -- as one of my favorite JJ songs, it was great to hear, but really could have used the guitar part. They came back to encore with a drum driven version of "You Can't Get What You Want" that was pretty incredible. That was followed with a by-the-book rendition of "Is She Really Going Out With Him." The show wrapped up with Joe solo in the spotlight belting out "A Slow Song."
The intimate crowd of "hardcore" Jackson fans had a fine time. Joe mentioned this was second trip through the Bay Area this year and asked how many of us had been at the May show -- by the reaction, quite a few. I'm guessing that the relatively light turnout (maybe two thirds sold out) was due to the earlier appearance. I spent most of the evening standing stage left, within two or three feet of the stage, which was very nice.
Oh, and "Freebird!"-boy was there. While Joe was introducing a song ("Solo", or maybe "So Low", from the new album, a beautiful and depressing piano ballad Joe performed solo), the guy bellowed out "Would it be 'Freebird', Joe?" So, he tried to make it fresh -- and failed.
Idiot.
ETA: I looked it up on Amazon -- not surprisingly: 7. Solo (So Low)
