Tag Archives: Jane’s Addiction

Nine Inch Nails & Jane’s Addiction live at Jones Beach, June 7, 2009

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STREET SWEEPER SOCIAL CLUB

Street Sweeper Social Club, the new band formed by Rage Against the Machine gui­tarist Tom Morello, opened. Their badass cover of M.I.A.‘s “Paper Planes” was a highlight.

Nine Inch Nails live at Jones Beach New York

NINE INCH NAILS

It felt wrong some­how to see a band as moody and dark as Nine Inch Nails play while the sun was still up. But clouds soon moved in, obscur­ing a sun­set that would have been impres­sive over the water, mak­ing every­thing suit­ably gloomy and very, very cold as NIN chased sum­mer away. This stripped-down four-piece ver­sion of the band played a great cover of David Bowie’s “I’m Afraid of Amer­i­cans,” the best song Nine Inch Nails could have but never wrote, and ended with the over­whelm­ingly sad “Hurt.” Sur­pris­ingly omit­ted was “Closer,” what I would assume to be a req­ui­site entry in any NIN set list (but the end theme did fea­ture in a short instru­men­tal jam). Speak­ing of, said jam was one of only two instru­men­tal por­tions of the set (the other being The Fragile’s ambi­ent inter­lude “The Frail”). A lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing, given that Trent Reznor has been becom­ing more and more musi­cally exper­i­men­tal and adven­tur­ous of late, with whole chunks of The Frag­ile and the entirety of the mas­sive two-disc Ghosts being instru­men­tal. Per­son­ally, when it comes to Nine Inch Nails, the music (not so much the gloomy lyrics) is where the action is for me.

Nine Inch Nails live at Jones Beach New York

JANE’S ADDICTION

All thanks to Reznor for play­ing peace­keeper in reunit­ing the noto­ri­ously frac­tious and unsta­ble Jane’s Addic­tion, at least for the length of the NIN/JA tour. Basi­cally a funk/prog/metal power-trio fronted by the antics of Perry Far­rell, a… unique indi­vid­ual whose ego (he once re-released a raft of Jane’s Addic­tion songs under just his own name on a solo great­est hits album) has often cre­ated con­flict with bassist Eric Avery. The full moon peek­ing out from the clouds prob­a­bly only added to Farrell’s lunacy. They opened with their mag­num opus “Three Days,” an epic fea­tur­ing more dis­crete gui­tar solos by Dave Navarro than I could count. Hon­estly, where do you go from there? They kept find­ing high points to hit, how­ever, includ­ing “Ocean Size” and the closer (what else?) “Jane Says.” It only took a few songs for the age­less Navarro’s vest to dis­ap­pear (he must have one heck of a per­sonal trainer, not to men­tion a chest hair waxer), and Perry’s shirt fol­lowed shortly thereafter.

Jane's Addiction live at Jones Beach New York

THE FUTURE

Reznor has made vague noises about Nine Inch Nails com­ing to some kind of end fol­low­ing this tour. It remains to be seen whether he means retir­ing the name in favor of solo work, start­ing a new band, or sim­ply ceas­ing to tour for a while. He’s report­edly been clean & sober for some time now, and engaged to be mar­ried, so more power to him. If he retreats now, he’d be going out on a high note. I hope the orig­i­nal lineup of Jane’s Addic­tion man­ages to keep it together to con­tinue work­ing in some form or another. With only two stu­dio albums to their credit (I’m not count­ing the awful Strays, writ­ten & recorded with­out Avery’s inim­itable bass), the world needs some new songs from them.

GETTING THERE AND BACK

I had a lit­tle unex­pected adven­ture on the long trip from Man­hat­tan all the way out to Jones Beach. Met a few fans on the Long Island Rail­road as we debated the var­i­ous ways of get­ting there, all of which suck. Thanks to Kim & friend for the impromptu car ride to the venue! But I didn’t have the same luck on the way back, an ordeal that included wait­ing a full hour for a LIRR train to arrive. Pic­ture dozens of hun­gry fans, shiv­er­ing atop an ele­vated plat­form in the mid­dle of nowhere.

