Classic or dud : Jane's Addiction

Spin, Aug 2003

see if this works, starts on p. 68:

https://books.google.com/books?id=Gxaz3RhzGKoC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Ads, ads everywhere. I'd forgotten what that's like.

Are you sure that qualifier applies here? Age of consent laws exist for a reason, don't they?

Even that's not cut and dry, though, insofar as these vary widely over time and between places - if Xiola were in Canada in the 80s, she would have been legally able to give consent (to sex, not heroin) even at 15, for example; so was it a non-consensual act just because they were in California? (Legally, yes.) Or were Canadian teenagers giving consent legally but not morally? (This might be an arguable yes as well but it's not clear-cut.)

And this is where we get above my pay grade so I'll note that I do like the solo on "Three Days" a lot.

It's a great solo, yeah.

Age of consent laws do vary a fair amount from context to context, no doubt about it, but for my money, 14 (more so than 15) is an exceedingly low threshold, pace Italy, Germany, Portugal, Austria, Hungary, etc. I certainly take your point, though.

(I think it was actually 14 in Canada as well pre-08.)

I don’t presume to know if Xiola did or didn’t feel like a victim, or if she might have considered the song & LP cover to in fact be awesome tributes to her short life. But knowing that Farrell began “dating” her when she was 15 (and he was 23 or 24), and that he introduced her to the drug that would soon kill her, makes her “consent” seem heavily complicated.

rolling age of consent and ripping navarro solos thread 2020

But knowing that Farrell began “dating” her when she was 15 (and he was 23 or 24), and that he introduced her to the drug that would soon kill her, makes her “consent” seem heavily complicated.

That very informative SPIN article says she was 13-14. He was 9.5 years older than her, so yeah still 23-24.

To his uh... credit (?) he didn't know she was his cousin until after she'd passed away.

Either way, extremely poor judgement. I don't care if you're from Flushing, Ann Arbor, West Hollywood or Punkeydoodles Corners.

(I think it was actually 14 in Canada as well pre-08.)

Yep, unless the adult was in a position of authority, which kinda begs the question imo.

Age of Consent guitar solo: https://youtu.be/MxH5odhoKfU

lol

"Actually it's ephebophelia and it's an example of the live más mentality."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C54gosWr5no

Tbf the lyrics are outright PC in comparison:

Sweet seventeen- age of consent
Seventeen- age of consent
She's seventeen and tight, ah yeah (look out)

it seemed to me there was a lot of pain and sadness informing this music...how much of it having to w the murder and suicide, respectively, of Dave's and Perry's mothers, I don't know

I also always felt that the light that came through it—the beauty—was a sexual energy, and more specifically a feminine energy. It never struck me as having anything to do with power or exploitation, but the sanctity of sex. If anything, as a kid it seemed to me that they were elevating women.

As for the stripper poles, the women in cages, etc. I definitely don't think that it was ironic—but it always scanned to me as having to do with establishing a balance—keeping one foot in the gutter, saying that sex can also be this too, it can be about objectifying each other as part of a compact, etc. (Obv BDSM was a big part of that aesthetic esp early on.)

guys i know you all love a good thought exercise & beating a dead horse literally to death but this is straying far far into nagl

(this all being a matter apart form the Xiola issue)

xp

Were there ever any boundary-pushing bands that dared put a scantily clad dancing *dude* in a cage to be objectified? Not taking a pot shot at this band in this case, just as I said, whenever bands want to be shocking or sexual or whatever, it's always the ladies that get trotted out as props.

Other than this guy of course
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/_1Fr5F9Q_J0/hqdefault.jpg

I also always felt that the light that came through it—the beauty—was a sexual energy, and more specifically a feminine energy. It never struck me as having anything to do with power or exploitation, but the sanctity of sex.

There is a particular type of creepy guy who works this angle, of course - "It'll be a spiritual experience...". Maybe Farrell is the exception.

(Sorry, I should stop posting - I'm genuinely skeeved, but I'm not even a fan of this band, so what do I care.)

Josh honestly I think you kind of don't get any of this, because as you said upthread you missed it at the time, but you are painting in really broad strokes and continuing to miss the mark and it's really fucking annoying

JiC forgot about Bez

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/WellgroomedAnotherIbadanmalimbe-small.gif

I thought exploring the tension between 'you had to be there, maaaaan' and retrospective post-millennial takes thereon was the whole point of this revive?

