Santa Cruz Sentinel from Santa Cruz, California • Page 48

lklH, IBl'lll I'M a-1 .1 ing out Mepp Pop star turned classical composer, Joe Jackson takes on the Seven Deadly Sins i Music er 4 IK funny lyric: Bite the peach, suck the juices, did you call me? "Suzanne's character is a hooker," says Jackson. "But I didn't want a hooker with a heavy-breathing, stereotypical voice. Instead, I had Suzanne's voice in mind. I don't know what I would have done if she didn't do it." Jackson then recruited Siberry after seeing her perform "and I was completely blown away by her." Roberts came on board because he is a big Jackson fan. "I'm just enormously flattered that everyone did this album," says Jackson, who plans to bring it to New York, Los Angeles, and Toronto this fall, then tour more extensively next year, likely hitting Boston at that time.

Jackson concedes that he was a pop star "back in the Jurassic era" (meaning, for him, the early '80s), but is now much more attuned to classical music. "Pop is just not as exciting as it once was," says Jackson. "I can like Blur and Oasis (two British roles of the virgin and the whore), Jane Siberry (singing the melody to 'The Bridge," about envy), and Brad Roberts of Crash Test Dummies (as the voice of sloth). "I didn't want it to be preachy and didactic," says Jackson, 42. "I'd like to think I avoided that." The music is complex, assiduously noncommercial, and astonishingly detailed in the arrangements of cascading piano lines, soft percussion, and tremulous strings.

The lyrics reveal a subtle sense of humor. In "Fugue 1More is More (Gluttony)," Jackson sings about a man who dies from eating too many ribs: Let it rain, just bring us some ale. he bellows. In the rock song "Right (Anger)," he sings, I'm going to have to get in touch with my inner adult some day. In "Angel (Lust)," Vega adds this cryptic yet An older, wiser Joe Jackson: taking on the classical genre, pop groups), but I don't feel I'm a I can like Blur and Oasis, but I don't feel I'm a part of the pop world anymore.

I don't care about what's fashionable, who's successful, who's on MTV. Joe Jackson By STEVE MORSE The Boston Globe FROM ANGRY young rocker to offbeat classical composer, Joe Jackson has come a long way. He used to sing dryly acerbic pop songs like "Is She Really Going Out With Him?" Now he's hanging out at libraries, reading Dante, and researching the seven deadly sins the theme of his challenging new album, "Heaven and Hell," which came out this week on the Sony Classical label. "I was looking for a theme that would hold this project together," says Jackson, an Englishman now living in New York. "The idea of the seven deadly sins came up.

At first 1 thought it had been done, but then I realized that what's interesting is that everyone does it a different way." Jackson's way is different, all right. His new songs are a black-humored lot that moves progressively through the topics of gluttony, lust, avarice, sloth, anger, envy, and the worst sin, pride. There are demonic violin sections. There are fugues that show just how much Jackson, an expert pianist, has moved into the classical world. There are theatrical cameos by Suzanne Vega (playing the dual -Television- Continued from Page 16 one isn't about cops or lawyers.

Should it survive religious conservatives who have instantly condemned it as blasphemous and Catholic-baiting (when it is, at heart, deeply reverent), "Nothing Sacred" may become the first evidence in years that a good drama need not be about cops or doctors. Only slightly less fine is "Cracker." That's a shock, because the show is an Americanization of a series of British movies (seen by loyal fans here on the network) about a forensic psychiarist played by Robbie Coltrane. Unap-petizingly graphic, and with deep pessimism about human nature, "Cracker" would seem to be just the sort of project that that American network TV would botch. That doesn't happen in ABC's pilot, thanks to a remarkable title performance by Robert Pastorelli that never attempts to replicate the original, and a script that successfully equates the plasticity of Los Angeles with the bleakness of industrial Britain. Plots will be determine whether "Cracker" is a good show or merely a good pilot.

But alas, "Nothing Sacred" and "Cracker" are projected to have the lowest ratings of any of fall's new shows on the big four networks. Besides "Veronica's Closet," a Broadcasting Cable magazine survey of advertising agency experts forecasts "Union Square," and, believe it or not, Monday's new edition of "Dateline NBC" to be fall's biggest new shows. If correct, they'll prove that while the networks may not know much about entertainment, they sure do know a lot about television mm r' If jT part of the pop world anymore. 1 don't care about what's fashionable, who's successful, who's on MTV. "I'm not interested in making pop records.

I want to make music that's fresh and unique. You won't hear an album of three-minute pop songs from me in the future. I did it for 20 years, for goodness' sake." Friday. September 5. 8 00pm PAN RAMAJAY Jazz Steel Drums S6Door Monday.

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