Classic or dud : Jane's Addiction

For some reason the first Lollapalooza did not come to Philadelphia. Neither did the second. The third in '93, where RATM stood there naked in protest, was held in the JFK parking lot (was this after they tore JFK down?).

i wonder if i wrote about it in my diary -- probably? i found a video of the performance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3zcsbNWUbI

the metal boys being completely freaked out and disturbed by the androgyny, the genderfuck, the insect quality of Perry's voice.

Were Jane's really seen as more androgynous than the glammy pop-metal bands of the late 80s? That seems a little surprising. Or did you mean compared to the heavier thrash bands?

Speaking of those weird confluence shows, the forgotten two-off shows (Bay Area and SoCal) that essentially was the functioning bridge between English/European festival culture and Lollapalooza and everything in its wake was 1990's A Gathering of the Tribes, which I didn't go to but I should have done. So basically if you want to consider ground zero, you have to thank Ian Astbury!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Gathering_of_the_Tribes

I'm trying to remember what the metallers *did* like... they expressed disdain for the pop hair-metal bands like Poison and Crue, because those were ~for girls~. They liked Metallica and Motorhead, and got as far into hair metal as GNR. While my girlfriend and I liked Hanoi Rocks and glam rock shit like the Dogs D'Amour, and GNR was as far into metal as I really went? (OK, I had a few Motorhead tapes cause of the Hawkwind connection.) I seem to remember that these upstate NY cis-boy metallers were... OK with the sound of Hanoi Rocks (though they thought Michael Monroe looked stupid) because Hanoi's sound nodded towards Aerosmith and the Stones, who were all considered very classic, but Jane's Addiction was definitely too far into "weird" for them.

Were Jane's really seen as more androgynous than the glammy pop-metal bands of the late 80s?
IDK but they were a different type of androgynous iirc -- not female-via-male-gaze (big hair/makeup) but more general androgyny, genderlessness. More freaky? At least that is what I thought at the time.

Freaky def makes sense.

x-post ha! yeah, The Cult were one of those cusp-y bands who operated at the confluence of glam-goth and metal. Forgot about them entirely. They are responsible for so much!

My sisX0r and I went to that show, as a pair of kinda goth, kinda queer, kinda psychdronenoise fuckups, expecting to see our scene in attendence. And ran into this wall of Frat Boy Types...Janes were great but the audience composition had definitely changed.

I had this experience in 1990 going to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who I'd seen only the previous year playing a free outdoor show at Rutgers University, supposedly opening for Killing Joke (though we didn't stick around for that) — the crowd was a mix of all types of people and seemed very punk/freak-friendly, everyone having a good time sweating together on the grass. Less than 12 months later, just after Mother's Milk came out, I saw them at the Ritz on 54th Street in New York and the pit was a roiling frat-goon mass full of shirtless bros in Duke caps who thought the whole point was to punch people in the head and laugh as they fell. It was the strongest feeling of "this is no longer my scene" I have ever felt.

Yeah, freaky, too weird, unsettling - in a way that wasn't like hair metal was recognisable as kind of pantomime dame drag?

In Seattle there were a LOT of grunge/glam/metal crossover bands, just very few that were notable outside of city limits.

Soundgarden was opening for Guns N Roses on the Use Your Illusion tour around the time Grunge was breaking.

And hating it. From Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge by Mark Yarm.

Susan Silver: After I got the call about the Guns N' Roses tour, I went to where [Soundgarden] were, at Stuart Hallerman's studio, Avast! I remember walking in, I had a box of T-shirts, some new designs. And I was so excited. Oh, my God, I was so excited: "Hey, guys! I have something to tell you! We got an offer today...to go...on tour...WITH GUNS N' ROSES!"

They didn't say a word. After about 30 seconds - it felt like an eternity - one of them said, "What's in the box?"

the same year we saw Sisters of Mercy / Public Enemy / Gang of Four

It was genuinely amazing, like, every group was in top form and played fantastic sets. But the audience had the strangest vibe I have ever experienced.

tour coordinators definitely ahead of their time on that one

Interesting to hear these reminiscences about the place and importance of Jane's in youth culture at the time. I was a few years too young (9-12 from 88-91) and don't think I knew anyone who was a fan, even later on in the 90s alt-rock heyday. I was aware of them, though, and just thought of them as a metal band because MuchMusic played them on their metal show: they were a little too weird for me to really get as a preteen (although I didn't think of them as feminine at all); it was afterwards that I got into their albums and realized the creativity of what they were doing and saw their influence in so much of the alternative rock I had listened to.

