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Joan Jett's Flashback (Blackheart), 13 covers and
nine originals recorded as early as 1979 and as late as 1993, looks
like a last gasp--the odds and ends of an honorable rock and roller
whose consistency has gotten boring. But from an early session with
two Sex Pistols to a Rock for Choice gig with L7, it sounds like
her best album ever. Jett's limited songwriting and fondness for
straight-ahead drummers and chords have always benefited from infusions
of outside material, even if her spirit appread to have flown by
1990's all-covers The Hit List. But the secret
here isn't the profusion of tracks from her mid-'80s prime. It's
that many of them--the censored Stones remake Star Star,
the early rap collaboration Black Leather, the casually homoerotic
Play With Me--were withheld as too raw, and that the the
two most recent, including the striking Activity Grrrl, match
their intensity.
Activity Grrrl invokes one reason Jett's feeling better these
days--the long overdue riot-grrrl punk typified by two even rawer
records, Bratmobile's Pottymouth and Bikini Kill's Pussy
Whipped (both Kill Rock Stars).
Admittedly, Bratmobile's tape-recorder-in-the-bedroom sound
may strike some as too cute to be so nasty. But their godmothers
in Bikini Kill are damned convincing, a first-rank hardcore band
whose rage just happens to be female. Guys who take pride in their
big dicks should probably seek entertainment elsewhere. The rest
of us still have shit to learn.
Fast Cuts: The three-CD Janis (Columbia)
is a smart, audiowise
set that not only gets Joplin's achievement right but helps us understand
it. Sue Foley's Without a Warning (Antone's)
has the sass, sweetness, and blues feeling
of the young Bonnie Raitt.
Playboy, Dec. 1993
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Nov. 1993 |
1994? 1994 |
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