One more time (Joe Jackson) (LP 2818 - 2820)

Joe Jackson  Look Sharp! (Vinyl, A&M Records, 1979) ****  

Joe Jackson  I'm The Man (Vinyl, A&M Records, 1979) **** 

Joe Jackson  Joe Jackson's Jumpin' Jive (Vinyl, A&M Records, 1981) *** 

Genre: New wave, pop

Places I remember: Secondhand shop (they have that secondhand shop musty smell intact)

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Is She Really Going Out With Him? (Look Sharp)

Gear costume: I'm The Man (I'm The Man)

Active compensatory factors: Look Sharp was Joe's debut album. At the time he was kind of bracketed with Elvis Costello and Graham Parker as they seemed to have similar shiny new wave sounds.

Look Sharp spins by very pleasantly with some reggae-fied beats. The big hit was Is She Really Going Out With Him? but there are plenty of other really good songs on it - Got The Time (covered later by Anthrax), One More Time,  and Sunday Papers are all great fun.

His second album, I'm The Man, also came out in 1979, and it continues the post punk/new wave thrust of Look Sharp! 

The reggae influence is still present (Geraldine and John) and the Elvis Costello reference point is still there from the first track - On Your Radio, which establishes the like mindedness well. Hey, it's still 1979!

By 1981 Joe was trying out different styles. The Joe Jackson's Jumpin' Jive album is a set of covers of classic 1940's swing and jump blues songs. It's a labour of love that my dad would have enjoyed a lot.

Where do they all belong? An interesting set of artifacts from 1979-1981.