It's funny, because I just went and listened to that first Janes album and found the offending track - I'm pretty sure it was Whores. They couldn't tell if Perry was a boy or a girl through the first song, but the minute he started screaming "I'm a whorrrrre, goddamn muthafucka, gimmee some morrrrre!!!" it didn't matter how heavy or gnarly the riffage was, they were like "this is f*gg*t shit, get it off!" - which, interestingly enough, was a reaction they had to the Velvets (but not necessarily the Stooges?) I could never figure out what her friends were gonna go for or not.

interesting but not surprising that "I'm a whore" caused offense but casually dropping n-bombs didn't even merit a raised eyebrow; I had heard "Mountain Song"/Nothing's Shocking first so when I went back to that album I had very strong "fuck this fucking band" reaction that lasted for about a year (basically, until I heard the second half of Ritual and thought "okay, they've clearly evolved and I don't feel like I hate myself for liking them anymore")

Were Jane's really seen as more androgynous than the glammy pop-metal bands of the late 80s? That seems a little surprising. Or did you mean compared to the heavier thrash bands?

― Feel a million filaments (Sund4r), Monday, August 3, 2020 10:34 AM (forty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think definitely more than other glam hair bands...I mean they wore corsets and shit. They would make out with each other! Also Perry was p upfront about having worked as a prostitute.

Jane's seemed more androgynous than hair metalers at the time because I never got the sense that the hair guys "meant it"---like Poison was dressed that way to shock, it seemed to me, not because they felt gender fluid. But I dunno.

also Jane's lyrics gave prominence to women characters without just sexualizing them, even though the iconography of the records made it clear that sex was part of what was going on. like again side 2 of Ritual, or "Jane Says", or even "Been Caught Stealing": it's "his girl" but she's one of the gang, not just an object of attraction. I dunno this made an impression on me at the time even.

LL that video is great

Also Perry was p upfront about having worked as a prostitute.

Didn't know this was a true story.

Appreciate the context. Euler's point about lyrics is a good one.

Tbh, I only ever listened to NS/RdlH, although I listened a lot. Never heard this first album before.

Completely understand, DJP, like we've discussed this before around Christian Death. (And I can relate, because I did have the similar needle-scratch moment around GNR's use of 'f*gg*t'.) And this is part of what made that Upstate NY Sisters/PE show so fraught - that a bunch of kids who had no problem with n-words in Janes or Christian Death, in fact found those forbidden words to be *part* of the transgressive appeal - were suddenly face to face with Public Enemy, telling them that shit was extremely Not OK.

And it wasn't the word "whore" that raised the reaction - lots of metal songs had profanity and shit talk about sex workers. It was that Perry aligned himself with women, with gay sex workers, he was the titular "whore" rather than a cis male utilising a sex worker's services. That Perry did come across as genderfluid and queer - and that really *was* shocking, rather than hair metallers dressing like that "to shock" and not being shocking at all.

(I just want to make clear, that I was at that time, in 1989, in both a lesbian relationship and also in a quasi-gay relationship with a gay man who almost exclusively dated butch lesbians. 1989 was like that, OK, that was my life then. Jane's made sense to me. And the "this is music for f*gg*ts" comment was quite amusing in context, like, yes, my metal dudes, you are in a house full of gay people. What did you expect to hear, but gay music?)

Haha, you can tell I've just read Glitter Up The Dark last week. Wonder if I should start/revive a thread for that?

I think a better point of comparison among the grunge bands, was the way that people like Jane's actually opened up a space for Kurt Cobain to be a bisexual, dress-wearing, Riot Grrrl-repping dude who went on Headbangers Ball in an actual ballgown and became a superstar while doing it. Kurt was *read* as a lot more cis, albeit a pretty-boy, and known for being in a heterosexual marriage so that his bisexuality was erased, but I think Farrell did open up that space for someone like Cobain to go through?

Did Cobain have any same-sex partners? I hadn't thought there was evidence of that?

I think that's true, whether Kurt would have got there anyway is something we'll never know (I think maybe?) I was just saying the other day that there's just a lot less sex in grunge in general, let alone anything that came out of it, there's a dark seedy glamour about Jane's that no one else ever came close to. There's sex in Nirvana but it's crowded out by a lot of other stuff.

