Classic or dud : Jane's Addiction

Omg lol do I know you?? My webmail works, I’ll get the message! Akron.

Ha! Never expected to run into a fellow Dancin’ alum here! (That’s what it was called, right? I can’t find any evidence of its existence online.) Based on your timeline I think our age difference makes it unlikely we know each other (by ’89-’90 I’d graduated to Nine of Clubs) but our paths probably crossed. I’ll send you a message later!

Dancin’ on the planet! But we called it Photon and everyone fronted like they weren’t going but they always showed up. I used to prank the payphone. And there was a dedicated indoor smoking room. A good lol we will have!

Before this whole discussion kicked off, I pitched a 30th anniversary writeup on Ritual to Stereogum. It's up now, and incorporates some of what was discussed here. (It was a lot longer at first, a broader piece about how much weirder "alternative rock" was immediately pre-Nirvana, and included discussion of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Fishbone, Faith No More, Primus, and Suicidal Tendencies.)

Thanks for sharing that.

“This guy’s a real moron — he doesn’t even understand fashion!”

^this is a pretty funny response to being hit by a flying Birkenstock.

That take was on the Classic Girl cd single! Also something about "women reach the age of menopause - that'll do!" that always befuddled me in the intro to their L.A. Medley.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXoLYvQW7XY

Just a couple days ago on twitter, Perry mentioned getting abused by his step-mom. Can't remember if I had read about that before.

Chris, Parental guidance was all but absent from my life. I owe much of my drive to a step mother, who let me know with a constant bashing, that I was no good. So, my advice to parents today is abuse your kids as much as possible. If you’re in a bad mood; take it out on them... https://t.co/L4RSz1Ar7W

— Perry Farrell (@perryfarrell) August 18, 2020

Good piece, unperson. It makes me wish I could ‘get’ this band, even though I know I never will.

Getting drum sounds while recording Jane’s Ritual -30 years ago - I have plenty of footage of the sessions ;) pic.twitter.com/Q2czczRjyl

— Stephen Perkins (@stephenperkins) August 21, 2020

Good piece there for sure.

X post sounds like an excerpt from bonzo’s montreux!

Senors y senoras
Tenemos mas infkuceienca

Zeppelin for younger Gen Xers

I listened to Nothing’s Shocking for the first time in decades recently and it sounded truly great — I was surprised by how much i enjoyed every song, even now! Not only that but the thing that stood out was the drumming in particular. I wouldn’t have thought S Perkins was that influential for me but his playing still sounds really good.

Yesss

As a middle to young era gen xer i liked zeppelin but loved janes addiction because it was all of the pomp and bombast and great bass playing but with more punk rockness and way less slow boring blues shit.

I know they enjoyed dry ice. Got herded out of the ICA in midwinter cos they set off all the fire alarms with that stuff.
Didn't really pick up on the lps until a while later.

Have they ever remastered the cds?

i don’t ~think~ so? mr veg is a big fan so we’d have snapped them up if there were remasters to be had, i’d think. but i could be wrong.

No; there were vinyl remasters a few years ago but no CD equivalents.

Audio Fidelity (an audiophile label no longer in operation) reissued Nothing's Shocking on a 24k gold CD in 2012, remastered from the original master tapes with HDCD encoding. It's an expensive collector's item now, but supposedly it does sound really good, especially if you can decode HDCD on your player.

Is there a reason why not if like everybody else has reissued things of that stature several times over.

It seems like the main way to justify remasters is the inclusion of bonus material, and it looks like they exhausted the vaults between Kettle Whistle and the box set.

There was a vinyl box in '16 that had the two WB albums, an abridged Kettle Whistle, and a previously unreleased live album that on the whole really should have had a dad a companion CD release.

previously unreleased live album

It was the third disc in the Cabinet of Curiosities box.

Ok, so the vault is truly exhausted then.

In 2016, I cobbled together all the covers/remixes/originals not on the three LPs. It's about 70 minutes of music and pretty underwhelming

There was a vinyl box in '16 that had the two WB albums, an abridged Kettle Whistle, and a previously unreleased live album that on the whole really should have had a dad a companion CD release.

the vinyl on this sounded pretty bad imo - the recent Ritual reissue on clear vinyl was brilliant, though.

