It feels out of place on this album as it crafted a portrait of a paranoid young man who practices voodoo to strike back at all of the people who “crossed” him. “The Evil Eye” was a surprise, in that Jackson wrote a odd bit of character study like that. It’s one of the most minimal things from Jackson I’ve encountered and it makes me want more of this. This track could have been released on that one, or even more appropriately, “Body + Soul.” Even so, the arrangement here was more electric than anything on those albums! It’s just voice, a bit of piano, and unrelenting, metronomic rim hits from drummer Dave Houghton, seasoned with the barest hint of organ. But “Night + Day” was a few years down the road. What was fascinating about this song was the clarity with which Jackson telegraphed his future intentions at sophisticated, jazzy pop where he would have his greatest success. It took Moon Records and another decade before ska was anything but a UK pop cult that didn’t really cross the big drink. With so much of the album swimming in ska and dub reggae, this made all of the sense in the world. The next track, “One To One” was sagely picked by A+M US as the album’s lone single Stateside. The dizzy cover art managed to capture the frenzied vibe achieved here exceptionally well.
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Also, his crafting of the song as a call-and-response duet between bassist Graham Maby with himself sounded fantastic! Gary Sanford’s deeply twangy Duade Eddy riffs that propel the tune forward were also a treat. Exposure to “I Just Can’t Stop It” got me straight with second wave ska later in the year, so I came ’round eventually! I love this track for the crude, brash dub effects that producer Jackson troweled on with no subtlety at all. I was mainly into New Wave synth rock so ska, at the time, was the retrograde enemy in UK pop. When Jackson’s third album dropped with ska coloring, I felt that it was about the trendiest thing that he could have done at that point, so I was not impressed. I was cool to ska in the ’79-’80 milieu of its contemporary ascendency. Pretty interesting! First of all, I had never heard the amazing title track back in the day, but exposure to it over the years on Chas’ Crusty Old Wave® program gave me tantalizing glimpses of its dubbed out, feverish vibe. I was familiar with the title track, “Mad At You” and the pungent “Pretty Boys,” but the juxtaposition of those three songs, the insanely beautiful cover art, its ready availability at the right price, and the je ne sais quoi of my day off work conspired to move my hand for the first time in 35 years on this title. K’s to while away an hour last Sunday one of the two CDs I was motivated to buy was Joe Jackson’s third album, “Beat Crazy,” which not only have I never owned before, I’ve never even heard it! Sure, sure. Never the less, when my wife suggested stopping into Mr. The only one of them who I would like to own their entire output is just Parker!
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In the last 20 years, Parker and Jackson have basically switched places on that list, and let me owe up. Of the three legendary “Angry Young Men Of New Wave®” Joe rates a distant third behind Elvis Costello and Graham Parker. I’ve got friends who are much more ardent in their fandom.
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But I’ve never really rated Joe Jackson all that much. He was also the first rock concert I ever attended. He was one of the first “New Wave” artists to get a toehold on the notoriously conservative Orlando FM Rock radio stations where I grew up.