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Too many times over the years we have seen a 70 or 80 something artist prove you can never go back again.
It’s Roger Daltry trying to convince us the angst of Teenage Wasteland still exists even if that scream left his vocal cords at the end of the tour in 1982.
It’s Todd Rundgren playing what he wants, touching his hits with a medley late in the show and not caring who came to hear him play anything from 30 years ago.
Joe Jackson is not that. He embraced a packed house at Rochester’s Kodak Theater on Saturday night opening solo on piano with “Is she really going out with him” before being joined by his bass player for “Fools in love” and adding a guitarist and two guys on percussion to touch on some more recent work.
Somehow the depth of his lyricism on his new material almost felt like Peter Gabriel. I don’t know where Jackson was since we lost track of him but he was paying attention, and bringing it to music.
Often musicians drift away and their new music, for those outside the hardcore, lacks resonance or doesn’t connect. That was not the case for Jackson. “Welcome to burning by the sea” and “I’m not sorry” both connected and were from his new album, “Hope and Fury” with emotional images of plays that matter to him like Brighton and Portsmouth in his native England.
Then he stepped into another world and we were hooked. The best bands always have two people on percussion, 3 if you count the piano, think Grateful Dead, Allman Brothers, Arcade Fire or even My Morning Jacket. Rhythmic textures can slam a song home even when it’s something like “Fool” which relates to how sometimes we have lost joy and the ability to laugh at ourselves. There is a core truth inside best characterized by a host of Shakespeare characters who make us look in the mirror and laugh at ourselves. It is a Strange Land and can leave us disorientated.
The End of the Pier was about a more innocent time where people would gather in England in simpler times for funky entertainment. It gave way to shows like Roxy Music and Ziggy Stardust. Jackson grew his chops from those English experiences.
He closed for the first time with “Stepping Out.” His band abandoned him on stage, bringing the song title to life.
They came back a few minutes later encores, hitting “Peter Gunn” a cover of Henry Mancini’s Pink Panther theme, “You can’t get what you want until you know what you want,” a song I didn’t remember from 1984 and finally closing alone, acoustic, nicely bookending the show “Hometown” about lusting for what used to be and may never be again. Except for Saturday night in Rochester when it was again.
