On March 20, 1982, Joan Jett and the Blackheart’s “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” hit number one on Billboard’s pop chart. After the breakup of Jett’s band The Runaways, she previously had a modest hit from her first post-Runaways album Bad Reputation (1980) with a cover of Lesley Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me.” But the title track of her second album, I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll, gave Joan Jett & the Blackhearts one of the all-time classic songs about rock music.
A British group named the Arrows had released “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” in 1975, but the song was not a hit in the U.S. Jett heard the song when she was touring with the Runaways, so years later she recorded her own version, taking it to the top of the U.S. charts. By then, the Arrows had disbanded.
But of course, nobody comes close to the rock ‘n’ roll talents and attitude of Joan Jett, who still performs and heads her own record label, Blackheart Records. Rock on.
What is your favorite Joan Jett song? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Happy Daylight Savings Time! As you set your clocks an hour ahead, you might consider the history of the day as well as an appropriate song. On February 9, 1942, a law passed by Congress pushed ahead all U.S. clocks by one hour for the upcoming years. President Franklin Roosevelt advocated the year-round Daylight Savings Time, which was called “war time,” as a way to save fuel for the Allied war efforts. The law remained in effect until September 30, 1945 when Congress repealed it. A similar national law that turned back the clocks for seven months of the year had been in effect during World War I. But after both World War I and after World War II, the wars’ ends meant that states could once again regulate their own standard times.
Eventually, in 1966, Congress passed the Uniform Time Act imposing a uniform standard for states to follow Daylight Savings Time, although allowing state legislatures to vote for an exemption. In the 1970s and 1980s Congress made additional changes to the law, including setting the time and date for when Daylight Savings Time begins. A 2005 law extended the Daylight Savings Time ending date from October to November, so now Daylight Savings Time begins at 2:00 a.m. on the second Sunday of March and ends at 2:00 a.m. on the first Sunday of November.
An appropriate song for Daylight Savings Time is the 1967 release “Time Has Come Today” by the Chambers Brothers.
The song has been covered by a number of people, including Joan Jett, the Ramones, and Steve Earle (with Sheryl Crow). The song seems to be loved by some great film directors. Hal Ashby used it in a key scene in Coming Home (1978); Brian De Palma used it in Casualties of War (1989); Oliver Stone used it in The Doors (1991); and Spike Lee used it in Crooklyn (1991). The song appears in several other films too, including Remember the Titans (2000), The Zodiac (2006) and many others according to Wikipedia.
In 2012, though, the use of the song was back in the news. Lester Chambers, the lead singer of the Chambers Brothers reached out to fans because he and the band often did not receive royalties for the use of their songs. Chambers explained that he is living on $1,200 a month and relying upon money from a musician’s charity when all he wants is what is rightly his. The campaign has attracted the support of Yoko Ono and others.
The law can change the clock, but can it turn back time to give justice to Lester Chambers? March 2013 Update: Through help from Sweet Relief Musicians Fund, Reddit, Kickstarter and attention through various media outlets, Lester Chambers — who had faced homelessness and health issues — began doing better and once again making music. He survived when someone attacked him during a performance in 2013 after he dedicated a song to Trayvon Martin. In 2014, Chambers was playing with Lester Chambers and the Mud Stompers. As of 2023, he continues to perform and was performing with Moonalice.
What do you think if Daylight Savings Time? What do you think of Lester Chambers’s campaign? Leave your two cents in the comments.
On March 20, 1982, Joan Jett and the Blackheart’s “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” hit number one on Billboard’s pop chart. After the breakup of Jett’s band The Runaways, she previously had a modest hit from her first post-Runaways album Bad Reputation (1980) with a cover of Lesley Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me.” But the title track of her second album, I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll, gave Joan Jett & the Blackhearts one of the all-time classic songs about rock music.
