Video: Blondie – “Doom or Destiny”
From Pollinator, out now on BMG.
Debbie Harry and Joan Jett are not amused by the state of the world. But that doesn’t prevent them from making fun of the news in our current political idiocracy.
Blondie’s Chris Stein told Rolling Stone, “Politics have become the new pop culture phenomena, but it seems the current landscape of music videos has so little to do with true protest or some kind of social message. It can be truthful, but irreverent, fun and funny.”
Below are the things we’ve posted to Twitter recently. 219 tweets including 138 links and 97 retweets. In reverse chronological order, just like Twitter…
Jeff Sabatini and Mike Vasquez are tweeting for GLONO from the All Good Festival in West Virginia, although word from Sab is that network connectivity there is awful. But tune in for updates.
# Internet success requires trust. RT @annkpowers: Prince and the Internet, a history (tragedy?) http://tinyurl.com/2bn54a5
# RT @Johnny_Marr: World Premier of Inception in Leicester Sq, London last night. Guitars on the score by Johnny Marr.
# Everything here is leaning on an angle because of the mountain. It’s disconcerting to say the least. #allgood
Lots more below, and you might consider joining the 841 other people following us on Twitter so you can keep up with this stuff as it happens…
Joan Jett by Todd Oldham, introduction by Kathleen Hanna
Ammo Books (224 pages; $34.95)
To be honest, I expected this book to be terrible. With the Runaways movie coming out in a blaze of twilit fanfare, you’d assume that any book being released around the same time would be nothing but a quickie cash-in.
But that’s not what this Joan Jett book is…not at all. Nice thick pages with high quality prints, assembled by celebrity designer Todd Oldham, it’s 9×9 size just looks cool sitting on your coffee table. Open it up and in additional to all the great rock and roll photos of Joan Jett throughout her career, you’ve got what amounts to an autobiography, seemlessly assembled from interviews over the past thirty years. Historians might’ve liked to have seen footnotes and a real bibliography so we could place the source of the quotes, but as it is it reads surprisingly cohesively.
It’s Christmas Eve. You know who knows how to do a Christmas song? Joan Jett, that’s who. Remember her version of “Little Drummer Boy” on I Love Rock N’ Roll? Her version kicked the crap out Bing Crosby and David Bowie‘s lame attempt, that’s for sure. And now she and her posse are taking on “Silent Night.” Dig it.
MP3: Joan Jett, the Blackhearts, and special guests – “Silent Night” from Joan Jett’s Blackheart Records Holiday Album (iTunes).
Now you’re all set like Joan Jett. Don’t forget to leave Santa some cookies…
Hard to believe it took until 2008 for Gibson to honor a female musician with a Gibson Electric Signature Model guitar. But they’ve launched the Joan Jett Signature Melody Maker, and it looks pretty sweet.
Joan Jett got her original Melody Maker in 1977 when she was in the Runaways. “It was light and it sounded great.” This new Signature Melody Maker is handcrafted to recreate Jett’s customizations. “This is my guitar. Gibson was successfully able to replicate my custom velvet hammer pick ups which have not been available for twenty years.” Its 24-inch scale length, slim-tapered neck profile is similar to the Les Pauls and SGs of the mid to late 1960s. MSRP: $839.
Full press release after the jump…
Continue reading Joan Jett Signature Gibson Melody Maker guitar
Variety: Runaways head to the bigscreen. “Neon Angels” will tell the story of the ’70s all-girl, teenage band that was created by producer Kim Fowley and included members Joan Jett, Cherie Currie and the late Sandy West.
“We certainly utilized to our advantage our image as teenage girls who wore titillating clothes,” Jett told Daily Variety. “But we also became an excellent band and made it OK for girls to play rock ‘n’ roll. It got hard once people focused more on what we were wearing than what we were playing.”
The Open Letter to Rolling Stone that everyone is attributing to Joan Jett was actually written by Maya Price.
Updated links 11/26/2008.
Okay, that’s it. I can no longer defend her. In a cleverly annotated transcript of a dial-an-interview with Britney Spears, Jim DeRogatis reveals that she doesn’t know where Elvis is from and doesn’t know who originally made “I Love Rock N’ Roll” famous. In case you’re wondering, the answers are Tupelo, Mississippi (although Memphis would be acceptable, and even preferred by some) and Joan fucking Jett and the fucking Blackhearts. I could’ve forgiven her thinking Elvis was from Las Vegas. Maybe she just misspoke, and who really cares anyway? I think it’s really cool that she’s dressed in a white bedazzled jumpsuit for her HBO special in Las Vegas. That’s fine. That’s clever. It’s cute. I like it.
But don’t fuck with Joan Jett.
If I were in charge, I would publicly execute anyone who thought that “I Love Rock N’ Roll” was a Pat Benatar song. I’m serious. That would be the Law, and the Law would be very strictly enforced. I might even make people answer that question before they could get their drivers license, vote, or open a bank account.
I realize that Ms. Jett did not write that song, but it’s her song as much as “Jailhouse Rock” or “Viva Las Vegas” belong to Elvis. And Pat Benatar sucks. If you’ve ever heard her cover of “Just Like Me” by Paul Revere and the Raiders, you know I’m 100% right about this. We’ve discussed this issue before, and it sickens me to have to acknowledge it myself. Oh Britney, my Britney, why hast thou forsaken me?
