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Heart, JOAN JETT coming to city
from: princegeorgecitizen.com
By Frank PEEBLES / Prince George Citizen
Two of the most powerful rock acts to ever book return engagements in Prince George have just announced they are coming back to P.G. - together.
The Queens Of Sheba Tour is a one-two punch of opening act JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS followed by headlining act Heart.
They will storm CN Centre on March 10 in a 100 per cent all-Hall-of-Fame night of groundbreaker rock.
Heart was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in 2013 and JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS were inducted in 2015.
Ann and Nancy Wilson founded Heart in the thrust of the Vietnam War, the apex of America's cultural revolution, and when their adopted hometown of Vancouver (they fled Washington State due to the war conscription of Mike Fisher, one of the band's guitarists) was hungry for a great folk-rock act they could support.
They sold thousands of copies of their first independent releases in the Vancouver market, and this spread across Canada, launching them to superstardom with the album Dreamboat Annie.
That record is now considered one of the touchstone releases of that era, with the huge hits Crazy On You and Magic Man not only establishing them as a major musical act but also breaking moulds.
Female rockers were rare, and in this case it wasn't just vocalist Ann cutting the ice but Nancy on lead guitar.
This unheard-of combination would not be stopped. Their early success took its next step with the platinum-selling sophomore album Magazine, which also had much of its roots in Vancouver.
Then, in 1977, things got completely stupid when their third album, Little Queen, sported the single Barracuda. This song exploded and continues to be one of the signature songs of that era in rock history. It was featured on the video game Guitar Hero because it has a stellar guitar groove many consider the very definition of the classic rock sound.
Heart would not stop there.
They rode a golden train through the '70s and early '80s, but then everything got stupid again. In 1985 when glam metal was emerging as a dominant genre of the day, the band released the eponymous album that was to turn their star status into superstar status.
They hit a hard rock stride that, again, is today considered the definition of that era. The singles piled up at the top of the charts: What About Love, Never, These Dreams, Nothing At All, If Looks Could Kill.
The MTV age had arrived with opulent music videos, crunchy guitars and power vocals were the vogue, and Heart owned all these factors. The album went quintuple platinum and still has an active fan base 30 years later.
The next album could hardly match the same sales burst, but it contained the single Alone which is now a go-to song for power vocalists everywhere.
When it looked like Heart's time was finally fading, another stun punch came out of nowhere. The 1990 album Brigade got the band into controversy for its storytelling skills but also for its sheer popularity. It sold so many copies - back into the multiplatinum category - that there was moaning about its constant presence with catchy hard rock standards like I Didn't Want To Need You and Stranded - favourites of shower singers to this day.
But it was the single All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You that got the band news headlines as much as chart lines. In the spirit of the great "story song" tradition, this tune was power ballad on the surface but a tale of a woman's deliberate tryst for pregnancy.
It sparked controversies by those critical of sexual openness, women's rights over their own bodies, and proponents of socially mandated monogamy.
In so doing, Heart was back at their beginnings, using music to protest gender barriers and social conformities.
There were more hits after that (The Voice, Will You Be There In The Morning, don't forget their hit duet Almost Paradise with Loverboy from the Top Gun soundtrack) and a second wave of popularity as The Lovemongers in which the Wilson sisters use mostly acoustic instruments to perform Led Zepplin songs, Christmas tunes and original material outside their rock personas.
Today, they are still a popular draw in concert, because they have so many songs from their catalogue of hits plus a road warrior's understanding of how to give a live audience a good show.
JOAN JETT has been cutting a legendary swath herself, decade after decade, starting in the grit of the punk scene where women were not only unusual, things were hostile as she and her band The RUNAWAYS cut their teeth.
That band was comprised of Jett, Cherie Currie, Lita Ford, Sandy West and Jackie Fox, all now considered punk heroes.
It was the stuff of movies, and Kristen Stewart played Jett when the bio-pic came out in 2010.
Jett was already a movie star herself, though, playing the lead character in the 1987 film Light Of Day in which she plays opposite Michael J. Fox as brother-sister nightclub rockers trying to get past their ultra religious upbringing.
Jett's song Long Live The Night also played a soundtrack role in the music-heavy Tom Cruise vehicle Days Of Thunder, and her version of Let's Do It - Let's Fall In Love (a Paul Westerberg duet) was in Tank Girl.
But Jett is known best - worldwide and generations deep - for anthems like Cherry Bomb (the breakout song by The RUNAWAYS before Jett went solo), I Hate Myself For Loving You, her cover of the Tommy James psychedelic hit Crimson And Clover, Do You Wanna Touch Me, Bad Reputation, and one of the most iconic songs to ever use an electric guitar. Who in the world hasn't heard her 1982 version of I Love Rock 'n' Roll, a song as eagerly listened to today as when it was released.
Heart first performed in Prince George in 2011 on the Red Velvet Car tour.
JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS first met a Prince George audience opening for Def Leppard on their Euphoria tour in 2000.
Tickets go on sale on Friday at Studio 2880, CN Centre Box Office, and online via the Ticketmaster website (1-855-985-5000 for phone orders). |
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