Jo Jo Zep rock it: Revisted

 Joe Camilleri. A front man who knew no equal. He can blow your head clean off at a distance of 40 years. First time I recall Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons was at the Town Hall when Joe was all over the stage; head in the drum kit, doing the splits, blowing solos like his life depended on it. Joe was a driven guy. He quit school early, worked dumb jobs that he wasn’t going back to. So when he was playing music there was no fall back position. Everything mattered. That meant the band could do a 20 minute version of King of Fools with Cammileri improvising this hysterical rom com in the middle section or a sublime 20 minute sax improvising “The Cthulhu” or if things could go badly then he might throw his guitar on the floor and storm out the back door with the band vamping on not knowing whether he was coming back. Often as not they played without a set list. Joe bought the jazz gimmick that a good show was determined by being in the moment. Nothing was ever really good enough for him either. He mastered one instrument and took up another. He was restless; he had an artistic twitch. I think he felt he had more to prove than most of his peers. I think he soaked up so much from his idols that he felt he had to find a different voice and he immersed himself in jazz and ska, in pop and R&B. Camilleri has been so deep into so many things that he is totally original. Check out the Dexterity 10″ for some of the most inventive R&B pop of the time or the “Taxi Mary” single or indeed his past 20 years. The reissue of Screaming Targets, the third Jo Jo Zep LP comes with bonus material that reminds us just how potent a force the Falcons were. They had Gary Young, the mightiest drummer Victoria has produced. Gary’s no nonsense feels underpinned Daddy Cool and even when that outfit went interstellar and prog Gary kept the time. He made it look effortless. Partnered in the Falcons by Foreday Rider John Power on bass – well the key is in the name. I loved Wayne Burt’s songs which made up the first album and may be one of the greatest unsung troves of Australian songwriting … but the hall marks of Jo Jo Zep are mostly the guitars of Jeff Burstyn and Tony Faehse. Check out “Ain’t Got No Money” – the guitars just dive in grinding away with the drums pounding it out each beat perfectly planted. Man I drove from Sydney to Melbourne for that gig and moments like this made it worth every mile. That’s the tip of the iceberg; check out the version of “The Promised Land” or the Paul Kelly co-write “Only the Lonely Hearted” but mostly I love a track like “Rock It” that has the stupid simplicity of classic R&B that starts with a Chuck Berry riff that gets subsumed into a glam rock riff and then  just careens into that space where everybody is just hanging in there, maintaining the groove, hanging in for dear life. That’s the zen moment of great rock & roll. How sweet it is.