Jane's Addiction live at Jones Beach New York

THE VENUE

Blech. Sur­rounded on three sides by water, Jones Beach sounds nice in the­ory, but in per­son it’s cold. Never mind if you’re going to a show there dur­ing the sum­mer; dress warmly. Also, for a music lover used to all kinds of venues in Man­hat­tan and Brook­lyn, it’s in the mid­dle of nowhere, with no food or water for lit­er­ally miles. The exor­bi­tant con­ces­sion prices are, let’s be hon­est here, graft. Just to keep from dehy­drat­ing and get­ting a migraine from all the second-hand pot smoke, I reluc­tantly paid $6.50 for a bot­tled water, which I cer­tainly hope the venue recy­cled. Also, the sound sys­tem is kinda crappy. Jane’s were notice­ably louder than NIN, but Farrell’s mike sounded pretty muf­fled, espe­cially on the first and last songs.

THE AUDIENCE

The audi­ence was a weird mix­ture of goths, met­al­heads, and gray­ing thir­tysome­things like me. Although NIN has remained extremely rel­e­vant for some time now, the orig­i­nal Jane’s lineup has been out of action for more than a decade, and both bands date back to the late 80s / early 1990s, when I was in high school. The black-fingernailed lon­ers didn’t sur­prise me, but I didn’t really expect so many head­bangers. I even saw a middle-aged, bearded, fat dude in a skirt, a look I thought fiz­zled on arrival in the mid-90s. In ret­ro­spect, I shouldn’t really have been sur­prised, but I come at Nine Inch Nails and Jane’s Addic­tion from a dif­fer­ent angle. Lis­ten­ing to NIN is an exten­sion of my appre­ci­a­tion for elec­tronic and pro­gres­sive rock, and Jane’s vis­cer­ally filthy, slightly sleazy rock owes more than a lit­tle to Led Zep­pelin (who were also arguably a bit prog).

Offi­cial band sites: www.nin.com and www.janesaddiction.com

Buy The Slip, Nine Inch Nails’ lat­est album, and the new Jane’s Addic­tion rar­i­ties boxed set A Cab­i­net of Curiosi­ties from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

26 Albums I’m Told I Should Remove From My Collection

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100albums2.jpgThe author, with some of the offend­ing articles

Chalkills, the XTC fan­site, wants to help you sift through the detri­tus of your music col­lec­tion, pronto: One Hun­dred Albums You Should Remove from Your Col­lec­tion Imme­di­ately (spot­ted on DGM­Live).

I own (or once owned) a whop­ping 26% of these over­rated (so they say) canon­i­cal clas­sics! Hey, Chalkhills, what did I ever do to you? I love XTC (Apple Venus and Wasp Star being two of my all-time favorite albums, hands-down), so my tastes can’t be all bad, can they? But hav­ing read your list, I find that for every one of your selec­tions that brings steam out of my ears, there’s another with which I have to begrudg­ingly agree.

So here’s my anno­tated list, includ­ing, for fun, the for­mat in which I pur­chased each offend­ing title and whether or not I even­tu­ally dis­carded it:

U2 - The Joshua Tree
2. U2 — The Joshua Tree
20th Anniver­sary Edi­tion boxed set
U2’s true mas­ter­piece Achtung Baby was yet to come, but the com­plex depth of that record wouldn’t have been pos­si­ble with­out the unironic earnest­ness of The Joshua Tree. And yes, maybe I’m a snob (not to men­tion old) for upgrad­ing to the remas­tered anniver­sary edi­tion, but just the other day I lis­tened to the revived record­ing of “Moth­ers of the Dis­ap­peared” with my jaw lit­er­ally hang­ing open and the prover­bial chills run­ning up and down my spine.

Nirvana - Nevermind
3. Nir­vana — Nev­er­mind
cas­sette (dis­carded)
It was a gift, I swear. While I intel­lec­tu­ally under­stand what the mass-market break­through of Nir­vana did for music (basi­cally, spark­ing a fresh explo­sion of so-called “alter­na­tive” music com­pa­ra­ble to punk’s effect on a stag­nant world of disco and sta­dium rock in the early 1970s), I always pre­ferred the rock ‘n’ roll songcraft of Pearl Jam to the loud ‘n’ sloppy depres­sion of Nirvana.

The Beatles - Let It Be
5. The Bea­t­les — Let It Be
cd, The “Naked” ver­sion
Any antipa­thy towards the Bea­t­les seems a bit strange com­ing from an XTC fan­site — surely Andy Par­tridge and Colin Mould­ing are acolytes. Do I still have to dis­card Let It Be if I own the McCartney-approved “Naked” edi­tion, as opposed to the orig­i­nal with Wall-of-Schmaltz orches­tral over­dubs by Phil Spec­tor? Let it Be is not my favorite Bea­t­les long-player (that would def­i­nitely be The White Album), and obvi­ously one the lads tossed off at the tail end of their (actu­ally quite brief) asso­ci­a­tion. But how is that any dif­fer­ent, really, from their early quickie LPs recorded in mere hours with the aid of amphetamines?

