* Joan Jett

FIT TO BE TIED: GREAT HITS BY JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS

(Mercury)

As the title mentions by omission, these aren't the greatest hits, just the great ones. And the first part of the title's nascent bondage imagery works well too, because what you come away with after listening to this disc is a sense of wonder about how such a tool could've become a minor deity in the riot-grrrl pantheon. Sure, the early Ramones-ette flair of "Bad Reputation" is a nice example of estrogen punk (though on those grounds it'd be nicer if this were a Poly Styrene best-of). But the album's next song is more indicative of the tone: the (Springsteen-penned) theme song from "Light of Day," that really bad movie where Jett played Michael J. Fox's sister. And now that I think about it, "I Love Rock N Roll" was one of the reasons why, coming to musical consciousness in the early '80s, I felt completely alienated by rock and roll and ended up listening to Roxanne Shanté instead. The same spirit of smug, self-referential, self-satisfied insularity pervades "I Hate Myself for Loving You" -- which I'm sure every Jett fan has screamed at her at least once -- as well as her absolutely maudlin covers of "Crimson and Clover" and "Everyday People" (the original version of which is now a car commercial).

-- Carly Carioli