Jett Breaks Sound Barrier

If an Iron Curtain could fall in Eastern Europe, there’s hope that the wall of corn dogs and cotton candy in Costa Mesa might some day tumble too.

Should the Orange County Fair’s bulwark against vital, relevant, unpredictable and artistically nourishing musical attractions ever come down, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts’ appearance Wednesday night may go down as the first crack in the fair’s dull, seldom-penetrated edifice of oldies acts (some classic, but more of them novelties and rehashes), kid-pop and second-echelon country talent.

Redolent of bikers and bondage in a shiny leather vest over bare, tattooed skin, jeans with chain dangling from her belt, Jett’s look alone made it clear that we weren’t in Kansas (or wherever the fair got this year’s “We’re in the Pink” theme from) any more.

For most of her hourlong early show, we were in an enchanting Punkaramaland of raw, throbbing chords and razory guitar fills accompanying a lead voice that was raspy yet clean and firm. Jett’s best songs reined in the breakneck speed of pure punk with the crunchy, more deliberate tempos of garage-rock.

At 37, Jett has been a tough-rocking presence on the scene since she was a 15-year-old member of the packaged, all-female, bad-girl Hollywood band, the Runaways. She commands a godmother’s respect among many in today’s generation of female rockers who are finally free to be aggressive and tough without being taken as an aberration from a formerly masculine rock norm.

Jett has collaborated recently with members of L7, Bikini Kill and Babes in Toyland, younger all-female garage-punk bands far removed from the wholesome traditions of county fairs. Yet, Jett made sense as a fair attraction.

Her punkette’s blond-dyed buzz cut the only variation from her trademark black, Jett was too busy smiling broadly to sneer much, and she played nearly every radio hit that most rock fans under 50 would remember. She balanced her tough-woman image with the enthusiasm and goodwill of a confirmed trouper as she barked at fans to sing along. In short, she was an ideal punk-rock spy in the house of corn dogs.

The chief concern about Jett playing the fair was that she might go native and turn in a tame, attenuated show with an oldies accent. She dispelled any such fears immediately with blistering renditions of her two best songs, “Bad Reputation” and “Cherry Bomb,” a holdover from the Runaways days that holds a place in Orange County punk history: Agent Orange based one of the first local punk classics, “Bloodstains,” on “Cherry Bomb” and its primitive, pummeling beat. (The Runaways played their first gig at a Huntington Beach house party, and Jett, now a New Yorker, alluded to her local history--”C’mon, this is my school ground, y’all, this is where I learned”--while trying to cajole a louder sing-along during a boisterous “Do You Wanna Touch Me? (Oh Yeah!).”

The opening lines of “Bad Reputation” could have been directed at the fair’s stodgy booking stance over the years: “I don’t give a damn about my bad reputation/You’re living in the past, it’s a new generation.”

And with “Cherry Bomb,” she hailed herself as “the fox you’ve been waiting for,” here to shake up the staid henhouse.

Jett knew where to draw the line for an audience that, of course, included not just her fans, but a mixed-age crowed with lots of curiosity seekers who may have just wanted to take a break from the animals, crafts, rides and calories. She didn’t cuss. But neither did she hide the punkish stickers on her white Gibson guitar. Only one of them, “Girls kick ass,” is even marginally printable here.

During a good opening stretch of nine songs, Jett and her three male Blackheart mates proved that the laws of garage-punk are as firm and unshakable as the laws of physics. Play it raw but cohesively, keep it lean and muscular, and deliver it with passionate attitude, and nothing can go wrong. A couple of new songs Jett introduced may not have been as initially catchy as her best-known stuff, but the honed attack held interest and gave them time to sink in as potential keepers.

Jett has built a good chunk of her career on savvy covers. It was a delight to hear her run through the Modern Lovers’ “Roadrunner,” a signal moment in the birth of alterna-rock, and a zooming pop-punk anthem take (patterned after Husker Du’s ‘80s version) of “Love Is All Around,” the theme from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”

Downshifting the tempo, Jett sang a jaunty, winking version of “Androgynous,” an ‘80s gem from the Replacements, whose singer, Paul Westerberg, has been her sometime songwriting collaborator. The androgynous-looking Jett dedicated this playful ditty envisioning a not-yet-dawned era of complete collapse of gender walls to “those of you who like to straddle and blur the lines a little bit.”

But Jett hasn’t been as consistent and single-minded a rocker as Westerberg, Husker Du’s Bob Mould, Patti Smith or many others in the punk-alternative elite. Her set deflated completely with the inflated power ballad, “Little Liar.” Instead of punk vibrancy, it sounded like something Jett could use to fit in on a nostalgic “First Women of Rock” tour packaging Jett with Heart and Pat Benatar.

Attitude and feel matter so much in garage-rock and punk that you can’t easily rekindle the spark after it has been lost. The rest of Jett’s set was an unremarkable run through of some of her biggest hits, including “I Love Rock N Roll.” Even a take on Iggy Pop and the Stooges’ garage-punk classic, “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” was lethargic. Jett tried to enliven it by pointing up the song’s kinkier bondage implications with some twirling of microphone cord, but the libido- and neurosis-driven, heedless catharsis of the original was so far missing that Jett started cracking up as she sang it.

But the very notion of nuggets from the vaults of punk-fired rock resounding at the Orange County Fair was downright revolutionary. Jett made most of them sizzle; let’s hope the spark she lit here continues to burn.