My Boiler’s Got Attitude (Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, Southpaw/deadboy & the Elephantmen, Mercury Lounge)

“5th Avenue & St. John’s.  I’m in a hurry,” I tell the cab driver.  The co-op meeting has run late (duh), it’s after ten.  Doors were at eight.  “I’m late for Joan Jett.”

“By about twenty-five years,” he says.

*

That totally did not happen.  (What my cab driver said was, “I do not know where that is?  Is this Park Slope?”)

*

Joan Jett (myspace) gives great rock face.

Her eyes take up a good 85% of her head; another 10% goes to mascara.  The rest is sneer and smile, spit and sweat.  But she doesn’t really need to use anything but her eyes.  Fuck it, she doesn’t have to sing.  She looks out and you hope she’s smiling, because that means everything’s fine.  When she looks mad, you wanna make in your kneepants.

Jett comes out – finally, after allowing us to hear at least one full Bikini Kill record, after an intro from some irrelevant classic rockjock (“She has a new album, and we’re playing it at the Q!”), after an entire song (“Doing Alright with the Boys,” maybe?) pumped in over a dark empty stage... Wait.  Let’s start again.

Jett comes out in leather pants and an unforgiving string bikini; she need make no apology.  After a couple songs in the Southpaw Steambath, she’s drenched, sweat highlighting every gym-cut corner of her body.  She looks like a well-oiled machine...

Okay, no.  That’s just terrible.

Here:  Joan Jett is forty-five fucking years old and looks a hell of a lot better than you do.  Her body has less fat than a bag of baby carrots.  When her face relaxes a little – from the scowling, the singing, the smiling – there’s a little give, thank God.  She’s human.  But she’s got ten years on me and I’ve got probably a foot on her and I’ve no doubt she could kick my ass.

But I want my ass kicked by rock and roll.

Jett has been doing this since she was fifteen.  An L.A. teen (relocated from Philly) she (along with Lita Ford, and others) got sucked into Kim Fowley’s skeevy underage pantyfest The Runaways and made it a band worth hearing.  She produced The Germs’ only studio full-length.  After that horrific tragedy struck The Gits’ Mia Zapata, it was Jett who led the band around on a memorial tour.  Generations of grrrls have cited her as an inspiration.  There’s cred to spare, here.

The inevitable question with Jett, is:  Does she have any other songs?  Everyone knows “I Love Rock n’ Roll,” her big hit from 1981’s I Love Rock n’ Roll.  Well... The second single from that record, which got lots of radio play, was a cover of The Shondells’ “Crimson and Clover.”  Freaks & Geeks’ theme song was the title track from her soon-to-be-re-released solo debut, Bad Reputation.  “I Hate Myself for Loving You” was a hit almost a decade after you-know-what.

She must have songs, because she’s got something like a dozen albums – her latest, Sinner, comes out next Tuesday – and a devoted following (tonight is the second of four supposedly sold-out NYC shows (after the Bowery, before CB’s and N6)).  But I’m not here for songs so much as the back-to-basics craft-and-attitude Jett stands for.  Three chord meat-and-adrenaline stuff.  The sort of music that – punk this, glam that – shouldn’t have a genre name.  It’s just Rock n’ Roll.  And I love Rock n’ Roll.

Jett does, too, like she says she do.  Much of the setlist consists of covers.  Represented:  Gary Glitter (“Do You Wanna Touch Me?”), The Modern Lovers (“Roadrunner”), The Replacements (“Androgynous”), Springsteen (“Light of Day,” from the film in which Jett starred), Johnny O'Keefe by-way-of Iggy Pop (“Real Wild Child”), Sly (“Everyday People”).  She does a version of the theme from The Mary Tyler Moore Show, for fuck’s sake.  And you know “I Love Rock n’ Roll?” (Of course, you do, of course.)  That’s a cover, too.  Some obscure Brit band called The Arrows.

There are some originals.

She combines the rookie mistake of explaining lyrics with the veteran mistake of forgetting the incongruous natures of rock and wisdom.  “This next song’s about introspection, inquiry.”  Another is “a commentary on the state of affairs in our country” (that would be “Change the World,” during which she yells out, “Clean skies!  Healthy forests!”).  I feel inspired.  To buy an SUV.  And run over Al Gore.

Her best songs, the ones that have some urgency to them, deal with sexuality; no introductions necessary, wham-bam-bam.  There’s a line in “Fetish” (the title song from her 1999 release) that goes “Relax while I pound your ass;” “A.C.D.C.” is a rock-solid rock-rock-rocker about having a bisexual girlfriend (“She got some other fella as well as me”) [and also a cover - see comments].

