Joe Jackson - Beat Crazy

I really thought Joe Jackson was something else right around his first three records.  After that he kinda lost me (have you read anything he's said lately?  He's a nut).  I can understand people really liking his later stuff and not being interested in his first three records, though.  He really kind of drew a line in the sand between early and later stuff, if you ask me.  I don't know what prompted me to go up and grab Beat Crazy, but that's what I did, so that's what I'll write about.

I like Beat Crazy.  Not as much as I like Look Sharp! but I think it's a really solid record.  I remember my brother had this one before me, so that was actually where I heard it first.  I could grab any of his records any time I felt like it because I was bigger, and I'd kick his ass if he touched mine.  Now if that sounds like a dickish way to be, think about this:  I have lots of records from back in my youth.  My brother has none.  They were all destroyed because he considered himself a Punk and that meant nothing needed to be well cared for.  Someone stole your brother's records at a party?  So what!  That's PUNK, man.

Which I always found to be an interesting philosophy - we all dress the same to show how different we are.  So I never looked Punk and I didn't care.  I had a lot of the records, at least from the bands that could actually make an entire album of decent music.  As much as I've always loved Punk and swear that Never Mind the Bollocks is the album that changed everything about how, why and what I listened to, I always thought it was more important to follow Mr. Wizard's advice and be vhat you iss, and not vhat you iss not.  What I am not is a guy with piercings, tattoos and blue hair.

I think I liked Joe Jackson because he wasn't a guy with blue hair, either.  He just looked like a guy.  But on records he was a guy with a really great bass player.  I think Graham Maby was really great.  Like as cool as I thought Chris Squire was when I was first getting into music and still understood everything the way a kid does.  Like in sporting terms.  Like when I went to the record store and asked who the best guitar player was, as if that could be quantified with a stopwatch or something.  I really like Graham Maby, though.

So if I think about Beat Crazy I think about how much I like Graham Maby's playing, and I always think next about the song Crime Don't Pay.  I just love the whole atmosphere of that song.  It's kind of like what Traffic would sound like if Traffic were cooler to people in my grade.  I mean, they did some cool stuff, but they sounded pretty dated by 1980, and Joe Jackson sounded old and new at the same time.  Which is really cool.  After that is Someone Up There, and Joe gets to to unleash some of his angry young man persona, and I always felt that when Joe sounded angry he could make Elvis Costello sound like a whiner.

I don't even know if Beat Crazy got any airplay back then.  I can't ever take any of it out of the context of listening to the whole album, and this is one of those albums that I always play both sides.  It just seems to be the kind of record that should be listened to like that.  I often just play one side of a record and move on to something else because that's what I like about records.  Twenty minutes or so and move on to a new sound.  I mean, when's the last time you played an entire 75 minute cd?  But there's something about the first scream on Beat Crazy that just gets me sucked in to the whole album.  I mean, Joe has some party music on this, but the lyrics are pretty serious.  Maybe that's why I don't remember hearing any of this on the radio.  It's probably too serious for the radio.

I don't know how long I've had my copy of this.  I know I bought it used, and it was probably in the 2000's. I had a friend that had it and that was good for me, but I haven't seen him in fifteen years or more, so I bought this.  The cover is pretty good, and the record is nice and flat and plays nice.