Joe Jackson 21: What A Racket!

Genre exercises have been part of Joe Jackson’s career since his fourth album. Having successfully shown his ability to recreate jump blues of the swing era, he’s challenged himself as a composer on several occasions to go outside the rock album box, with varying results.

This time he’s going back a century to dwell in English music hall, having concocted a barely believable back story about a set of “recently discovered” songs by the long-lost, long-forgotten Max Champion. One listen to Mr. Joe Jackson Presents: Max Champion In “What A Racket!” should prove to any of his fans that he’s solely responsible for the words, music, and even the crafted arrangements. Each song is sung with an overly pronounced Cockney accent throughout, which both obscures the lyrics and prevents individual songs from standing out from the uniform pack. One can draw a line to Gilbert & Sullivan by way of Eric Idle much of time. That said, he’s in good voice, so his continued insistence on social cigarette smoking hasn’t taken its toll yet.

Said back story suggest that these old chestnuts are still as timely as today’s headlines, and indeed, he’s careful to blend old tropes with mildly timeless commentary. The so-called overture “Why, Why, Why?” decries complainers and dissent, but then “The Sporting Life” tackles (sorry) the plight of an non-athletically inclined citizen. The decorations on the overly maudlin “Dear Old Mum” distract from some of the nuances in the lyrics, such as the dwindling size of the family and the ways she supported them. There seems to be some kind of pertinent message in “Monty Mundy (Is Maltese!)” but it only makes us want to listen to Tom Lehrer. A peeping Tom gets ironic comeuppance in “The Shades Of Night”, which closes with something of a “get home safe, folks” salutation—odd in the middle of the album, but it caps what’s called Part the First, so consider this your notice for intermission.

Sure enough, the rousing title track—an anti-noise rant—crashes in as the virtual curtains open, but “The Bishop And The Actress” tries too hard to be covertly bawdy. “Think Of The Show!” is a variation on the timeworn life-on-the-road lament, a subject he covered way back on “The Band Wore Blue Shirts”. “Never So Nice In The Morning” is very clever, but the constant switching between the slow verse and moderate chorus makes the song drag. On one level, “Health & Safety” chides exercise buffs, but in the end it skewers the concept of armed forces in peacetime. And while Part the First had something of an obvious finale, “Worse Things Happen At Sea” is merely a keep-your-chin-up message with a singalong chorus with an anachronistic digital-sounding piano.

He’s likely not excepting sales in the millions with What A Racket!; after all this time Joe Jackson writes to please only himself. Given how many other so-called jukebox musicals have been concocted over the years over flimsier premises, it’s entirely possible that these songs could find their way to a theatrical venue at some point. Whether it does or not, we’ll wait to see what other songs he might write.

Joe Jackson Mr. Joe Jackson Presents: Max Champion In “What A Racket!” (2023)—3