Also want to echo Ned's post, the general sense that Jane's themselves still feel like this blueprint for a future of rock that never happened and Nirvana were probably the biggest reason why it didn't, coupled with maybe the sense that Jane's had created something and simultaneously taken it as far as anyone could. Like, who else could have pulled off something like Ritual?

xp: No, it doesn't look like he did. I just went hunting for supporting evidence on that as well, because I didn't recall having heard anything. He discussed same-sex attraction though.

https://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/people/2013/10/24/rediscovered-interview-reveals-kurt-cobain-thought-he-was-gay

Orientation is about attraction, and not neccessarily about 'action'? Cobain said repeatedly he was attracted to dudes, that's enough for me. Policing people's orientations and identities like that and demanding 'evidence', especially frpm the dead, is considered kinda old-fashioned these days. ::shrugs::

One problem I sometimes have with hedonism as subversion is that it so often defaults sexist and gross. So Jane's Addiction having, say, go-go dancers or strippers writhing around on stage to me is really no different than Motley Crue or whomever doing it, and bands like Soundgarden, despite poking fun at that scene with songs like "Big Dumb Sex," still defaulted macho. I've never heard anything about Cobain being anything but heterosexual, but he did seem to recognize that stuff as problematic, which is why he went to such relative lengths to feminize or undercut that macho element to Nirvana's music. (Reminds me of Elliott Smith choosing the name Elliott because "Steve" just sounded like such a jock name.) Anyway, I can totally imagine Jane's Addiction embracing the sex/drugs/rock Sunset Strip scene, to the extent that I can also easily imagine them hanging with the likes of Motley Crue for all the expected (wrong) reasons. That could be perhaps why I dismissed JA as poseurs at the time.

I think I missed the generational bus with these guys. I remember hearing 'Jane Says' and 'Been Caught Stealing' on the radio as a tween in the late 90s, and both struck me as okay singles but way too jolly and extroverted compared to Nirvana and their post-grunge imitators, whom I obviously worshipped at the time. I listened to Ritual de lo habitual a few years later after coming across a glowing retrospective review (on AMG, if memory serves) and I can't say any of it clicked with me, probably because I've never been drawn to the 'transgressive sexiness' axis of post-1970s rock. Anyway, I'm slightly baffled by the recurrent use of 'dark' to describe their sound upthread.

My never-written senior dissertation on how the way for the grunge explosion was paved by Jane's, The Pixies, and Living Colour would have spent some time on the presentation link between the pansexual hedonism of Jane's and Cobain's "fuck it, I am wearing a dress today" insouciance.

the presentation link between the pansexual hedonism of Jane's and Cobain's "fuck it, I am wearing a dress today" insouciance

I hope this dissertation would also have included a mention of Living Colour releasing a single with the chorus "I ain't no glamour boy - I'm fierce!"

Orientation is about attraction, and not neccessarily about 'action'? Cobain said repeatedly he was attracted to dudes, that's enough for me. Policing people's orientations and identities like that and demanding 'evidence', especially frpm the dead, is considered kinda old-fashioned these days. ::shrugs::

― Branwell with an N, Monday, August 3, 2020 4:24 PM (twenty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Agreed. To be clear, I was simply responding to what Sund4r was asking about.

I've never heard anything about Cobain being anything but heterosexual, but he did seem to recognize that stuff as problematic, which is why he went to such relative lengths to feminize or undercut that macho element to Nirvana's music.

This is mostly what I get from the Advocate piece upthread.

Although I never experimented with it, I had a gay friend, and then my mother wouldn’t allow me to be friends with him anymore, because she’s homophobic. It was real devastating because finally I found a male friend who I actually hugged and was affectionate too, and we talked about a lot of things. I couldn’t hang out with him anymore...

I've always wanted male friends that I could be real intimate with and talk about important things with and be as affectionate with that person as I would be with a girl. Throughout my life, I've always been really close with girls and made friends with girls. And I've always been a really sickly, feminine person anyhow, so I thought I was gay for a while because I didn't find any of the girls in my high school attractive at all. They had really awful haircuts and fucked-up attitudes. So I thought I would try to be gay for a while, but I'm just more sexually attracted to women

Josh's take is a weird one on the LA underground scene which was still very SST-adjacent, eg Perry (as singer of PSI-COM) had opened up for Sonic Youth at Gila Monster Jamboree in what is the Mojave Desert (with The Meat Puppets & Redd Kross), had been featured on an early SubPop zine/compilation cassette, etc.

