Posts Tagged ‘Joan Jett’

  
Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

Caught on Tape: Joan Jett, 1984

by Rob Hoffman

Joan_jett_-_album[1]The time: September, 1984. I had just begun my junior year at Georgetown University, having taken over the job as music director at WROX, the campus radio station, and arts editor at the Georgetown Voice, the campus alternative weekly.

Even though my grades were sure to suffer (and they did), I was determined to make the most of my opportunity to become BMOC when it came to hooking up with music VIPs.

Pulling a few strings, I managed to arrange a phone interview with Joan Jett, shortly before she and the Blackhearts were about to release Glorious Results of a Misspent Youth.

Three years earlier, Jett had sat atop the pop world with her hits “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” and “Crimson and Clover.” It was never a perch that was apparently very comfortable for her. The idea of being a pop star didn’t exactly square with an artist who started out playing raucous live shows in cheap bars – and never got over that adrenaline rush.

By 1984, the fervor had died down and Top 40 radio had forgotten about Jett. In fact, the only places where she got regular airplay were adventurous AOR stations and college radio outlets like ours. (more…)

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Thursday, August 13th, 2009

Lost in the ’70s: Gary Glitter

by John C. Hughes

lit70s

This is a tough one. Is it possible to look past someone’s reprehensible criminal behavior and enjoy their art? A question asked many times about many people. In this case, we ask this question of ’70s glam rock god Gary Glitter, one of the biggest pop stars of that decade in the UK. After many attempts at a recording career throughout the ’60s, Glitter finally concocted a signature sound with the epic “Rock & Roll Part 2″ (1972). Originally a 15-minute jam, once the song was cut up into the mostly instrumental single version (complete with football cheer “Hey’s”), it made the Top Ten in England and the States, one of the few glam successes on this shore.

Glitter followed that up “I Didn’t Know I Loved You (’Til I Saw You Rock & Roll),” (1972) (download) a bit of a sound-alike of his first smash, albeit with vocals and a more melodic hook this time around. Let’s face it: Glitter’s songs all pretty much sound the same. The stomping beat, the crunchy guitars, the shouted “Hey’s” – but I’ll be damned if they’re not all catchy as hell. While his second single was another Top Ten hit in the UK, it did noticeably less business here, barely denting the Top 40. It would also be his final chart hit in the United States. It wasn’t for lack of trying – Glitter toured sporadically Stateside and even did some local television appearances, like this Los Angeles-based dance show where he performed his second single. But first, Gary had to judge a dance contest: (more…)

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Saturday, July 18th, 2009

Soundtrack Saturday: “Light of Day”

by Kelly Stitzel

So, I hope you enjoyed last week’s guest post by the lovely Scott Malchus. I also hope that you missed me and are delighted by my return. If you’re not, well, fuck you — I never liked you anyway.

I had considered writing about a space-related film this week in honor of the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission since I’m a giant space nerd. (If you follow me on Twitter, you are well aware of my geekiness and are likely totally sick of my NASA-related tweets.) But I changed my mind once I managed to finally piece together a fairly complete soundtrack for one of my favorite music-related films from the ’80s, Light of Day (1987).

I’ve wanted to write about this Michael J. Fox movie for several months now, after finding a near-mint-condition vinyl copy of the soundtrack album at Half-Price Books earlier this year. That led me to purchasing a used VHS copy of the movie, which is, tragically, not on DVD yet. But since (1) the soundtrack is out of print, (2) I don’t have a turntable I can use to rip my vinyl to digital, and (3) I’ve had a hell of a time finding MP3s of most of the songs elsewhere, I’ve been putting off writing about it, hoping to get it together one day soon. Finally, I have.

(more…)

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Wednesday, March 18th, 2009

CD Review: Various Artists, “The Coolest Songs in the World! Vol. 8″

by Rob Smith

Various Artists – The Coolest Songs in the World! Vol. 8 (2009, Wicked Cool)
Purchase this album (Amazon)

Let us now praise famous do-rag-wearing guitarist/songwriter/deejay/record execs. Now, unless Clive Davis has a couple side gigs or fashion proclivities I’m unaware of, I can think of only one person who fits the bill—Steven Van Zandt. Call him Miami Steve, Little Steven, Silvio Dante, or Steven Lento, his main nom de rock should be “Almighty Savior of Garage Rock”—that soul-stirring mongrel amalgam of rock, soul, surf, folk, blues, punk, and the kitchen sink. Progenitors and practitioners of the three-chord stomp owe the recent interest in their work to Van Zandt’s radio program Little Steven’s Underground Garage and its various offshoots, including festival concerts, the show’s Web site, its satellite radio channel, and the wonderful Wicked Cool Records, the label through which Van Zandt has released a stack of loud and proud albums by the likes of the Chesterfield Kings, the Cocktail Slippers, and the Grip Weeds.