I dunno I think I have a handle on what Pearl Jam's deal is, but because I've never really listened to it very closely I'm going to refrain from shitting it up w/ my long-distance takes

I'm 45 years old, I'm very aware of the band. I missed them only in the sense that I didn't like or connect with them. Jane's Addiction doesn't need me as a fan, but if the only people who can discuss bands are fans of them, well, I know how that goes.

Like, I can hum the introductory bass line of Three Days right now, off the top of my head, which is more than 99.9% of non-fans can do.

xp I hope that's not what you think I'm writing... I mean to say there are posters sharing things here about that whole scene, and rather than deepen or develop your point you seem hellbent on one-noting this BUT GIRLS IN CAGES! thing

So yeah all you Navarro fans should check out the Deconstruction album. Lot to love there.

morrisp completely OTM, choosing a bassline you love over disgust at introducing a 15 year old to heroin, having a 3-day smack and sexual bender with her and your girlfriend and then making a sculpture of it to transform it into art is not a defensible position. Musically, a great song, but I am not going to listen to this skeevy motherfucker any more. He always struck me as a creep and I thought oh maybe it's just my innate contempt for that kind of muddled semi-spiritual bullshit that masques as a cover for "do whatever the fuck I want". So yeah, I was right after all these years. Goodbye asshole.

I think you might be the right audience for this, but can I tell you how much I love this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBUxxl5NnME

So yeah all you Navarro fans should check out the Deconstruction album. Lot to love there.

I've probably said it before in this thread but in some ways that Deconstruction album holds up better than Jane's for me - obviously it lacks the big ticket tunes but yep Navarro is still in his sweet spot between rock pyrotechnics and post-punk moody textural stuff - and these days I find Eric Avery's lyrics more personally resonant (less "toxic"?) than Perry's golden god self-mythologising - and def. interesting project wrt this thread in the context of a partial critical response to Jane's immediately after the event

Were there ever any boundary-pushing bands that dared put a scantily clad dancing *dude* in a cage to be objectified?

Someone post that Shamen video with Jason Statham in it

just realised how wrecked my syntax was above, but the TL;DR is that the art doesn't justify Farrell's behaviour and I'm done with Jane's, which resolves the ambivalence I've always felt.

Someone post that Shamen video with Jason Statham in it

I have to say, again and again, that this is stuff that is extremely personal for me, and a lot of it is about naming and reclaiming my own experiences of the time.

While a teenager, I absolutely had non-consensual, coercive sex that was 100% Rape. I also had consensual sex in which I was the agent and the intiator and it was 100% Not Rape, and the difference between the two experiences was not that I was 17 2/3 in one case and 18 and one day in the other.

The difference was consent, it was agency, it was whether I felt like I was in control of the experience, and that my desires and needs were being honoured.

The conversation has switched over the past few years, from "no sex is ever rape" to "all sex is rape". The latter position *ALSO* means that the desires and needs of the female (or on the "down" side of power) participants are STILL not being honoured, and are not likely to be.

When a group of people, mostly cis men, demonstrate that they do not understand what ISN'T rape, it makes me very wary that they don't have a very good understanding what IS rape.

Music often functions as a... theatre of desire. In many ways the music industry (and even moreso back in the 80s) is in the business of commodifying sex, desire, romance, longing, infatuation, and all of those other exciting emotions, and providing a place for people on the cusp of sexuality to experience and explore them. (ILM has a long history of demonstrating that it is intensely uncomfortable with female desire.) An industry that traffics in desire in this way, is entirely ripe for abuse. To combat that abuse, without simply declaring "desire" off limits (because we all know whose desire gets cracked down on first), one has to understand, beyond a 'letter of the law' approach, what is, and isn't abuse.

(The absolute epitomy of the dark side of this 'letter of the law' approach to consent versus abuse is on that other thread, about the Killers thing. "The actual girl was not raped; however deliberately convincing the only female crew member, for weeks, that her colleagues were all rapists, was just ~hazing~ - therefore no abuse has taken place." Please move beyond these letter of the law approaches. The letter of the law can be used to harm, discredit, diminish, the negative experiences of women, as easily as it can the positive.)

