Joe Jackson, last night, at the London Palladium. It was billed as a 40th anniversary tour but, as he also has a new-ish album out, it was the usual mix of old and new songs, but not leaning quite as heavily on his 'Night and Day' album as some of his shows in the last 20 years! Of his two hits,
Is She Really Going Out With Him was dispensed with early in the set and the encore was a perfectly-reproduced version of
Stepping Out, utilising the 1979 Korg drum machine from the original, which was ceremoniously brought on to the stage like an ancient artefact. The low point was probably an uninteresting and unnecessary rendition of The Beatles'
Rain, which was introduced as making the point that there was no title track on Joe's album of the same name
Having seen him play a short solo set on several occasions, I'd love to see Joe perform a completely solo show, as Elvis Costello did brilliantly a few years ago. However, at least he's working with same three-piece band from his last tour and they are a spectacularly tight combo. Unfortunately, about half way through someone on the mixing desk decided to crank up the volume and over-emphasise the guitar, which made some parts of the second half quite painful to listen to. The acoustics at that venue are pretty dire at the best of times and it doesn't respond well to over-amplification.
Overall, about 8/10 - docked one point for the sound and one for not playing the sublime
Love at First Light from the Volume 4 album.