Wicked Cool is also responsible for a series of bitchin’ compilations named after Underground Garage’s weekly “Coolest Song in the World” feature. The eighth volume of the series has just seen wide release (after a four-month exclusive period with f.y.e., which sponsors the show), and it is a keeper. With its focus on new and young bands, the album shows garage as a living, thriving endeavor.

Palmyra Delran of the girl group the Friggs kicks off the comp with “Baby Should Have Known Better,” locking into a punky groove and spiking her cautionary tale with the kind of repetitive chorus that lodges itself in the listener’s head for years. It’s a fitting start to the record—the song was selected by Underground Garage listeners as the “Coolest Song of 2008″ and, well, it rocks.

“Terminal Boredom” finds the awesomely named Cute Lepers rocking a tune that could have been a Clash outtake. The Lepers are currently signed to Joan Jett’s Blackheart Records—a fitting connection, as Jett’s influence can be felt on a number of tracks led by female singers, like the Downbeat 5’s “Dum Dum Ditty,” which channels the Crystals through a Bad Reputation filter. That track would have made a an equally great Phil Spector single or deep cut on the Ramones’ first record, as would a number of old and recent Joan Jett tracks. (more…)

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Friday, February 6th, 2009

Chartburn: 2/6/09

by The Chartburn Panel

Chartburn Logo


Mainstream Rock: Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, “I Love Rock & Roll” (1982)

Zack: The only way this song to could get worse would be to have some pigtailed, bubble-gum chewing pop star perform a cover of it. Oh, wait. The rhythm guitar part is so incredibly simple it could have been played by an elementary school band, the guitar solo is laughable, and given the opportunity to choose between listening to Joan Jett’s screech or the sound my own screaming as a fingernail was pulled out, I’d ask if anybody had some bandages and maybe some Aleve for when the throbbing set in.

Ken: Not a favorite, really. Oh sure, if I’ve had enough to drink, and this comes on the jukebox very loud, I might get up, but on any other occasion, it just bores me to tears. It’s one of those songs that people use to define rock ‘n roll, and it just isn’t defining. It’s just mainstream crap really.

Dunphy: Complaining about this song is like complaining about pork rinds. It’s not good for you, and the taste of them kind of turns your stomach, but every so often you can handle it. This is the perfect illustration of lunkhead rock, but it’s not so awful that you’d do something drastic, like change channels or anything.

Jon: Top 40 radio playlist for a typical hour, spring 1982: “I Love Rock & Roll,” “Centerfold,” “Ebony and Ivory,” commercial break, “I Love Rock & Roll,” “Centerfold”… That year had the tightest Top 40 playlists of any in the pre-Soundscan era. Only 15 songs reached Number One all year, mostly because those three songs combined for 20 weeks. Those playlists also were practically lily-white; there’s a reason Columbia had to threaten MTV over Michael Jackson in early ‘83.

I still haven’t commented on the song. That’s because I’m ambivalent about it, and always have been. (more…)

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Friday, April 18th, 2008

Boys Must Be Strong

by Darren Robbins

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away lived a kid who hadn’t a care in the world. In the small Indiana town he called home, he had a ton of friends and spent his summers riding bikes around the neighborhood, building makeshift ramps out of scrap pieces of wood, and giving the stay-at-home moms (of which there were many in those days) around the neighborhood minor heart attacks with stunts that would give Evel Knievel pause.

Then one day his own mother told him the grandfather he loved more than anything was dying of leukemia. The family would move to Michigan as his dad had agreed to step in and run the auto parts stores his grandfather had turned into a thriving business.

His first day of school in Michigan would set the tone for the remainder of his childhood. One of the kids took him aside and told him that if anyone tried to beat him up, he’d protect him. Why anyone would beat him up was such a foreign concept. Back in Indiana, there’d been no cliques, no bullies, and no reason to need one of the bigger kids to protect him.

Unable to reconcile such idiocy in his mind, he retreated into his own world and found solace in the music that blasted from his stereo. It became his most trusted friend when others failed him. It understood him when others couldn’t be bothered to try. When his grandfather passed away – having beaten the cancer, but being too weak to stave off the pneumonia that followed – he lost the one human who never judged him harshly, who’d always believed in his every dream as if it were his own. This was a man who’d been told by a teacher that he’d never amount to anything. Years later, after having become a successful business owner, he was visited by this same teacher, who’d come into the store for the express purpose of saying he was wrong. The kid always remembered this when someone told him that he too would never amount to anything. (more…)

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