Surely a cd update on its own would be welcome. & if lacking bonus tracks surely there must be some live stuf of some quality. Or demoes of crucial tracks or something. Just seems like the cds were issued like once , not sure how later things like the box of the 3 together differed soundwise.

Have just been conscious that I would like a more recent cd upgrade for like years like.

Back together with Eric Avery judging by photos on Instagram this morning?

pretty incredible development considering the bad blood after the last reunion

i was so stoked to see that line-up perform live even though (or even because?) the acrimony was palpable and they were tuned down a couple of steps to save what's left of Perry's voice

JA have burned a lot of my goodwill (and dispelled a lot of their aura/magic) with their non-Eric activities* - but with him involved i would always be cautiously interested - one of my all-time favourite musicians

*i also wholly understand that they need to pay their mortgages

It is crazy but also great how much of a difference he makes to their music - in some ways he’s better than they deserve but no question on my mind that i’d pony up my dollars to see that lineup again, last time was great

I’m interested in this detail from Pitchfork’s Nothing Shocking review:

Jane Addiction’s convinced their new label to allow a “fake indie release” of Jane’s Addiction on Triple X Records to maintain their street cred, a strategy they accused Guns N’ Roses, Smashing Pumpkins, and Soundgarden of copying afterwards.

so.. dave navarro not playing on the smashing pumpkins tour - due to long covid Is the official reason - weird. love that eric is back but don’t know i would enjoy a Jane’s show without Navarro

pretty good article about all of it in rolling stone, interesting on the eric/perry rapprochement

Yeah, Jane's without Dave would be as tough to wrap my head around as Van Halen without Eddie or something. On the other hand, I love Troy Van Leeuwen (who is filling in for him) so I hope he pulls it off with aplomb.

That's pretty wild. Van Leeuwen just filled in for Captain Sensible on the Damned's tour of the U.S. this year.

Was Dave Pajo busy or something?

Why is RS the worst website in the world

yeah you gain so much w eric but without the flashiness of dave it doesn’t work
jane’s is such an oddly specific ecosystem

yeah you gain so much w eric but without the flashiness of dave it doesn’t work
jane’s is such an oddly specific ecosystem

ok so now Josh Klinghoffer has replaced the still MIA Dave Navarro and they sound… really great?! like Klinghoffer (who I know nuthin about) is totally nailing a kind of shreddy looseness that sounds like JA of the olden days and the rest of the band have lifted to meet him, and even Perry sounds energised and determined to max out what’s left of his voice and -??

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSi_7azF7u4

Its not in that vid but I saw a clip from the night before where JK totally bodied the Three Days solo and actually got chills -

Anyway something slightly interesting going on when I thought they were totally destined for an endgame of sad cash ins and diminishing returns

Nuts Avery is back in the band. Perry ever so slightly looks like Biden in that clip. Still think the dancers are kind of embarrassing.

Eric’s always been the heart of JA to me so this is really cool news

Josh Klinghoffer is a pro sideman dude, he was in RHCP for a while, I'm assuming a super great player

he filled in for Matt Cameron on Pearl Jam’s last tour - he’s really good (his own stuff under Pluralone is p decent too)

Whoa reading Klinghoffer's bio is quite a thing — he's played with/been close Bob Forrest, John Frusciante, the Chili Peppers and now Jane's Addiction (among many others). He must be some kind of junkie whisperer.

He played some of the drums on Warpaint's Exquisite Corpse record, as well.

I think a big part of being an in-demand sideman is the ability to be chill and vibe with a wide range of challenging personalities

Also the youngest inductee in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame I think!

Yup - at 32, beating previous record-holder Stevie Wonder (38).

He also played on Warpaint's "Exquisite Corpse" EP

i think he was on maron’s podcast a year or so back and talked about Rhcp etc etc

yeah, Klinghoffer is great. iirc, he also played on the Exquisite Corpse EP from Warpaint.