September 2010 News

by RTT Staff Writer

(RTTNews) - JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS took center stage at the Virgin Mobile Free Fest between Baltimore and Washington, D.C., on Saturday, September 26. And though Joan was the oldest act on the bill, she still riled the crowd up as much as any of the younger acts.

Jett and company tore through over an hour of classic tracks sandwiched between newcomers Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros and Matt & Kim on the festival's main pavilion stage. Jett turned 52 just days before the fest, almost the collective age of indie duo Matt & Kim.

During the set, the band ripped through their mega-hit "I Love Rock and Roll," plus a collection of covers including Garry Glitter's "Do You Want to Touch Me" and the Tommy James and the Shondells standard "Crimson and Clover." The latter earned the BLACKHEARTS a number seven hit on the Billboard Hot 100 nearly 30 years ago.

Along with M.I.A., Ludacris and the recently reunited Pavement, JOAN JETT and company played to an estimated crowd of 40,000 at Saturday's fest in Columbia, Maryland.

by Roxana Hadadi and Rudi Greenberg, Photo by Josh Sisk

Music festivals are generally plagued by blazing heat, clouds of dust and overpriced beer, and Saturday's Virgin FreeFest had it all. What it mercifully lacked were stinkbugs.

The smelly insects currently swarming the Washington area were, for the most part, absent from the festivities at Merriweather Post Pavilion. Perhaps the heady aroma of sweat and wacky tabacky kept them away. Huzzah!

The epic slate of bands at FreeFest was a test of endurance for concertgoers on festival overload, from early afternoon act Jimmy Eat World to midday chill wave band Neon Indian. But the fest really kicked into high gear after the sun began to drop, pitting its heavy-hitting headliners against one another and forcing some difficult decisions for attendees.

JOAN JETT by Kyle Gustafson for The Washington PostFirst there was JOAN JETT in the Pavilion at 4:30 p.m., delivering BLACKHEARTS-era tracks like "Backlash," "Crimson and Clover" and the crowd-pleasing "I Love Rock 'n' Roll." Jett, much like her cougar-in-arms Madonna, proved that age just means knowing how to rock harder: She pranced, she purred, she had the audience in the palm of her hand.

After Jett wrapped up, it was into the Dance Forest for electrofunk duo Chromeo, who drew a larger and larger crowd as Dave 1 and P-Thugg got the party started. By the time they launched into "Hot Mess," awkward dancing was in full force. Flailing limbs and non-ironic robot-ing continued through "Tenderoni," "Call Me Up," "Needy Girl" and "Bonafide Lovin,'" and the hazy steam rising off bros and indie kids alike got darker and darker as a sea of feet kicked up the dust below.

The cloud of smoke (of some kind) hovering over Ludacris's set on the West Stage was inescapable. The crowd packed both lawns to watch Luda rip through older tracks like "Ho" and "Cadillac Grills" while also peppering in his verses from Fergie's "Glamorous" and Taio Cruz's summer smash "Break Your Heart."

As much as girls dipped it low during Luda's set, nothing came close to the energy level at Sleigh Bells' 30-minute set in the Dance Forest, where fans crowd-surfed during Derek Miller's and Alexis Krauss's 10-track performance. Surprisingly, it seemed that the same people head-banging during Sleigh Bells couldn't be bothered to wait around for M.I.A., who signed the pair to her N.E.E.T. record label.

by Michael David

2010 has been an eventful year for JOAN JETT. The female rock n' roll pioneer turns 52 years young today, and she has plenty to be thankful for.

Not only has she released a career spanning Greatest Hits album with her long time back up band the BLACKHEARTS, but a whole new generation has discovered her first group, The RUNAWAYS, through the movie of the same name.

While the film was not a blockbuster in the theaters, it has been a consistently strong seller on DVD and rental.

Having Twilight star Kristen Stewart convincingly portray Jett in the recent bio-pic has definitely added to interest in Joan and her music.

An anthology of the all girl group, which included Cherie Currie and Lita Ford, was also released earlier in the year.

"The godmother to female musicians with loud guitars and idealistic dreams." That's how the New York Times once described JOAN JETT, expressing a sentiment shared by Jett's legions of fans.

From her pioneering stint in the RUNAWAYS in the '70s, to her trailblazing work on hits like "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" and "Bad Reputation," the artist once deemed "the female Elvis" has paved the way for every young girl driven to strap on an electric guitar.

More than that, however, Jett has given us some of the most unabashed guitar-rock of the past three decades. Injecting sass and sneer into a sure-footed sense of melody, the ever-youthful Jett combines a love of classic radio pop with a gnarly attitude in a way that goes to the essence of what rock music is all about.

