Hey all:

I recieved this email from Debbie @ SoundCheck Magazine. Its a letter from Joan Jett that she wrote in reponse to the WOMEN IN ROCK special in a past issue of Rolling Stone.

Rock!

xoxo, l.drooby >^.^<

_____________________________________________________________________

An open letter to Rolling Stone by Joan Jett

  I tried to find some cleverly worded way to express my disgust with your
"Women in Rock" issue, but what I have to say is really quite simple: You
guys are completely retarded.

By Rolling Stone standards, Rock is no longer a style of music but a trendy
costume to
be whipped up by expensive stylists and slapped onto the latest pop tart
barbie doll. Give a girl some tight pants and a spiky bracelet and POOF! She
ROCKS!

Your poor choice of cover girls and featured artists brings to mind the
Sports Illustrated swimsuit editions. There is nothing necessarily wrong
with the breast-baring models inside...but we all understand that they have
NOTHING TO DO WITH SPORTS--Which just might be offensive to women who are
interested in sports or who might even be (gasp) real athletes.

Yes, Britney has a talented stylist and yes, somebody gave Shakira a Guns &
Roses t-shirt to wear...but they ARE NOT NOW NOR WILL THEY EVER BE ROCK.

Maybe it's naive of me to expect any glimmer of rock'n'roll credibility OR
respect for women from a magazine whose cover shot is regularly a naked
underweight actress. The thing is, I AM a woman musician with a rock band,
and as we all are, I am STARVED for any little crumb of recognition that real
women rockers might be thrown. So like a sucker I find myself short another
five bucks...and pissed enough to write my first letter to an editor. Avril
Lavigne gets some studded accessories from Hot Topic so now she's "upholding
the brazen tradition of teenage outrage"???!! Are you SERIOUS? And could
someone please explain to me why people keep insisting on referring to PINK
as rock? Wasn't she doing the white girl hip hop thing a minute ago? Yeah,
she performed on the Aerosmith tribute show --big deal..she was on the Janet
Jackson tribute show just before that--Whatever's trendy. WHO CARES. She's a
Spice Girl reject...but I digress.

Jewel and Mandy friggin' Moore have full page features as Rock
Icons...Meanwhile Joan Jett gets one line. ONE LINE. Joan Jett & the
Blackhearts, who have never stopped touring, recently did 10 days in the
Middle East playing for the troops stationed in Afghanistan. In AFGHANISTAN,
Joan would come onstage wearing a birkha, which she ripped off and stomped
on before blazing through the purest and nastiest rock show ANYWHERE. But
even in the RS WOMEN IN ROCK issue, a story like that gets ONE SENTENCE on
the bottom of the last page of Random Notes.

Britney's Rock credentials? Well, she butchers the song "I Love Rock'n'Roll"
on her latest record, and when asked about it the genius replies "Well, I've
always loved Pat Benatar." And SHE is your Rock issue cover girl?? You
should be REALLY embarrassed.

Sleater Kinney was the only rock group listed on the cover...and they got
only half a page. Ashanti, the r&b back up singer who can't seem to do
anything without "featuring Jah Rule," has two pages.

What about the Donnas? The Yeah Yeah Yeahs? The Distillers? A mag like RS
has the power to shine important light on groups like these-- instead they
are afterthoughts, and that valuable spotlight is wasted on the same
overexposed pop princesses WHO HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH ROCK.

In your own letter from the editor you have the hypocritical balls to say
"rock radio won't touch female artists, while the pop factory keeps churning
out soundalike clones, and ambitious musicians with something to say find
themselves left out in the cold."

The pages that follow those words are a blatant display that Rolling Stone
magazine is happily working for the factory now too.

If the issue had been called "Women in Music"...or maybe "Some Cute Girls
with Top 10 Records out Right Now"..I would have no beef with it. Corny as
it may sound, ROCK is something which is still meaningful and even sacred to
some of us. Use the word "rock" in bold letters next to a picture of Britney
Fucking Spears, and you're turning your whole publication into a joke...and
an offensive joke at that.

-Joan Jett