I saw him dancin’ there by the record machine
I knew he must a been about seventeen
The beat was goin’ strong
Playin’ my favorite song
An’ I could tell it wouldn’t be long
Till he was with me, yeah me
QUEENS OF NOISE: THE RUNAWAYS SHOW BRITNEY WHO’S BOSS
Johnny Loftus
It’s all VH-1’s fault.
The next addition of the network’s ailing “Divas” series – which will likely feature Leslie Carter, Mandy Moore, and the Olsen Twins – will prove exactly what “Divas” does not promote: Women who play guitar will always kick more ass than those who simply sing and look pretty. They should have quit while they were ahead. After the extravaganza’s first incarnation featured actual, professional divas like Aretha, Diana, and Janet, VH-1 had to somewhat broaden the definition of “diva.” Left with C-list young’uns who weren’t around to see Madonna marry Sean Penn, their production probably didn’t inspire any female watching to do anything but switch to an old re-run of Moeesha. The absurd staying power of the Britney brand aside, it’s obvious that the divas are dying. Examples? The recent Josie and the Pussycats redux did not feature a D*Child-style girl group. Instead, a leather-clad Rachel Leigh Cook strummed chords on a black Les Paul. Pacific Northwest stalwarts Sleater-Kinney have finally begun to tear into the national media, achieving for the Riot Grrl movement what it could never muster in its mid-90s heyday: true respect of women who rock. So now that chicks with guitars are back, it’s only fair that The Runaways have their say. Their girl-on-girl rock groove pre-dated the post New-Wave spate of girl bands like the Go-Gos and The Bangles by half a decade. And Vicki Blue is out to prove it.
Edgeplay: A Film About the Runaways is an upcoming documentary that has been put together by Blue, the band’s former bassist. It mixes interviews, performances, and tour film together to tell the story of the girls who rocked back when, most notably young, nails-for-breakfast versions of Lita Ford and Joan Jett.
The Runaways weren’t the greatest band of all time. Their tunes suffered from crappy production, and sometimes just weren’t that good. But the attitude was always present, even when their public image was being molded and tortured by Kim Fowley, the svengali who was the Maurice Starr of the 1970s. It was his idea to have the girls perform in lingerie; but it was still Joan Jett who wrote “I Love Rock and Roll,” even if she did have to play it in her underpants. Conversely, when Britney tears her clothes off on M-TV, all she has is her tits and some backup dancers. She can’t smash her guitar, or strike a mean pose behind a big Fender bass. The Runaways may have been a packaged thrill just like Britney and her peeps, but Ms Spears’ll never stick a Marlboro in the neck of her Gibson.
The timing of Edgeplay is perfect. Lita Ford’s been on TV warning of Metal’s return for years, and it turns out she was right. Boy bands and divas can’t rule the stage forever. The triumphant return of the Go-Gos (with new material and not simply another greatest hits package) is in line with the current spate of 80s nostalgia, but their popularity also proves that distortion is finally back. Even Her Diva-Ness Madonna is playing her guitar on the current Drowned World tour. And into this mix comes Edgeplay to show little girls everywhere how fun it is being an 18 year-old girl with long bangs, leather pants, and a scowl that cuts glass.
And the best thing about the documentary? Angelina Jolie is nowhere near it.
JTL
Since bursting upon the scene in Hackers, a cinematic triumph from 1995 that also starred that guy who played Sick Boy in Trainspotting, Angelina Jolie has marked her territory in Hollywood. She also began pissing all over the public consciousness.
Where’s Charlize Theron when you need her? Here’s a girl who made a big splash with a hot nude scene (with James Spader in 1996’s 2 Days In The Valley), becoming all the rage in Hollywood almost overnight. Angie made a similar move, probably when that sequel to Hackers didn’t pan out. She starred in the HBO biopic of Gia Carangi, doffing her kit repeatedly (most hilariously in an early sequence involving a overacting fashion photographer. “Keep the fence,” he says. “Lose the clothes.” Snooze.) What separates Ms Theron from good ol’ Angie is that Charlize can actually act. I think in the version of Cider House Rules starring Jon Voight’s daughter, Candy pulls a shiv on Homer in that orchard. Thankfully, that version was left on the cutting room floor. Another good thing about Charlize, besides her normal, human-like lips? She doesn’t waste a lot of ink with bizarro statements about her freakish sex life. I mean, Angie vociferously denies sleeping with her brother out of the left side of her mouth, and then describes a typical day at the Billy Bob/Angie Circus out of the other. “If there was a safe way to drink his blood, I’d love to. We’ve thought about it. You lay in bed and you just want to bite holes in each other. It’s not about cutting yourself or some kind of weird thing — now it’s just, ‘I want to eat him.” This from the latest Rolling Stone, the one with the oh-so-perfect tagline ‘Angelina Jolie: Blood Sugar Sex Magic.’
Why must we endure this torture?
The really sad thing is that I can see Angie starring in Bad Reputation: The Joan Jett Story. Can’t you? Can’t you see those enormous Mick lips wrapped around a microphone, lip syncing to “Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yeah)”? Oh, the horror. I don’t know if such a film is in the works, but I hope that Ang isn’t a Glorious Noise reader, or I’ve just set the wheels in motion on the very thing that will send me to my grave.
But at least that grave hasn’t been bought, in advance, by me, for myself and my mate. That’s just another wacky occurrence in the humdrum life of Johnny Lee Miller’s ex-wife. I’ll just be over here eating orange food with Billy Bob.
(Aside to The Donnas: You can make a Joan Jett movie anytime you want.)
JTL
