Novemember 2006 News

In the interest of full disclosure, we admit that when we were offered the chance to see JOAN JETT's show Saturday night at Atlantic City's House of Blues, we clapped our hands, jumped up and down, and made noises similar to those a thirteen-year-old girl might make when stumbling upon a treasure trove of shirtless Orlando Bloom pictures. In short, we may have been instantaneously transformed from a serious and rational person into a squealing fangirl. We are not ashamed to admit this, because we admit this about JOAN JETT, and JOAN JETT is roughly sixteen different kinds of awesome. (We say roughly because we are unsure what your individual kinds of awesome might be. JOAN JETT averages between twelve and thirty different kinds of awesome, depending on the sliding scale currently in use in your neck of the woods.)

We were not disappointed in her show.

From the opening notes of 'Bad Reputation' to the closing chords of Sly and the Family Stone's 'Everyday People', Joan put on a fantastic show. A significant portion of the set was devoted, as should be expected, to songs off of her new album SINNER (her first all-new material album in almost a decade).

Rock critic Dave Marsh has referred to JOAN JETT as "the female Chuck Berry," and I suppose that description is as apt as any. Having broken down barriers both musically and sexually, she's a pioneer, innovator, and bona fide rock legend. And, like Berry, is sadly thought by many to be an oldies act. More respected than commercially viable, she fights to remain relevant to a crowd who may just want to hear "I Love Rock 'N' Roll." But one thing she's got on Chuck (besides thirty years) is a compelling and fierce live show that should shut the mouths of any doubters in attendance. Joan and her band, drummer THOMMY PRICE, guitarist DOUGIE NEEDLES, and bassist Enzo Penizzotto, stood in classic rock poses as a curtain opened to the familiar chords of "Bad Reputation." Dressed in a tight, shiny black vest, covered in tattoos and with short, choppy black hair, Jett is the picture of cool and rebellion. She's lean and muscular, and looks better at 46 than you do at, well, whatever age you are.

What I love about a JOAN JETT show is how all-inclusive it is. It's one big punk 'n' glam hootenanny. Joan may be the living, breathing embodiment of the grand idea that is rock 'n' roll, but hey, she's no snob. Everyone is welcome, and she seems to appeal to all types. Look around and you'll see parents with small children on their shoulders, gay and lesbian couples, old rock dudes, rednecks and informed Bitch readers. And just look at her repertoire. While I am certainly not downplaying her originals, she has had big hits with cover songs by artists as diverse as Gary Glitter ("Do You Wanna Touch Me? (Oh Yeah!)"), Sly and The Family Stone ("Everyday People"), and Tommy James and The Shondells ("Crimson and Clover"), all of which she performed. She even does a revved-up version of "Love Is All Around," the theme song to Mary Tyler Moore. Seeing her live is a pop culture refresher course.

All of her big hits were represented. If you came to the show wanting to hear a specific song, there's a good chance she played it. Along with the solid winners mentioned above, there was "Light of Day," "I Hate Myself for Loving You," the RUNAWAYS classic "Cherry Bomb," and, of course, "I Love Rock 'N' Roll" (which, I suppose it should be noted, is a song by the British band The Arrows). She didn't play "Fake Friends," but why quibble?

Johnny O and the Classic Dogs of Love

Plus Special Musical Guest
JOAN JETT

To Get Free Tickets Send a Self Addressed Stamped Envelope now to:
DeBella DeBall
WMGK
One Bala Plaza
Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004

- Tickets are on a first come, first serve basis.
- Attendees must be 21 or older.

Frequently Asked DeBall Questions:
Do men HAVE to wear a tuxedo?
A tux is not required. But most guys do wear them. Others just wear suits.

Location:: The Knitting Factory, Hollywood, CA
7021 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles, California 90028
Date:: December 9th, 2006
Cost: $10.00 and all proceeds go to The Sandy West Foundation
Buy Tickets Online or see about other purchase options.

Join us at The Knitting Factory in Los Angeles for a rockin' Tribute to Sandy West, for being the best female drummer in rock 'n' roll history. We love you and we miss you!

