Joe Jackson Sang the Answer 40 Years Ago.

Click?HERE ?to watch video.

What Can We Learn From Joe Jackson?

Thanks to a very generous gift from my friend Brett, my wife and I have tickets to see Joe Jackson in Ft. Lauderdale tomorrow night.

I loved Joe Jackson’s music when I was in college. Two of his albums,?Look Sharp!?and?I’m the Man?spent lots of time spinning on my turntable, along with Chicago, The Allman Brothers, The Police, Boz Scaggs, and Supertramp.

Over the years, though, I started listening to other things. And so, besides the Joe Jackson hits that get played regularly on classic rock radio stations, I mostly stopped listening to his music. Not for any particular reason, mind you, but just because other great choices came along.

To get ready for the concert, I started digging through Jackson’s music again – refamiliarizing myself with his old hits and experiencing his newer releases. Thanks to Apple Music, I didn’t have to flip through my old crate of LPs, my shoeboxes full of cassettes or my shelf racks jammed with CDs. Instead, it’s really easy for a total music nerd like me to travel deep down the rabbit hole of any particular musician or genre that strikes my fancy with just a couple taps on my phone or computer keyboard.

The other night I was playing (okay, blasting) a random collection of Joe Jackson music and mentioned to Gloria that this was the guy we were going to go see perform. Unlike me, Gloria wasn’t a JJ fan and isn’t familiar with his songs – in fact, while she thought she did recognize one or two of his bigger hits, the others were all new to her. To paraphrase the old Donny and Marie Osmond song, “she’s a little bit disco and I’m a little bit rock and roll.”

What Does Joe Jackson Sound Like?

What Gloria did point out was that one of Jackson’s songs sounded like The Police, another sounded like the B-52s, a third sounded like Culture Club, and another resembled the Manhattan Transfer. I was about to disagree with her when I realized that she was right. I hadn’t noticed the similarities, but once she pointed them out, it was clear as day. I was a bit surprised that I hadn’t noticed that before.

I’m not suggesting that Jackson copied any of those other artists, by the way. He’s way too talented, creative, and multi-faceted for that. Instead, he was simply marinating in the same musical trends as the other artists that were working at the same time. Joe Jackson and the rest of the musicians were tapped into the universal zeitgeist that was exposing them to all of the rhythms and sounds sonically swirling around.

Why didn’t I recognize the similarity of the trends? Because at the time I was swimming in the same river of dreams as all the rest of them. Just like?I am today .

And just like you are too.

In a day and time where so many of us are opinionated and polarized, the question is simple: What is going on right now that we don’t see or hear simply because we are so influenced by our own personal echo chambers?

More importantly, what mistakes in judgement are we making because our firmly reinforced beliefs and opinions are blinding us to other ways of looking at things that might be more productive, more efficient, more comforting, more profitable, and so on?

To dive back into my water metaphor, remember that?Marshall McLuhan ?wrote, “We don’t know who discovered water, but we know it wasn’t the fish.”

To quote Joe Jackson: “If you want to know about the gay politician

If you want to know how to drive your car

If you want to know about the new sex position

You can read it in the Sunday papers.

Sunday papers don’t ask no questions

Sunday papers don’t get no lies

Sunday papers don’t raise objections

Sunday papers ain’t got no eyes.”

What Can We Learn From Joe Jackson?

What is happening right now that we cannot see, hear, smell, taste, touch or feel simply because we’re so deeply submerged in our own fishponds, watching our own networks, and reading our own Sunday papers?

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