Early Jane's was less a part of the Sunset scene (Lingerie excepting) and more a part of the downtown scene (Al's Bar, HK Cafe, Scream) which was a world away from that universe. Curious if Underrated Aerosmith or Jay Babcock are lurking this thread as I believe they may have been drifting adjacent to this crowd (and also have sharper memories than I).

Living Colour coded as pansexual to me already from the first album, with "Glamour Boys" and the Mick Jagger connection (who in the late 80s was (still?) considered pretty sexually fluid). Even in the 80s all the colo(u)r they used signified...something. The second album continued with that, "Under Cover of Darkness" especially: "I like to touch your skin even if it is a sin". And then the third album had "Bi", which in retrospect sounds a bit judgmental to me but still raised the subject.

My take is only my take, and as often is the case, not necessarily accurate, esp. re: the LA scene. But at the time that's just the vibe I got from Jane's Addiction every time I tried to listen to them. Like I said, the only people I knew who listened to them at their peak were bro-types, and I never thought of the band as any different than I thought of the Chili Peppers. Just shallow party-down (on your pussy) dudes that wore socks on their dicks, or the (nothing's) shocking equivalent. Just seeing Dave Navarro end up the stripper-dating where's-my-shirt shredder pretty metal guy and Perry become the corporate mascot of Lollapalooza Inc. sort of bore that out in my mind. Again, just imo. I absolutely recognize that this band meant a lot to a lot of people. One of my best friends regales me with "Perry" stories all the time, and I more or less tell him the same thing, that I must have just been on a totally different wavelength.

(I should say I always loved the JA rhythm section. I played drums and loved watching Perkins play.)

I don’t think Janes had strippers/go-go dancers in their videos(?) I’m not a fan myself, but I went to h.s. from the Sunset Strip, and the goth-adjacent kids who were into Janes definitely wouldn’t have touched Motley Crue with, er, a 10-ft. pole.

I was just watching LL's video upthread, and there are definitely two bikini clad women writhing and simulating various sexual acts. A very Crue thing to do.

It was part of their live show, I think?

2011 Jane's clip: https://youtu.be/4qmrM-CSUr8

Porno for Pyros in 93: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osSOEH8EVZ4

NSFW obv
xp

(*far from the Sunset Strip)

Yeah, but their MTB videos back in the day? I’m not arguing they don’t have that gross machismo quality, I’m just not sure it was so detectable back when those first two albums were out.

*MTV (lol)

I didn’t realize it at the time but I was responding to their rhythm section too, when I liked them as a teen. They were HEAVY but not (I thought) quite as gross or scary/unapproachable as other heavy bands whose music I could access for one penny through Columbia House. Lol. After that summer idk if I ever regularly listened to them again. Certainly haven’t in probably 15-20 yrs?

Also this isn’t related to Lolla but the teen dance club I went to 89-91 used to play “Mountain Song” and all I remember was how loud it was and the pause before “coming down the mountaaaaain” everyone always recognized the song right away, it was one song that always brought the boys off the sidelines and girls could dance without being stared at/appraised.

My never-written senior dissertation on how the way for the grunge explosion was paved by Jane's, The Pixies, and Living Colour would have spent some time on the presentation link between the pansexual hedonism of Jane's and Cobain's "fuck it, I am wearing a dress today" insouciance.

― shout-out to his family (DJP), Monday, August 3, 2020 12:55 PM (fifty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Don't forget Faith No More!

Roddy: "To me, throughout our career, the representation of the band and the way I've been portrayed everything has been so homosexual every we've ever done. I've portrayed some absolute blatant, stereotyped homosexual. I've been the boy in bondage, the sado masochistic cop, the homo-cowboy. I mean. I've been so blatant about it - it just blows me away that people don't pick up on something like that. Y'know. what am I supposed to do? Hit people over the head with this? That hurts, right? It hurts your head and it's an insult to people's intelligence."

Certainly by "Angel Dust" the band was really leaning into it. You might be the guy to ask, do you think Patton as lyricist was coming to it on his own, or do you think he was influenced by being in John Zorn's orbit?