CENTERSTAGE

"I love this weather,” Joe Jackson was enthusiastically telling the enraptured audience of 400 or so, who were quietly drying out, the result of the first genuine downpour of the new year. "English blood is made up of rain, rain and beer,” Joe amiably concluded, before he got the OK-signal from producer David Kershenbaum, holed up outside in a mobile recording van, and launched into a regretful song, appropriately titled "Hometown.”