March 1997

Joan Jett is rock. There's no denying it. The '97 version may still be the queen of the cover tune (more of that later), but she's cropped the black tresses and bleached away; the end result is a look that is equal parts Annie Lennox and Billie Joe Green Day.

She's so lean that you want to pull her aside and ask her if she's eating properly, but those triceps fairly ripple. Out front of her black-leather- clad hard-rocking combo (who all seemed to be named Tommy), Jett's totally watchable -- every sneer and snarl and trademark "yow" and whiplash guitar turn. And she's still big on living out the role of the punky elder sister who guarded her record collection as though it were Fort Knox or the Shroud of Bloody Turin. Or maybe she's the loner from high school with "the reputation," who grew up, got famous, and can now flip the world the middle finger.

Whatever. But I've got to wonder how she feels about her audience these days: the bald spots are prominent, as are the paunches and corporate ponytails. Jett didn't seem to mind, though, as she not so much played her guitar as fondled and dry-humped it, rolling her eyes to the ceiling orgasmically. Maybe she just couldn't see beyond the first row.

Age hasn't affected her pop-metal stomping; tonight she was road testing a brace of new tunes (titles such as "Fetish," "Kiss on the Mouth" and "Naked" suggest Jett's going all adult on us), but she found the time and energy to rip-and-tear through her faves. Naturally, Iggy Pop renditions featured prominently: "I Wanna Be Your Dog" closed the set proper. The Danbury crowd yanked her back for an encore, and moments later she delivered "Wild Child" as her parting shot.

Jett put a punkish spin on "Crimson and Clover," transformed Paul Westerberg's "Androgynous" into a Thursday night singalong, revealed her roots (and age) by her 100-mile-an-hour savaging of the theme to the Mary Tyler Moore Show, virtually splintered the stage during a Glitter Band shout-and-respond revelry, and then somehow found the time to serve up her own "Light of Day," "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" (natch) and (surprisingly) "Cherry Bomb."

Sure, Joan Jett's cartoonish and maybe she shouldn't be doing this kind of noisy thang at her age, but she is rock 'n' roll incarnate, primal, earthy and essential. If one ever needed evidence, it was there on exhibit, tonight in Danbury's Tuxedo Junction.