Like many others there are certain bands, and songs that draw me back to very specific memories. I was 19 when Joe Jackson‘s first album, Look Sharp!, arrived in the spring of 1979. I was just finishing my freshman year at UCSB and music was undergoing an upheaval. I arrived at my dorm the previous fall listening to bands like Rush, Queen, UFO and Blue Oyster Cult. I was aware of punk rock and new wave but just hadn’t really been exposed to it. But as that first year in college went along there were a lot of different sounds blasting out of the dorm-room doorways. Blondie, The Boomtown Rats, Elvis Costello, The Records, The Beat (Paul Collins‘ version), The B-52’s were competing with the classic and hard-rock records I grew up with. And this record by Joe Jackson just seemed to cement it all together, sending me down a power-pop/new wave rabbit hole that I didn’t emerge from for a few years. Continue reading →