Journalist, Author & Syndicated Columnist
An avid traveler, Piper Perabo credits her trips for getting her involved with the International Rescue Committee. “I was working in Istanbul and there were so many Syrian refugees there,” she says. “Until then, it hadn’t hit me how far many of them had walked with their families to try to find safety and work. That was an awakening for me.”
The only thing coy about Joan Jett Saturday night at the Cabaret Metro was the peekaboo lace catsuit she wore. With a guitar slung low on her hips and a sly sneer spread over her lips, Jett out-machoed the male guitarists she grew up emulating and took her fans through a gritty, 85-minute rock ‘n’ roll odyssey, where sweat and vitality were as essential to the show as a solid riff.
Joan Jett has been a part of the rock ‘n’ roll vocabulary for so long, it’s easy to forget she is just 32. She has been neither a trend-setter nor a follower in her 17-year music career. Even when critics dismissed her as a novelty, one-trick pony or, perhaps worst yet, “girl singer,” the raspy-voiced musician persevered and produced a string of anthemic records that hailed the primal joys of adolescence with rebellious vocal sneers.
“There haven’t been as many screamers at our shows as in the past,” said bassist John Taylor, one of the heartthrobs in the British pop band Duran Duran. “It’s really been kind of nice because not only do we have newer, older fans, but we still have a lot of our fans from seven years ago. It’s like we’ve grown up together.”