At 12:48 AM 3/26/2003 -0500, David H. Adler wrote:
>Frankly, expecting Joe Jackson to do anything more than once is foolish.
>I personally don't think any of his stuff is "awful", just different
>(and, yes, there's some of it I don't like, but that's pretty much
>exclusively because he's gone in a direction I don't care to follow,
>which I see as a very different thing than it being bad).
>
>I am, perhaps, reading you wrong, but I've heard enough people call
>music that doesn't fit their particular preconceptions "bad" that I've
>become cynical.

As a general rule, I agree with this sentiment.  However, WILL POWER,
Jackson's pseudo-classical instrumental album from the late '80s, genuinely
*is* utterly worthless.  It had about the same relation to classical music
as Keith Emerson's version of "Fanfare for the Common Man," and the same
relation to jazz as Kenny G.  It was boring, pretentious, and nowhere near
as daring or deep as he thought it was.  It was lame middlebrow noodling at
best.

Your mileage may vary, of course, but that was the point at which I stepped
off the Joe Jackson bandwagon.

S