This is a bad paraphrasing of one of the few present-day vignettes from Joe Jackson's engaging and honest new memoir, A Cure for Gravity, a look back at his coming of age as a man and musician in the mid-70s. The scene in question occurred in a cafe in Durham, North Carolina, where Jackson attended a dance performance set to his music. His lunch was abruptly interrupted by a young man who decided to sit at the restaurant's piano and thrash out Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" to the delight of all but one diner. This starts a round robin of questions in Jackson's mind and the too familiar sensation of being "different" from the masses.

Jackson doesn't "expect everyone to be musically educated and discerning. On the contrary, I know that real aficionados are by definition a minority. The only thing that bothered me was being called a snob just because I know the difference." In another context, this might be referred to as the difference between confidence and cockiness.

By the time the reader reaches this point, about two-thirds of the way through the book, it is abundantly clear that Jackson is infrequently running with the majority opinion. For those who know even a handful facts about his career (recording a three-sided release in front of a live audience whom he told not to applaud, writing two symphonic pieces and a song cycle about the seven deadly sins), an independent spirit is part of Jackson's internal composition. From extremely modest roots in the southern English coast town of Portsmouth, young David Ian Jackson (he was dubbed "Joe" by bandmates later and it stuck) was asthmatic, a weakling and sports-phobic. Not a great combination for a grade-school-age, working-class kid. Then he decided to take violin lessons.

Fast forward to the English ritual of high school entrance examinations. Dave takes the performing arts exam and is accepted at London's Royal Academy of Music. From the outside, this seems the ideal place for the struggling musician and composer to blossom, but Jackson's classmates are enthralled by contemporary minimalist composers, frequently arguing over which is best. The winning criteria seemed to be the one who was most obscure.

For Jackson, this was difficult to reconcile. He wanted to make a living in music more than anything else up to that point in his life, and that meant appealing on some popular level. He already had dozens of gigs under his belt as a pub piano player and felt the natural high of audience appreciation, such as it could be from a bunch of drunk sailors in Portsmouth. The curse of seeking that popularity enabled him to keep that "other" mantle firmly on his shoulders even while at the Academy. (At least one of his classmates made the two halves into a whole: a Scottish flutist named Annie Lennox.)

At one point while I was reading, I remarked that the feel of the book was lyrical, in an Angela's Ashes kind of way. In retrospect, that's probably not the best analogy. A Cure for Gravity is another pop gem, a book-length "It's Different for Girls," if you will. Openhearted, genuine, self-deprecating, critical, informative, exceptionally witty. Not unlike the majority of songs in Jackson's discography. He's a wonderful storyteller and observer. He looks back honestly, sometimes so honestly I winced right along with him. While reading, I often felt like I was sitting at a window table in New York City's Fanelli's - an occasional haunt of Joe's who divides his time between New York and Portsmouth today - as JJ spun yarn after yarn with both objectivity and opinion. He listens to Look Sharp, more than 20 years after recording it and documents what he hears. He also singles out two of his records that still hold a special resonance for him (one should be obvious, the other much less so).

There is autobiography in probably 90% of an artist's work. This time, however, Jackson looked in the mirror not just for an idea to be fleshed out in four minutes of pop song craft. He looked in the mirror, and in the meticulous diaries of two old bandmates who helped jog the memory of long forgotten clubs, payments, roadies' names and nightmarish gigs. Though, I have to wonder sometimes when the memory stops and poetic license takes over. One of countless priceless moments was when a semi-literate roadie was helping the band load gear and was nearly knocked cold by an amp. "I was nearly decaffeinated," Jackson recalls him saying. Then again, JJ does have a song titled "Stranger Than Fiction.

The early 70s in London was a heady time for pop music with the progressives of early Genesis, Pink Floyd and Steely Dan and before the explosion of punk, Bob Marley and ska's rebirth. Jackson started playing in some jam sessions around his school schedule that led to the formation of his first rock band, the abominably named Edward Bear. Before writing his own songs, Jackson's first contribution to the band was a bassist known as Badger whom he met on the bus one day. You and I know Badger as Graham Maby, a mainstay of the Joe Jackson Band. That ensemble was still years from playing a note together and the struggles of getting funds for a demo tape led Jackson to accept a semi-appalling list of part time gigs from the Playboy Club to a lounge act dubbed Koffee 'n' Kreme.

Interspersed with the chronological recap that leads to the recording of his debut, Look Sharp, at the book's conclusion, are brief chapters that have Jackson stepping out (sorry!) of biography mode into reflective mode. Less appealing are the times Jackson reduces the rationale for getting through from point A to B to mere determinism. "I realized once again that what looked like confidence to others felt like desperate, white-knuckled determination to me. I had to succeed in music. I was no good at anything else" (emphasis Jackson's).

More effecting are the awkward reminisces of an awakening sexuality and the out-of-body bliss many performers use to describe the moments on stage powered by adrenaline, a P.A. and their creations. Permanently burned into memory is the first night billed as the Joe Jackson Band. "I counted off the first song, not just with the authority of having written it, but with an intoxicating feeling of power. The band - my band - exploded into action and played like maniacs. The audience loved it. By the end of the evening I'd felt like I'd just gone 10 rounds with Muhammad Ali, but I was still high - I didn't want it to stop, ever."

The notion memoir has become unfortunately hackneyed today, cheapened by the sheer volume of volumes. Jackson has subtitled his book "A Musical Pilgrimage." The destination seems to be the reminder that music is, for him, a cure for gravity, a means of rising above the pull of outside expectations. Those expectations ranged from the working-class way of life to the classical music-centric thought at the Royal Academy to the pop music consumers waiting for "Is She Really Going Out with Him, Pts. 2 - 100." While there is enough to be inferred from Jackson's experiences and their retelling to lead a well-examined life, he promises to dispense only two pieces of direct advice. The second is a mangled version of "to thine own self be true": "Don't mutilate your foot, trying to squeeze it into Cinderella's slipper. I've tried to do some of that myself, but nowadays, there's no doubt in my mind: I'm one of the ugly sisters. And proud of it."

If my eyes, and ears, don't deceive me, there's nothing wrong with that around here.