Click here for a slide show of Jett and her fans at Pacific!

I stand by my praise of Joan Jett in my guide to Pacific Amphitheatre’s summer season: She is a forebear worthy of the Hall of Fame, a crucial figure in the development of women in (hard, punk) rock and a fairy godmother to the small but influential riot grrrl scene of the ’90s. Her time will come, hopefully long before they get round to considering Courtney Love’s merits.

But Thursday night, before a few thousand faithful devotees and OC Fair lookie-loos, Jett did not deliver a Hall of Fame performance, only a very good one.

Much of Jett’s power comes from her playing her raw power-punk VERY LOUDLY, lest the basic technique on display start to seem anemic –- something the heavier hitters in this Pac Amp run (from Judas Priest to the Steve Miller Band) compensate for with pro-grade skills. So to have Jett and her trusty Blackhearts muted by Pacific’s strictly imposed sound limitations automatically sapped more than a little strength out of them. It seemed to sanitize the set, as if this were a Tonight Show taping.

It also didn’t help that a none-too-bright house mixer decided to cut the PA before she was done with her main set –- thus almost all of “Crimson and Clover,” her best remake and one of the strongest songs of the night, was played so that only the first 20 rows or so could actually hear it. Now I know how the Blackhearts would sound in my garage, but talk about a momentum-killer.

As if Joan needed more of those -– she had provided plenty of her own by needlessly overdoing it on material from her admirable 2006 effort Sinner.

That disc is a little gem, a fine addition to Jett’s often undervalued catalog that reasserted her vitality. When it arrived, a dozen years after her previous proper album (1994’s Pure and Simple), Sinner held appeal not only because it reminded what a fierce rocker Jett has never stopped being but more so because it found her opening up about her sexuality while confronting society’s attitudes toward Queer Nation, among other personal/political matters. It exposed a frank nakedness her earlier records rarely dared.

But that was three years ago, and Jett has promoted it well, including via a trip on Warped Tour and at a memorably storming show at the Grove of Anaheim, at which former Runaways vocalist Cherie Curie turned up for “Cherry Bomb.” (No replay of that at Pacific, though Jett did dust off some other faves from the proto-Donnas of the mid-’70s, including “I Love Playin’ with Fire,” “School Days” and the first song she ever wrote in her bedroom, “You Drive Me Wild.”)

Jett mostly selected wisely from Sinner Thursday night: the tabloid-blasting “Five,” co-written with Bikini Kill/Le Tigre mastermind Kathleen Hanna, is a ripping winner, while the darker grind of “Fetish” has become a staple with her crowd. In my immediate vicinity that included colorful lesbians and balding dudes in golf shirts, the redheaded rockabilly chick in skin-tight leggings and high heels in front of me (who quickly caught Joan’s eye during “Do You Wanna Touch Me?”) and the fannypack grandma acting out every chorus behind her.

Not every newer choice worked so well, however. “Change the World” has good intentions but no backbone. And her redo of the Replacements’ “Androgynous” is really lacking -– she grabs hold of its as-I-am empowerment with such heavy hands, it obliterates the bittersweet slink and wry charm that her friend Paul Westerberg originally brought to the song. Melissa Etheridge fresh out of the closet was less obvious.

Worse, when you place those songs back-to-back –- and just after the joyful release of “Bad Reputation” and Springsteen’s “Light of Day” and all those yeah-oh-yeah’s of “Do You Wanna Touch Me?” (“Man, those are some great lyrics,” says the guy behind me) -– well, then they become a buzzkill.

What was insulting, though, was how Jett plugged Sinner as a “new album,” even pointing out that the cover of Sweet’s “A.C.D.C.” is its first single. Now was the not the time to hawk an album already purchased by anyone who was ever gonna care. Especially with longtime collaborator Kenny Laguna (looking like Martin Scorsese) sitting in on keyboards, now was the time to storm through two hours (not 90 minutes) of rock ’n’ roll both rare and revered with a forcefulness to suggest Jett has some of the genitalia of her male counterparts, so to speak.

Instead, I noticed a swagger grown all too polite and only felt her fury in flashes -– during the roar of “Love Is Pain” for sure but mostly in her encore, which segued nonstop from “A.C.D.C.” into the ’50s staple “Real Wild One” (hers has a hint of “Beat on the Brat” in it) and then a rousing finish with Sly & the Family Stone’s “Everyday People.”

There are so many other surprises to have resurrected from the glorious results of her misspent youth, as she put it in a 1984 album title. As it was, to have merely rehashed a kinda tired three-year-old show came off a lot like Jett’s diet: meatless.

Main set: (Intro music: Blitzkrieg Bop) / Bad Reputation / Cherry Bomb / Light of Day > Do You Wanna Touch Me? / Change the World / Androgynous / You Drive Me Wild / Five / Love Is Pain / I Love Playin’ with Fire / Naked / Love Is All Around (The Mary Tyler Moore Theme) / School Days / Fetish > I Love Rock ’n’ Roll / Crimson and Clover / I Hate Myself for Loving You
Encore: A.C.D.C. > Real Wild One > Everyday People

Photos by Rose Palmisano, The Orange County Register. Click here for more!

Previously at Pacific:

• Smokey Robinson proves he’s still got it
• Rick Springfield’s power-pop strong as ever
• Duran Duran struggles to be seen and heard
• Heart sticks to the classics to rock season kickoff
• Which Pacific Amphitheatre shows are worth the money?

Posted in: Concert Reviews • Bikini Kill • Bruce Springsteen • Joan Jett and the Blackhearts • Le Tigre • Melissa Etheridge • Sly & the Family Stone • the Replacements • the Runaways |

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