Joe Jackson - live and exclusive

Tomorrow night, in Cardiff, Joe Jackson starts a four-month tour that will take him across Europe and then on to Israel, Canada, the United States, Australia and South Africa. His only other UK gig - in London on Sunday - is sold out, but there may be more UK concerts in the summer so watch THIS space.

Today, writing exclusively for The Free Society blog, Joe explains why he wrote the song 'Citizen Sane', which appears on his new, critically acclaimed, album Rain:

This song says, more or less, that we're all yearning for some kind of authority to tell us how to be sane citizens in a confusing world; but that the authorities all turn out to be corrupt or dishonest or incompetent. What puzzles some of my interviewers is that I target not just politicians and preachers but doctors, who currently enjoy the kind of unquestioning faith which in other times was commanded by kings, popes, or the KGB.

In his typically forthright manner, he adds:

Even with the best of intentions, the health and safety brigade are often wrong, and only look at life from one angle - an angle which is increasingly mean-spirited, promoting paranoia, intolerance, and illusory concepts like 'zero risk'. This is not the road to sane citizenship.

To buy or read about the album click HERE. To read the full article, click HERE. Comments welcome.