AudioLancelot
Omniscientist
Joe Jackson Band Reform.
The original Joe Jackson Band from the Look Sharp days is back together.
The original band featuring Jackson with Graham Maby (bass), Gary Sanford (guitar) and Dave Houghton (drums) has recorded a new album and planned a tour to mark the 25th anniversary of the classic 'Look Sharp' album.
'Look Sharp' from 1979 was a milestone in new wave, coming off the back of the establishment punk rock. The album included what is now the rock classic 'Is She Really going Out With Him?" and was one of the first albums to commercially produce a mix of rock and reggae (known in it's day as 'white reggae'.) The Police also use the white reggae formula on their early hits and even named an album 'Regatta D'Blanc' in honour of the genre.
The new Joe Jackson Band album will be released on March 11 through RYKO. "I think that even the most rootless traveler sometimes has to put his foot down somewhere familiar," says Joe Jackson at his official website. "You can't only go forward. Sometimes it's healthy to look back."
Jackson says he is as surprised as anyone that this reunion happened. "I never thought this would happen" he says. "But at some point it struck me that 2003 would be our 25th anniversary - which was quite a staggering thought! I started to wonder if some kind of reunion might be fun, and the more I thought about it, the more appealing it seemed".
Despite carving their name in rock history the Joe Jackson Band were together only a very short time. "We were together for a much shorter time than I realised," he says. "We got together in the summer of '78, recorded Look Sharp in August, and just kept going through to the end of 1980. We toured very hard, but then again, we were very young and it was an adventure. This was all heady stuff, because so much of it was new - traveling internationally, playing bigger places, being on TV. It's kind of like you've gone through a war; you'll always have that bond because of what you've experienced together."
The album was recorded at Ridge Farm Studios, Surrey, England, with Joe producing and mixed at The Magic Shop, New York City.
The songlist for Volume 4 is:
Take It Like a Man
Still Alive
Awkward Age
Chrome
Love at First Light
Fairy Dust
Little Bit Stupid
Blue Flame
Dirty Martini
Thugs Are Us
Bright Gray