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Cool Like Us
from: emusic.com
by Ann Powers
I know we rock critics are too cool — we're the smarties in the corner at every rock show, smug in our mastery of one of the few ways to be total obsessive nerdballs and insiders at the same time. Ordinary concertgoers hate us as we stand there recording the stoopid behavior unbridled fanship motivates. A rock critic never screams, "FREEBIRD!" or lifts up her shirt in exhibitionist ecstasy; no teardrop falls from the critic's face when an arena star plays "our song." No, we observe. We wax witty. We know, because we've done the research, that said rock star has played "our song" on 17 of the last 21 nights, and that the guitar solo's a rip from a Zep B-side. As the smarty band Sleater-Kinney once said, we're no rock & roll fun.
But deep in our un-aerobicized hearts, we rock critics still love the thrill of the show. I wouldn't have sacrificed a third of my hearing ability if I didn't believe in the transformation uniting performer and audience, even when both parties are acting like boneheads. Sure, there are stars who phone it in, and fans too full of supersized Bud to care. But the mix of amplification, theatricality, the human voice and human pheromones means somebody will be changed by the live experience.
I pulled out an album this week that reminded me of such a moment. I first saw Amy Ray perform the material from Stag in Austin, Texas, in 2001, when it was fresh off the burner. Ray had always been the "rock" one in the Indigo Girls, with a rip in her jeans and a bit of ragged in her voice. For Stag she'd amped it all up: volume, confrontational politics, prowly sexiness. I was eager to see her unleash this stuff live with tuff queer punkers the Butchies as her backing band. And the setting was perfect: a coffeehouse overflowing with both earth mamas and tattooed love girls, divergent pleasure-loving feminists mingling in the dirt-floor backyard. Ray knew she had something to prove to both sides — the gentle Indigos fans were suspicious of her noisy side, while the hipsters feared a sing-along. Anticipation was palpable.
Ray strolled onstage in her leather jacket. She crashed into "Lucy Stoners," a rant against music biz misogyny, slayed with the ferocious "Hey Castrator" and lifted everyone high with "Black Heart Today," a song that proves gals can be Beatles, too. Then the band began a clatter, and a rush ran through the crowd: this wasn't a song originally meant for women. It was Tom Petty's "Refugee," exactly the kind of classic rock song a politically correct crowd wasn't supposed to love, being reworked by the kind of artist its stereotypical fan was supposed to hate. Ray's voice strutted all over that song, setting it — and her — free from stereotypes. When it was over and she waved good night, we were all a little bigger, giddier, more satisfied.
It wasn't the first time I saw a woman exceed herself with help from a loving crowd. It didn't happen the first time I saw JOAN JETT, but it did nearly two decades later. In 1981, I watched my punk heroine play the Showbox in Seattle with her stalwart biker-boy band, the BLACKHEARTS, dodging the male-dominated crowd's spittle like a rooster-haired Maid of Orleans as she snarled her signature line, "I don't give a damn about my bad reputation." Evidence eventually surfaced that the former RUNAWAYS guitarist did care about her reputation, though, and her confused public persona and too-slick music stalled her career. In 1999, she found the thread again.
Like Ray, Jett was jazzed by punk feminism (for Joan's fave mentees, check out Bikini Kill) and started taking risks like the ones that got her gobbed on — and worshipped — in the first place. Fetish, from 1999, collects some of Jett's most audacious efforts. The blunt eroticism of the title track would give John Ashcroft shingles. "Baby Blue" is a paean to a "switch hitter" and "Secret Love," while still dodging the "L" word bullet, at least has Jett declaring an open season on desire. The music that fires these missives is as gleefully aggro as ever. Add in a few revitalized classic cuts, including Gary Glitter's "Do You Wanna Touch Me?" and Joan's own "Love is Pain," and Fetish stands as one delicious comeback.
I saw Jett at the legendarily tiny Hoboken club Maxwell's around the time Fetish came out. She and the BLACKHEARTS offered a typically blistering set, but things really got heated when they attacked "I Wanna Be Your Dog" by the Stooges. Jett clung to the lip of the stage as she sought worthy inspiration in the crowd. Soon her gaze focused on my pal Vickie (my friend! Now, that was fun!) and she locked in like a laser for the delivery. Just as she does on Fetish, Jett made a bunch of kinky cliches personal and totally hot. The definition dodger took no outs that night, and she's thrived ever since.
Encounters like these remind fans and artists that they truly do need each other. It's easy for performers to get weighed down by the packaging and "market strategies" that drive the business of music. But in a room lit by nothing more than the spark of fan love, they can find their true form again. Even this nerdy girl ditches her notebook when that happens.
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