Now I'm gonna go have a little dance on the Shamen thread.

The band that Jane's most resembled lyrically, at the time I loved them, was the Velvet Underground. That absolute refusal to take a moral position, writing completely non-judgemental songs that were "neither for nor against, just about".

And who you choose to take that moral non-positition towards, is far more important than the act of non-position. Farrell was pretty clear that he very much did have a moral position on cops, governments, leaders. But in the face of the Reagan/Bush years of Just Say No and the War On Drugs (which was actually a war on the poor, and specifically a war on African-Americans, because no one cared if Wall Street was a blizzard of cocaine) to refuse to take a moral position, to write songs that posited... sex workers are just people; drugs can be fun or spiritual or all kinds of things; shoplifting is exciting and fun - the directionality of who gets moral blame (cops) and who doesn't (sex workers, shoplifters) can be really powerful in a way that transcends the sleaziness of the writer.

I don't think I ever, even at the height of my fandom, thought Farrell was any kind of messiah or... (role model is the wrong word here) - he was, like Lou Reed, a fucked-up, damaged individual writing songs about fucked-up, damaged people - whose damage resembled the damage me and my friends had - in a way that didn't condemn us for our damage, but allowed some people who had been quite marginalised by the Reagan-Bush moral regime, to accept and address our damage.

I totally respect people who choose to nope out on him because (in the absence of Xiola's voice), they read his behaviour as not-OK. I was never under any illusions that he was any kind of ~nice person~ - he exuded fucked-up damage, so it is not a surprise that he was sleazy or creepy, any more than - it was disappointing, but also not a surprise to discover that Lou Reed was an abusive control freak. I just really hope that people ITT understand that I am not excusing Farrell's behaviour. But this music provided a lens through which people like me could examine our own damage.

I was never a junkie, but I was certainly an addict and an alcoholic, during periods of my life. It took therapy to help me understand, that as impressionable as I was, and as irresponsible as these artists might have been - I didn't become an addict because of Lou Reed or Sonic Boom or Perry Farrell. I was *drawn* to these artists and their addict art because there was already damage to me, the kind of damage that makes people think addiction is a solution.

Their first album, they covered a Stones song and they covered a Velvets song - and I think, at the time, I was very aware of the Velvets connection, and saw them through that lens.

thanks, Branwell, great posts. I think a lot about "acceptable transgressiveness" in art but also in "lifestyles" and the obvious tensions therein. There's something different about our moment of "progressiveness" in which the advances are today less in the direction of "freedom" than in other directions, of "do no harm" but also "respect others' freedoms". But those don't necessarily go together well. as ever this is not the thread for this but I don't know what is.

it's not exactly that weird or suspicious that ppl are erring on the side of "that's pretty fucked" when we have almost nothing of xiola's side of things. partially because she's dead from the drug perry (and probably others) helped supply her from a young age

that said I would never judge anyone for finding value in whatever art they please. I still listen to brand new, and in some ways knowing what we know or could guess about his conscience actually makes their later work i daresay quite powerfully bleak

I'm not exactly rushing out to give them my $$$ though

oh lastly some of us have conclusions and attitudes that are informed by experience as well even if we don't all post about it, something to keep in mind when yer tempted to make sweeping pronouncements about those annoying cis boys :)

Not to mention that my understanding of this and other similarly sketchy situations was chiefly shaped by listening to the women I know who have experienced such things first-hand. I will also say (alongside Simon, and for the last time, I promise) that offering heroin to a 14 year-old who ended up dying from it before even reaching the end of her teens is a significant part of what makes this tale so disturbing.

Oh but she was such a free spirit. And he was so damaged, you see.

My daughter is 18.

I had a long conversation with my Mum about the times described in this thread.

To this day, she hates my then-girlfriend because she introduced me to drugs and gay sex, and she thinks that ruined my life for decades. I have no way to express to her, that being introduced to drugs and gay sex genuinely saved my life, and without those experiences and those people, I would not have survived the 80s and I would not be here today.

People can read the same situation in many different ways, depending on their position and relation to it.

Is there anything left to be gained by continuing this, or are we just at “we disagree, leave it” here?

idk is it really ILX if we don't drag this out until a valued poster ragequits

(j/k I'm happy to drop it)