Also Performing: Cherie Currie (The RUNAWAYS) with Jake Hays, The Donnas, Ian Mitchell (Bay City Rollers), Athens, The Street Walkin' Cheetahs, D.H. Peligro (Dead Kennedys) and Craig Else, Michael Des Barres, Chuck Wright (Quiet Riot), Vinnie and Carmine Appice, Rhino Bucket, The Adolescents, The Start, Diane Katz, and many more!

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.

A package of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll was delivered to the House of Blues on Monday, exciting hundreds of anxious, screaming, sweating fans. The concert featured the legendary JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS, the raw-to-the-bone rock 'n' roll quartet Eagles of Death Metal and the Southern California rockabilly heroes Throw Rag.

As always, Throw Rag sped through a tight set featuring the Mick Jagger-meets-GG Allin stage antics of lead singer Captain Sean Doe.

However, the show truly started when the members of Eagles of Death Metal pranced onto the stage as the giant curtain opened. Launching into "Don't Speak (I Came to Make a BANG!)," a powerful gem off its latest album, Eagles of Death Metal immediately captured the rowdy crowd with its stage presence.

The original Riot Grrl herself, and to many the godmother of punk, JOAN JETT continues to fly the flag for punk rockers everywhere as is evident on her recently released studio outing SINNER.
v Though the bulk of the album appears on Jett’s Japanese-only 2004 release Naked, many of the tracks have been given a makeup and re-recorded for SINNER which is also Jett’s first full length album of all new material, U.S wise, in over a decade. While Jett does a superb job of holding fort on SINNER, much of the super-charged six-string rawness is down to Blackheart guitarist DOUGIE NEEDLES whose passion for punk extends well beyond his work with Jett.

His own band The Public Offenders also serve up a healthy dose of old school New York punk. For Needles, living and breathing punk is the order of the day. Joe Matera recently caught up with DOUGIE NEEDLES for this exclusive interview for UG to talk about SINNER, working with Jett and the simplicity of punk.

Ultimate-Guitar: How did you come to hook up with JOAN JETT?
DOUGIE NEEDLES: I was working at S.I.R. in NYC and a friend I worked with was Dee Dee Ramone's guitar tech. Joan was playing a gig in Long Island where Dee Dee came up to play a song. My friend found out that night that Joan was looking for a guitar player. He gave out my number and I got a call a few days later to audition. They advised me by saying, ‘better learn two songs really good than three songs half-assed’. And then added ‘Oh and she doesn’t like any of that Eddie Van Halen shit!’ And I was like, ‘you know, I grew up learning these [Jett] songs’. So I pretty much knew the whole thing. It was a great audition as I ended up playing the whole set.

Without question, JOAN JETT is an institution. Joan holds the 87th spot on Rolling Stone Magazine’s 100 Greatest Guitarists of ALL Time and #7 on AOL’s list of Women Who Rock. JOAN JETT is a genuine rock and roll icon who broke down musical and sexual barriers by co-founding The Runaway’s in 1975 with Sandy West, Joan’s beloved friend who recently lost her battle with lung cancer. BLACKHEART RECORDS web site states her feelings best: We are deeply saddened by the loss of our good friend Sandy West. She was an incredible drummer and a kind soul. She will be missed. "I started The RUNAWAYS with Sandy West. We shared the dream of girls playing rock n' roll. Sandy was an exuberant and powerful drummer. So underrated, was the caliber of John Bonham. I am overcome from the loss of my friend. I always told her, we changed the world."-JOAN JETT

After the RUNAWAYS disbanded, Joan rocked everyone’s world with multiple Top 40 hit singles and eight Platinum and Gold LPs. Hits such as "I Love Rock ‘N Roll", "Do You Wanna Touch Me", "Crimson and Clover" are songs that are easily identifiable as Jett. Joan has starred in movies, on Broadway, and is as vibrant today as she was in the 80’s. Joan also hosts "JOAN JETT's Radio Revolution" on Little Steven's Sirius Satellite Radio's Underground Garage.

After seeing JOAN JETT perform this summer on the Warped tour, and again in Cincinnati, OH and getting a chance to meet her backstage before her show at Bogart’s, it’s more than evident that Joan is playing at the top of her game. She looks fantastic, she sounds as good or better than she did in the 80’s, and it’s obvious that she’s extremely comfortable in her own skin. Joan remains on tour through early December so there’s still time to catch her in action.