"I'm a big fan of [pop music]," Jett said, in 2001 interview. "I think it really has to do with degrees of intensity, as to whether a song is bubblegum or rock 'n' roll. Good rock 'n' roll has to have a good pop sensibility within it. You need to have songs that say something, that have a hook, and that are catchy. Of course I listened to things like Bowie and T. Rex, too. It's all 'poppy' music, but with a harder edge."

Jett has lost none of her passion for her beloved rock 'n' roll. Doubters need only check out her recent performance for the "Nissan Live Set" concert series to see a artist in full flight, still reveling in making music. "I'm so blessed to be doing what I do," Jett says at one point.

Likewise, we're blessed -- blessed that Jett is still going strong and that she's lost none of her leather-clad edge...Gibson joins with Jett's fans in wishing her a wonderful birthday.

by Heather Persson

I've been waiting to see Aerosmith since 1988.

So it was with a sense of destiny and some pretty high expectations that I showed up Sunday at Credit Union Centre for the Cocked, Locked, Ready to Rock tour.

I had tickets for their Greatest Hits tour when it hit Regina and my friends and I were stoked -- I think that's the term we used back then -- to see the classic band.

Then I got grounded.

by Amanda Ash

JOAN JETT may be in her 50s, but that doesn't mean she's traded in her leather bustiers for floral-print pantsuits.

Her voice says it all: Over the phone, calling from her home in New York, the infamous tomboy from '70s all-girl punk rock band the RUNAWAYS growls with a sense of authority. She speaks and you can't help but nod in agreement. Like the 15-year-old bruiser who clawed her way into the world of rock 'n' roll, Jett still has a clear sense of who she is and what she's fighting for.

Which is why calling the 51-year-old a role model might be a bad idea.

"I could never say that about myself. To me, that sounds conceited," Jett says in her raspy East Coast voice. "It's not for me to say, as far as I'm concerned, because any artist can think they change the world. I just want people to get something from (my music)."

If you've got the guts, though, you can claim Jett has changed the world.

With the release of the biopic The RUNAWAYS (based on bandmate Cherie Currie's memoir Neon Angel), Jett's life and story have been splashed across the big screen, reaching a whole new generation of teenagers.

by Rob Williams

If this is the last Aerosmith tour ever, at least they're going out with their wings intact.

The Boston rock veterans brought their Cocked, Locked and Ready to Rock Tour to the MTS Centre Wednesday night for a crowd of 8,500, about the same amount of people who would have seen the band if they played the Canad Inns Stadium last year. That show was cancelled when vocalist Steven Tyler injured himself after falling off the stage during a concert in Sturgis, S.D.

The injury led to a winter of discontent within the band and left the group's future in doubt. They eventually regrouped, but with Tyler set to join the judging panel of American Idol, the quintet's future remains cloudy.

It's not like they are bursting with creativity anyway. Their last album of originals was 2001's Just Push Play, and so Wednesday's concert followed a similar formula to the last few Aerosmith shows in Winnipeg, a mixture of hits from the 1970s and singles from their comeback in the 1980s and 1990s.

At this point there really aren't any surprises at an Aerosmith concert, unless you count the mid-concert commercial for Guitar Hero: Aerosmith that occurred during lead guitarist Joe Perry's guitar solo.

If there is any animosity between Tyler and Perry -- who has been justifiably critical of Tyler's decision to join the televised karaoke contest without telling his bandmates first and knocked the singer off the stage in Toronto last month after Tyler bumped him -- it wasn't evident last night. The pair didn't spend a lot of the time in the same vicinity on the large stage, but during the third song of the night, 1975's No More No More, Tyler put his arm around Perry and the pair shared the microphone on the chorus.

No More No More was one of the early highlights of the night. The band -- Tyler, Perry, guitarist Brad Whitford, bassist Tom Hamilton, drummer Joey Kramer and a keyboardist -- took to the stage to the classic Same Old Song and Dance before showing off their blues influences with a cover of Train Kept a Rollin'.

by Rick Fulton

Rocker JOAN JETT yesterday revealed how she is helping Twilight star Kristen Stewart deal with fame.

The 20-year-old actress plays girl-power pioneer Joan in new bio-pic The RUNAWAYS, out on Friday.

Although Joan admits Kristen's fame is far more extreme than she experienced in her days in the girl band, she says they share many similarities.

And she is confident the young star can handle the pressure.

"Look what she's got to deal with," said Joan, 51. "You can be a successful actor and still be able to go out and buy a loaf of bread but there's nothing that Kristen can do at the moment.