The Police - Synchronicity
7. The Police — Syn­chronic­ity
cas­sette (dis­carded)
I agree with Chalkhills’ assess­ment that Syn­chronic­ity is a sur­pris­ingly dark album for a main­stream plat­inum hit, but I believe that’s exactly what makes it spe­cial. What other band, at the peak of their com­mer­cial suc­cess, released such a para­noid, neu­rotic album? OK, maybe Radiohead’s Kid A.

Lou Reed - Transformer
8. Lou Reed — Trans­former
vinyl
Agreed. “Walk on the Wild Side” and “Satel­lite of Love” are both mas­ter­pieces, but I couldn’t name a sin­gle other song from the album. Am I redeemed by own­ing the vinyl edi­tion? It must be said that it earns extra Cool Points for being pro­duced by David Bowie, but the back cover pho­to­graph of Lou with the boner in his tight jeans is just plain gross.

Miles Davis - Bitches Brew
9. Miles Davis — Bitches Brew
Com­plete Bitches Brew Ses­sions boxed set
Yes, I am that poseur that owns the Com­plete Ses­sions boxed set. I have to very, very strongly object to Chalkhills’ dis­missal here (and I do I detect a strong anti-jazz bias?). Miles changed music for­ever when he plugged in to rock, fusion, and funk. Try­ing to pre­tend Bitches Brew never hap­pened is as fruit­less as still com­plain­ing about Bob Dylan going rock (or coun­try, or Chris­t­ian, etc…) or The Sex Pis­tols giv­ing the world the fin­ger. The dif­fer­ence is that it still sounds fresh and new.

Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti
12. Led Zep­pelin — Phys­i­cal Graf­fiti
vinyl
I love me some Zep­pelin, but I have to agree that Phys­i­cal Graf­fiti isn’t a keeper. It is, how­ever, bet­ter than its follow-up Pres­ence (but that’s not say­ing much).

Beck - Midnite Vultures
19. Beck — Mid­nite Vul­tures
cd (sold)
Agreed. I lis­tened to it once, and then sold it as quickly as I could. Blech!

Derek and the Dominoes - Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs
21. Derek and the Domi­noes — Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs
cd (sold)
I could not agree more: two bril­liant songs in “Layla” and “Lit­tle Wing,” padded out with a for­get­table batch of filler. Leg­end has it the substance-abusing Clap­ton lit­er­ally does not recall record­ing the album.

The Who - Tommy
22. The Who — Tommy
vinyl (triple gate­fold with lyric book­let)
I don’t dis­agree that Tommy is loaded down with a lot of silli­ness and filler, but hey, it’s a rock opera, and the first one at that. What do you expect?

U2 - Zooropa
26. U2 — Zooropa
cd
I firmly, absolutely dis­agree. Zooropa may be a prod­uct of its time (the cut ‘n’ paste post­mod­ern media over­loaded 1990s), but it includes some of U2’s all-time best songs, includ­ing the title track and Stay (Far­away So Close). The mul­ti­lay­ered pro­duc­tion by Flood and Brian Eno may make the songs “sound weird,” but it also rewards a life­time of repeat listens.

The Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin
32. The Flam­ing Lips — The Soft Bul­letin
cd
I regret­tably agree. Give me Yoshimi Bat­tles the Pink Robots any day, but I just can’t get into this one.

Dave Brubeck - Time Out
34. Dave Brubeck — Time Out
cd
Blas­pheme! Blas­pheme! Again with the jazz hate! I was not aware any­body dis­liked this album. What’s wrong with you? If you had included Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue on your list, I think I would have had an aneurism.

Wilco - Being There
39. Wilco — Being There
cd (sold)
Like the rest of the world, I loved Yan­kee Hotel Fox­trot, so I sought out some older Wilco albums. And I sus­pect like most of those peo­ple, I got rid of them.

The Police - Zenyatta Mondatta
42. The Police — Zeny­atta Mon­datta
cd
Dis­agree! Zeny­atta Mon­datta is my favorite Police album. Granted, “De Doo Doo Doo, De Da Da Da” is the epit­ome of pop silli­ness (except for maybe “Louie Louie” and R.E.M.‘s “Stand”), but the rest of the album is full of clas­sic reggae-inflected new wave pop.