Joan Jett & the Blackhearts – A.C.D.C. (mp3) (preorder or download album)

“Five” (“Do you want me to come out? (Ready or not?)”), co-written with Kathleen Hanna, is the best of the new tunes she plays tonight, alternating between a dirty-chorded hook and a friendly, poppy chorus.  Live, it’s great; the recorded version sounds a bit too much like Hole.  It should be the other way around, no?

Joan Jett & the Blackhearts – Five (mp3) (preorder or download album)

Jett apparently has a huge following in the lesbian/gay community, and – Park Slope, hello – the house starts out packed (though they were still selling tickets at the door when I arrived); good chunks of the crowd lap up everything she has to offer.  The Paul Westerberg song is met with what she calls its “first ever sing-along.”

The Replacements – Androgynous (mp3)(buy)

But the room thins.  Some of this is due to the heat.  Someone’s being stingy with the air conditioning, people are staggering out.  A chant starts in one corner, “VENT-IL-A-TION, VENT-IL-A-TION...”

Some of it, though, is the performance.  Jett – who looks, remember, younger than you do – is forty-five, and the songs sound it.  Other than “Bad Reputation,” every number counts off sluggishly.  There’s a lot of sweat up there.  But there’s a lot of sweat down here, too, and not because we’re doing any work.

Visually, Joan Jett is a commanding presence.  In other ways, too.  There’s some serious shit going down, on stage:  She’s ordering her backwards-Mohawked bitchboy roadie to towel up puddles of sweat, she’s angrily shoving guitars at him when she breaks strings, she’s gesturing to... turn her vocals up in the monitor?  To cut the AC?  We can’t tell, and Jett’s not letting us in on it.  Her band is professional, and she is professional, and they mosey ahead as if there’s nothing wrong.

*

If you’re looking for some Jurassic Cretaceous Rock to bop your nog to, you could do a whole lot worse than the new Cheap Trick album.  Seriously!  Someone – a favorite uncle, perhaps, or an elder sibling’s best friend – may once have told you about a time, long ago, when the band from Rockford, Illinois, released quality shit.  No shit!  Happy days are here again; their new album, Rockford, rocks.

It’s streaming for free at AOL, this week.  I’ve already listened to it TWELVE TIMES.

Listen, then buy it (you know... just like they did in the old days).  I’d link to Insound, but it’s not on their site (how indie izzat?).  Probably because they laughed, “New Cheap Trick album?  Must suck!”  O, how wrong they were.

*

“This is ‘Blood Music.’”

Of course it is, Dax.  Aren't they all?

deadboy & the Elephantmen (myspace) – aka Dax Riggs and Tessie Brunet – played a late-evening set at the Mercury Lounge, Monday night.  I’d seen them before, and I’ll probably wind up seeing them again in a month; though poorly said, I’ll stand behind what I wrote last time.

Is Riggs a haunted soul?  Or just some bored misfit who drew pentagrams on his Trapper Keeper in Jr. High?  Don’t know.  But he has a great voice, and a genuine, troubled intensity.  Brunet pounds those drums so hard you think she’s fistfucking your eyesocket.

There was a bass player with them, this time, wearing a “Getting Lucky in Kentucky” t-shirt (Riggs had a Syd Barrett T, Brunet a tied-off wifebeater).  He sat dormant for stretches.  I don’t know that they need him, really.  He just seems to be there to make things louder, and Riggs’ stuff is creepier, for some reason, if it’s just two of them up there.

Was this a showcase of some sort?  A lot of people in the room for an 8 o’clock show, and I’m not sure anyone paid to get in (if I’m on the list, I just assume everyone else is); the gig was added late and filled quick.  Jay McInerney was there.  At least he was outside, standing in line, looking like he wasn’t used to waiting in them.

At least someone who looked like Jay McInerney was outside, standing, looking like he wasn’t used to waiting in lines.

I have no idea which band he was there for, but I hope he’s not planning on giving d & the E’men one of his pathetic tongue enemas.  That would be unfortunate.

Here, songs:

deadboy & the Elephant Men – Ancient Man (mp3) (buy)

deadboy & the Elephant Men – Evil Friend (mp3) (buy)

(photo from the Northsix show; a couple more here)

tags: joan jett and the blackhearts  dax riggs  tessie brunet  jay mcinerney  concert reviews  deadboy and the elephantment  

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