JET'S "PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS"
SHOWS CLASSIC ROCK IS ALIVE, WELL, AND NEW

I've just gotta take a momentary break from the media frenzy over what's shaping up to be yet another depressing and wrong-headed political-sexual witch hunt, and focus on something uplifting.

I've been seeing their t-shirts on the kids here and there for a couple of years now, at one point even mistaking the band's logo for having something to do with Joan Jett--yeah, yeah, I'm getting old and out of touch. I even heard, and liked to some extent, their hit tune from a couple of years back, the one riffing on that Iggy Pop song used in the film Trainspotting. Of course, I've really had no idea who they are or what they're about until earlier this evening when I saw them play their new single on Leno. Needless to say, I really dug what I saw. Jet fucking rocks.

According to this Wikipedia article, these Australian lads are something of a classic rock revivalist band, heavily relying on the Beatles and the Stones, but also treating the entire classic rock genre as their own little tool box, successfully merging the signature sounds of artists as diverse as the Who and T. Rex--"to the sound of old T-Rex - who's next?" Along with that, says the article, has come a pounding from rock critics, who have blasted Jet for, I guess, daring to play in an old style--that is, they appear to be too derivative for serious music guys who know more about music than me. I swear to god, if critics today were writing about Beethoven when he was composing, they'd be blasting him for deciding to work in the Viennese classical style, which had been around for decades beforehand; "you're ripping off Mozart," they'd exclaim. Well, fuck 'em. The problem with classic rock is that so-called classic rock stations play the same 250 or so songs ad nauseam: the genre itself still has buttloads of unexplored territory.

And kids today know that. Jet is extraordinarily popular, I understand, with the teen and twenty-something set. It's too damned bad that the American music industry appears to share the critics' view on classic rock, which is probably why we have to import bands like Jet and the Vines from overseas, instead of looking to the countless good bands here in the States doing the same kind of material.

Anyway, here's a link to the video for Jet's "Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is." Check it out, 'cause it's great.


Classic rock gets a much needed shot in the arm.

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