It's hard to deny that in the Jackson 5 Joe always was the worst dancer. No heel-spins or swallow dives for this fellah; Christ, it was struggle enough for him to click his fingers along in time never mind get down to the grooooove. Worst afro of the bro's? Step forward Old Man Joe, male pattern baldness finally doing to his career what his two left feet had made largely inevitable anyway.
So Michael started whispering in Randy and the boys' collective ear "He's gotta go dudes, this cat ain't no good..." and one day poor Joe rolls up at Jackson House only to find all the locks have been changed and all his belongings have been dumped on the door-step in a brown paper bag. Which should have been the end but it wasn't. Little did The Jacksons know at the time the giddy heights that a jettisoned and driven Joe Jackson would attain.
And here he is. What we get here in this rather stiff-backed venue is a broad overview of Jackson's career, the early plaintive punch of such hits as 'Stepping Out' and 'It's Different For Girls' made to sound all the fizzier by the flat raspberry of his sorties into jazz and bigband swing that have tended to characterise his more recent efforts.
Something obviously happens when you start knocking on a bit. Music that once would have put you to sleep now provokes an enthusiastic stroking of chins and ecstatic nods along. Witness George Michael and Elvis Costello in their ongoing struggle to appear mature. Unfortunately Joe Jackson has also fallen for DULL MUSIC in a big big way and seems desperate to distance himself from the spiky, skinny-tied pop that seemed at one stage to come so naturally to him.
'Is She Really Going Out With Him' remains one of new wave's finest blasts of unrequited love, a deeply bruised teenage crush in all its many shades of deep black and awkward blue. If anything it's even more affecting here, the added weight of 20 years of melancholy threatening to crush him with every world-weary, resigned bleat.
We had jazz...BOO! We had jive...BOO! We had swing....BOO! We also had three great singles though that any singer/songwriter would be blessed to call his own. HURRAH!!
Images: Winnie Chang