Jane's Addiction - Nothing's Shocking
44. Jane’s Addic­tion — Nothing’s Shock­ing
cd
As Perry Far­rell him­self once sang, “Stop!” Jane’s Addiction’s debut stu­dio album Nothing’s Shock­ing is a fan­tas­tic batch of songs. Perry Farrell’s wild per­sona and Dave Navarro’s famously louche lifestyle got all the press, but my god, haven’t you lis­tened to the rhythm sec­tion? Jane’s Addic­tion proved that prog could live with­out shame in a new world after Led Zep­pelin, and they got even bet­ter in their next album Rit­ual De Lo Habit­ual (before self-destructing, alas).

Cocteau Twins - Heaven or Las Vegas
50. Cocteau Twins — Heaven or Las Vegas
cd
I don’t have a really strong opin­ion about it, but I enjoy lis­ten­ing to it from time to time. I didn’t even know it was espe­cially pop­u­lar. Sorry, jeez.

Radiohead - I Might be Wrong
51. Radio­head — I Might be Wrong
cd
It’s a fair state­ment that most live albums begin life as con­trac­tual oblig­a­tions. But what actu­ally does bother me more about I Might Be Wrong is that it’s basi­cally an EP sold at LP prices. That said, the per­for­mances are strong, and prove that the weird, arty music on Kid A and Amne­siac can and really do come to life on stage.

Tori Amos - Under the Pink
54. Tori Amos — Under the Pink
cd (sold)
I loved Tori’s offi­cial solo debut Lit­tle Earth­quakes, but I sus­pect my sen­si­tive teenager self may have been crush­ing on the cute & quirky red­head at the piano.

Arrested Development - 3 Years, 5 Months, & 2 Days In The Life Of...
55. Arrested Devel­op­ment — 3 Years, 5 Months, & 2 Days In The Life Of…
cd (sold)
”…non-threatening rap-lite for sen­si­tive white lib­er­als who want to “keep it real” and expe­ri­ence hip-hop safely.” Zing! Busted.

Pink Floyd - The Dark Side of the Moon
64. Pink Floyd — The Dark Side of the Moon
30th Anniver­sary SACD
Again, blas­pheme! Yes, enough copies of Dark Side of the Moon exist on this planet to form their own con­ti­nent, but don’t you think there is a rea­son for that? Mere momen­tum alone can’t be enough to explain its appeal. If you want to sin­gle out one Pink Floyd album for being over­rated and over­pur­chased, please allow me to direct you to The Wall, which unlike most other Floyd albums, appeals to sullen imma­ture teenagers but does not grow in sophis­ti­ca­tion as they do.

Sarah McLachlan - Fumbling Towards Ecstasy
65. Sarah McLach­lan — Fum­bling Towards Ecstasy, Sur­fac­ing
cds (still on my shelf but I really ought to sell them)
Ouch! You got me here. I once liked both of these, but quickly fell out of love with them. I main­tain there are some decent songs under­neath the slick adult con­tem­po­rary overproduction.

U2 - War
69. U2 — War
vinyl
U2 charts no less than three times on this haters list, rival­ing the Bea­t­les and the entire genre of jazz for rais­ing Chalkhills’ bile. I sug­gest revis­it­ing “Sun­day Bloody Sun­day” and tell me if the drums don’t make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

R.E.M. - Out of Time
80. R.E.M. — Out of Time
cd
OK, maybe it’s not their best, and it is espe­cially dis­ap­point­ing for hav­ing come right after the leg­endary, essen­tial album Green. But “Shiny Happy Peo­ple” is maybe the best 3/4-time pop song ever, and the whole sec­ond half is superb.

Grateful Dead Reckoning
83. Grate­ful Dead — any album
Reck­on­ing (lp) & Infrared Roses (cd)
Yep, I picked up a sec­ond­hand vinyl copy of Reck­on­ing for pen­nies and it’s pretty loose and ram­bling, even for the Dead. But I do dig the crazy elec­tronic jams on Infrared Roses, man.

Sting - Ten Summoner's Tales
90. Sting — Ten Summoner’s Tales
cd (sold)
I’ll cop to lik­ing “Fields of Gold” back in the day. Oh god, did I just admit that out loud on the internet?

There, done. Finally, I just want to say that yes, I do have a sense of humor and I get the point of Chalkhill’s rant. Respond­ing to their List of Hate was just an excuse for me to scrib­ble out a few words about some of the dusti­est old arti­facts from my music col­lec­tion. Thanks!

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