Take out your compass and multicolored pencils, resort back to basic algebra, no Excel or Power Point programs are needed, we are making your old school pie-chart today. Wheel the circle, and start breaking off sections, 27.22% for the first one, label it Oasis and color it orange, a nice shade of cheddar. A slightly smaller section about 6.11% and using a touch of pink label it Joan Jett. Next to that how about a 19.72% of black shading for AC/DC. Tattoo the next section blue for the Rolling Stones while making it 13.61% of this pie. Leave the next section white at about 22.5% of the chart and label it Beatles (or draw a Green apple there if you are feeling artsy). You should have about 10.84% of your spiffy chart left and here I will leave it up to the creator, you can break this down into smaller quadrants or you can simply label it “All Other Classic Rock such as Led Zeppelin, The Faces, Iggy Pop, The Kinks etc…etc…etc…” Voila! There it is…Jet’s live show.
Notice that not one section of that chart says “Original” or “Exciting”? The early fall show at Irving Plaza in NYC highlighted all of Jet’s classic rock influences but it also showed how unoriginally dull they are. It’s as if Jet sat around listening to four different 70’s rock hits, took a riff from one, a beat from another, a hook from a third, and their fashion style from the fourth. Live it came off utterly cheesy. The bands largest influence on this night was sadly Oasis, who they have toured with and, ugh such a pity, stolen from. Poorly ripping off a bunch of convicted thieves is no way to get ahead.
While some in the audience soaked it up as simple giddy fun, others were clearly annoyed by Jet’s lack of showmanship and overall mediocre playing. All classic rock clichés came out, as did a few lighters during “Look What You’ve Done.” The groups other hit songs like “Cold Hard Bitch” and “Are You Gonna Be My Girl” were played without energy from the band and the new tunes off the up coming Shine On received a tepid crowd reaction. This mash-up bar cover band isn’t going to change the world, or Rock N’ Roll, but at least they could put some effort into it. However, then again they were given no legitimate reason to, as there were a lot of pretty young things happy to scream out the words to songs that would’ve given their parents a jilting case of deja vu.
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