Schedule Location Date and Time

Fillmore
1805 Geary Blvd.
San Francisco, CA 94115 map
cross street: Fillmore
district: Japantown/Fillmore
Sat Nov 4 (9pm)

Description
*QUEEN OF ROCK: * If punk and every girl rocker have a godmother, Joan Jett is it. She exploded onto the scene in the late '70s with her all girl outfit The RUNAWAYS, formed her own record label in the early '80s, has a more than legit claim as a recording superstar, discovered and produced bands and records for years, hit Broadway, gained international acclaim and still finds the time to pick up her guitar and rock the hell out of any stage she comes across. JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS--some 23 years after recording "I Love Rock 'N Roll"--just got off a summer stint headlining the Vans Warped Tour and keeps right on cruising the tour circuit for her latest release, SINNER, with the Eagles of Death Metal and Throw Rag in tow.

It seems nowadays that every band has to have a certain "rock label" attached to it: punk, pop, metal, hard-core, post-hard-core, indie, emo, screamo, etc.

It's difficult to find a band that is still around today about which you can simply say, "That's a rock 'n' roll band." Thankfully, JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS are here to let us know that rock 'n' roll still exists and is still going strong.

On Oct. 17, Jett and company played to a nearly sold-out crowd at the 9:30 Club. As anticipation built up in the crowd waiting for The BLACKHEARTS to play, people started to get restless. While everybody was busy setting up the equipment and getting the previous band's equipment off, the crowd was left to stand alone watching and waiting.

West was ''exuberant and powerful,'' said JOAN JETT. Sandy West, the formidable drummer whose taut, brawny traps work propelled mid-’70s all-grrl phenom the RUNAWAYS to dizzying heights, died on Saturday, October 21, from lung cancer. West was only 47 years old, and it’s a damn shame, in part because West’s work was so grossly underrated by the many who reserved the RUNAWAYS little more than scorn. Plagued by the perpetual, misogynistic chicks-can’t-really-rock syndrome, the RUNAWAYS were an exceptional torpedo to that tired hulk, and West herself represented perhaps its most convincing refutation, because she didn’t do anything but just-fucking-straight-ahead rock it.

A Southern California beach girl with a legitimate rock & roll fetish, she had begun playing Zeppelin and Sabbath covers at age 13 with an otherwise all-male garage band on the numbingly active teenage kegger circuit. A chance 1975 meeting with Strip Svengali Kim Fowley at the Rainbow changed all that; bear in mind that West was just 15, one of an army of local hip chicks who thought nothing of hitchhiking dozens of miles to dig in at Rodney’s English Disco or the Starwood (spots full of the quasi-Humbertish likes of Bingenheimer and Fowley, trolling for teen thrillers who might be able to jump-start a new scene). After Fowley led her to JOAN JETT, the earliest incarnation of the RUNAWAYS was born. While Fowley was bent on exploiting a weird national obsession with redefining the teenage girl (a Zeitgeist that also involved Suzi Quatro, Tanya Tucker, Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver and Brooke Shields in Pretty Baby), Jett and West were downright serious bad-ass rockers. Once Lita Ford and Cherie Currie got into it, there was no stopping them.

Even as punk rock set out to murder rock & roll, the RUNAWAYS jolted it back into life, treading the mainstream’s shadowy borderline with gorgeous abandon and a set list bristling with undeniable killers: "Cherry Bomb," "I Love Playing With Fire," "Getting Hot," "You Drive Me Wild" and dozens more. The band faced stacks of dismissive crap that tagged them an annoying novelty or, as Trouser Press’ Ira Robbins sniffed, "a fake rebel band"; but, as West told a Metal Maidens interviewer in 2000, "The musicianship was so good and so powerful, I never worried about that." The RUNAWAYS refused to break stride, and began burning down houses around the world, gaining a rabid international following even as Fowley’s under-my-thumb methodology grew heavier and more debilitating. Through all the insults, postshow adolescent high-jinks and foul drama, West sat back on the riser and drove the damn thing with a muscular, metronomic brilliance worthy of the best male rocker. "An exuberant and powerful drummer," JOAN JETT said, "so underrated, she was the caliber of John Bonham." While West did lead her own mid-’80s band for a time, her brief, almost incalculably influential work with the RUNAWAYS guarantees her well-deserved immortality.