The 1981 Listening Post - Jo Jo Zep & the Falcons - Dexterity

•  Reviewed by Paul J Zickler
• Released: July 3 1981 Jo Jo Zep & The Falcons Dexterity Genre: Aussie PopSkaBluesJazzSoulReggaeNewWaveRock and Roll Rating: 3.75 out of 5 Highlights: Tighten Up Flexible Johnny Kain Rub Up Push Up Jo Jo Zep = Joe Camilleri, vocalist, songwriter and sax player. The Falcons = a swell bunch of guys from down under. Dexterity = the ability to carry out various tasks with relative ease. In this case, said tasks include playing nine different 2 to 4 minute long songs in multiple styles and genres, all with equal energy and joie de vivre, while walking that fine line between workmanlike and memorable, without ever drifting into boredom or annoyance. Dexterity is technically a Mini-Album, known in the States as an EP, or Extended Play. It’s a smidge under 27 minutes long, which means that if you put it on at a house party, you’d have to be ready to queue something else up pretty quickly afterwards. Judging by the overall quality of this record, it wouldn’t be a terrible idea to have another Jo Jo Zep album nearby. You’d have 10 more of them to choose from after all. The highlights depend purely on your own personal musical preferences. I tend to be a sucker for second wave ska, even if I don’t listen to a lot of it, so I found Rub Up Push Up (You Know You Were Wrong) and, to a slightly lesser degree, Tighten Up, pretty irresistible. As previously discussed in a few of my reviews, I’m also a major jazz hound, so the brief, bluesy sax/piano instrumental titled Flexible was another favorite. I’m also deeply devoted to Declan McManus (aka Elvis Costello), whose Get Happy era influence can be clearly felt on the wavish Johnny Kain. This tracks with the previous Jo Jo Zep album I reviewed in 2020, which had three solid EC-influenced bangers in a row. Finally, while it doesn’t qualify as a highlight, I have to mention the last track, Please Please Please, which consists of Jo Jo doing a quick James Brown impression followed by a minute long soul fadeout. I suspect the kids today would call this album a flex. This is a band with chops, showing what they can do, without exerting themselves very much. It may elicit a smile or three, but it’s not going to stick with you. In this case, I think that’s just fine.

The 1980 Listening Post - Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons - Hats Off Step Lively

 Reviewed by Paul J Zickler

Released: August 15 1980 Jo Jo Zep And The Falcons Hats Off Step Lively Genre: Pop Rock Rating: 3.9 out of 5 Highlights: I Will Return All I Wanna Do Don't Go Jo Jo Zep is Joe Camillieri, a singer, songwriter and saxophonist from Australia. He and his band, the Falcons, played blues, R&B, rock and reggae. They weren’t huge, but they had fans like Paul Kelley, Graham Parker, and Elvis Costello (who covered one of their songs on a 1987 LP). They moved towards a pop reggae sound in 1979 and scored a couple of hits, toured the U.S. and Europe, and eventually burned out and broke up. Or so says Wikipedia. The opening track is Puppet on a String, a sort of infectious new wave reggae thing. I was bobbing my head along with it while it was playing, but I instantly forgot it once it was over. P.T. has a fun rhythmic bounce, a clever bridge, and a cute farfisa organ riff. Little did I know this was a portent of bigger things to come. There are a couple of other tunes that were even more forgettable, and then something crazy happened. Imitating your favorite artists is one thing, but managing to create good songs with strong hooks and creative playing while doing so is a much neater trick. Amazingly, Jo Jo manages to do it three times in a row. I Will Return, All I Wanna Do and Don’t Go all owe huge debts to Elvis C, Graham P, Joe J et. al, but they’re also damn fine tunes. And there they are, back-to-back-to-back, right in the middle of the album. After that, they go back to the just OK rock reggae thing, with the horns and the riffs, followed by No Mystery to Me, a less successful attempt at Costello territory, and the inevitable R & B ballad closing track, which is almost saved by some big harmonies on the chorus, but ultimately just plods along. Still, nothing here is remotely awful. It’s all listenable, and some of it is pretty terrific. Another band that had potential but didn’t quite put it all together. Seems unfair that they ended up in the final set of obscure remainders from 1980, but then, it was a big year for music, and somebody was bound to be left behind.