For the longest time, my most-seen concert favorites were spread among five names: Cheap Trick, Rush, The Pretenders, Joe Jackson and The B-52's. I had seen each act eight times. Then Joe pulled ahead on his 2003 tour, and last night, he went into double-digits on his Hope and Fury Tour. (I don't think any other act on that list will reach that tally.)
He's touring with the same band he's had since the Fast Forward Tour in 2016: Teddy Kumpel on guitar (dressed to kill in a purple double-breasted suit, dark turquoise fedora and bright orange shirt), Doug Yowell on drums (who dressed tastefully in a red brocade vest over a white shirt) and the one & only Graham Maby on bass (who, to be honest, looked rather slovenly by comparison). A fifth musician, Felipe Fournier, is on board this tour to play percussion and vibraphone. They played five songs from
Hope and Fury, along with a few other selections from JJ's post-Eighties releases. They also threw in a Bowie cover during the encore. The rest of the set -- nine out of eighteen songs -- were taken from his more famous recordings.
The concert setting brought a lot of energy to the newer songs (which, honestly, sound a bit "closed-in" to my ears, in their studio versions). Not surprisingly, the bulk of the time he spent talking to the crowd, introducing the songs, was devoted to his later songs. He gave a rather long discussion about the song "The End of the Pier," framing how its lyrics are set in two separate eras -- first in the years after the first World War, when the music-hall acts would play at venues situated at the end of the pier in seaside towns, and then a century later, with the piers still there but the venues long since replaced with tourist shops and video arcades. Talking about those bygone days, Joe recited a list of music-hall stars, asserting that those were the finest entertainers of their era.
And as an aside, he joked, "I'm sure Max Champion drew quite a crowd too." It was a reference to his previous album,
What a Racket! -- a collection of songs that Joe wrote in the music-hall style, alleging them to have been written by the fictitious character Max Champion. That album is kind of a weird twist on the whole "nostalgia act" concept. And the jokey reference got a pretty good laugh from the crowd.
SETLIST:
Is She Really Going Out with Him? (JJ solo)
It's Different for Girls (JJ and Graham)
Welcome to Burning-by-Sea
I'm Not Sorry
Another World
Fool
When You're Not Around
Fabulous People
Sunday Papers
The Face
Strange Land
Be My Number Two
Real Men
End of the Pier
Target
ENCORE:
Scary Monsters and Super Creeps
You Can't Get What You Want
Hometown (JJ solo)
No opening act.
