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Defying years, Jett keeps the volume high
She blows an amp but not her fuse at Gypsy Tea Room
from: dallasnews.com
by Mike Daniel, The Dallas Morning News
At first, JOAN JETT makes everyone around her feel old.
The 48-year-old queen of punk rock looked half her age during her 80-minute set with the BLACKHEARTS on Monday at the Gypsy Tea Room's Ballroom. She has better muscle tone than the average high-school athlete. Despite her years and diminutive stature, she stomps, paces and pogos around the stage with the grace and confidence of an ebony panther.
Though most of her major hits are a generation old now – squarely classic-rock territory, a fact reflected by the audience's relatively advanced mean age – her new material is as polished and well-written as her age-defining hits.
Surprisingly, the fresh stuff off SINNER, the Philly native's first studio CD in 12 years in the United States, furnished most of the set's high points.
Ms. Jett has always been a sex symbol for the alternative set, even when she de-emphasized her gender in the early 1980s. Her seedy, sultry performance of SINNER's "Fetish," during which she stared down a single audience member for half the song, would've turned on Walter Cronkite.
Heady, smart performances of "Five," "Naked" and the album's new single, "A.C.D.C.," surely sold some albums, too.
Her voice has lost none of its pungency, presence or scratchiness – she can still hit the screeches in "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" and "Love Is Pain" – and the BLACKHEARTS are as rigid, rangy and wily a supporting band as they were 20 years ago.
The band sounded magnificent, even after Ms. Jett's guitar amp fizzed out just before "Crimson and Clover," ruining the song, frustrating Ms. Jett ("I'd tell a joke, but I tried that once many years ago, and it was really bad," she said) and delaying the last song before the encore, "I Hate Myself for Loving You," for a few minutes.
She's mainly known as an approachable, do-it-yourself bootstrap yanker, but Ms. Jett's perfectionist side created the set's few trite moments. The amp issue, which plainly peeved her, was one; her constant rig checking, roadie summoning and between-song tuning were others.
But her deviously charming grin, chant cheerleading and playfulness toward the audience more than overshadowed those procedural flaws. Besides, whatever Ms. Jett is doing is working, and well. She made many of the 450 concertgoers act as young, wiry and vibrant as she herself appeared. At her rate, she'll finally look 48 in her 90s, and she'll probably still be making fans feel half their age by rocking with timeless sass and verve.
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