Two Things I'll Never Do Again (Because I Like Jazzier Numbers)

Last night I saw Joe Jackson at the State Theater (my wife and a few friends are fans) and this morning I finished John Steinbeck's sprawling novel East of Eden, and while I am glad to have done both these things, I'm not revisiting either—the classic Joe Jackson songs ("Is She Really Going Out With Him?" and "Sunday Papers" and "Steppin' Out") have too many words for my taste; I'm not a huge fan of dense singer-songwriter lyricism—I prefer obtuse abstractions sprinkled in amongst music with syncopated timbre (e.g. The Breeders' song "Cannonball" . . . I'll be your whatever you want/The bong in this reggae song) and I have the same complaint about Steinbeck's East of Eden . . . it's a compelling (but ultimately and very consistently) tragic multi-generational saga that is just so fucking long that, while I am glad I read it, I am also very glad that I am finished—it's a bit heavy-handed with Biblical imagery and symbolism . . . but I did enjoy Joe Jackson's newer, jazzier numbers—the songs where he let his incredible band (a fantastic drummer and a fantastic percussionist!) step out and really play and he interspersed some of his trademark lyrics here and there, and I also like John Steinbeck's looser, jazzier books: Cannery Row, which is more a sequence of entertaining and fragmented vignettes and anecdotes of the colorful characters that work at the labs and processing plants and sardine factories in Monterey, California—or Travels with Charley, a non-fiction travelogue wherein Steinbeck drives ten thousand miles with his pet poodle in a modified GMC pick-up camper (named Rocinante) and so the moral here is sometimes it's nice when artists leave things out and let the theme emerge (or not) instead of beating you over the head with it for 640 pages.