Those of us who became teenagers during some of the worst years in music history, we maybe had a tendency to over-gush about the great big alternative uprising of the early 1990s. But who could blame us? Well before 1990 hit, even the best veteran acts had almost all uniformly lost the plot. There was almost nobody creating good music in 1980 and 1990 both, for example — it’s difficult to find a similar ten year stretch at any other point you can think of. Unless perhaps you’re talking about 1979–1989. Or 1978–1988.
Part of this suddenly slippery footing I think is due to uncharted territory, in that these dinosaur rock bands had pretty much formulated that beast in a laboratory themselves, with no other example to follow. So it’s a bit unrealistic to expect that some of these characters such as the Stones or Who or Kinks would still be holding it together and cranking out top shelf classics at the 20 or 30 year mark. No other group really ever had before, and yet here all these 60s outfits were, seemingly hobbling together as one toward that same distant finish line. For one of them to issue a totally-actually-not-altogether-terrible album like Steel Wheels or something felt like a press-stopping achievement.
But another big piece of this malaise, and the aging solo artists were just as if not more guilty than those full-blown legacy bands, was leaning way too far into trends, in an effort to fit in with the era. Not that hailing from the 1960s was a prerequisite for falling into this trap. This phenomenon you can break off into a pair of closely related smaller ones, which occasionally overlap. Some artists, like Rod Stewart for example, made a phenomenal go of it in shifting from rock to pop. The problem with this tactic, however — which isn’t to suggest Rod The Bod is complaining, necessarily — is that pop fans are fickle, and eventually stop caring. By which point you’ve lost your rock crowd to some extent, and can’t effectively make that switch back. Or at least not to where they care much about your modern day work.
The other, far greater and centrally damning blight, however, besmirching so much music from this era, was chasing the hot sounds of the day. Meaning that even solid groups that may have initially enjoyed some success with a slicker sound (ZZ Top comes to mind, though even a group like Rush became way too infatuated with synthesizers and other assorted studio gadgetry over the back half of the 80s) were rusting in gruesome fashion by decade’s end. A smaller but nobler subset, of which our hero Neil Young here is the patron saint, moved violently in the opposite direction, to counterbalance this tendency — but I wouldn’t exactly claim this was an overwhelming success, either, for most of them.
Into this void steps a band like Jane’s Addiction, whose timing you might argue could not possibly have been better. They have certainly gotten a ton of mileage to date on a rather thin discography. People will not be listening to these guys a hundred years from now — or at least, they shouldn’t be — but I get it. Perry Farrell is an interesting dude, and it’s considered cool to like them. However, this neatly summarizes my overall take on what I consider an excessively praised outfit: interesting and cool to like (they even had naked women on their album cover! In America, in 1988!) more so than a great listening experience. They do have a few good songs, but a little Perry goes a long way, and Dave Navarro’s guitar playing remains overrated to a baffling degree, as does their catalog itself.
Considering Ferrell was the primary brainchild behind Lollapalooza, however, his name will live on, I suspect, for that reason alone. And the band which initially made him famous makes for as good a case study as any, examining how we arrived at this point. In shades of a similar move made by Guns N’ Roses at right around the same time, the Jane’s Addiction “live” debut features overdubbed crowd noise from a completely different act. Unlike GN’ R Lies, however, only half the material was cooked up in the studio, the rest was at least taken from real shows. This would be the self-titled document issued in 1987, on tiny label Triple X.
“They only had two good songs,” my brother has gone on record saying, “and one of them was overplayed.”
He’s off the mark by a little, I will concede, but not totally out of line with this observation. By this he means of course Been Caught Stealing and Stop, and regarding the whole overplayed thing, I’m guessing you can figure out which of those earns that badge (though Jane Says was eventually even more worn out, neither of us consider it anything worth listening to.)
I was initially inclined to make Stop my selection for this piece, actually, as it’s likely my favorite tune of theirs. It’s an upbeat rocker, somewhat familiar to anyone who was listening to alternative music heavily during that era, though probably missing those of you who were not. My wife, Erin, had for example never heard the thing until I recently cued it up for her, and she was instantly wondering why they never play this on the radio instead of that other pair of worn out tracks. Although I suppose this would eventually make it as overplayed and stale as well, so I’m glad nobody has.
Well, anyway, I ultimately decided to go with a more obscure and mellower tune, I Would For You. Here, the languid, keyboard drenched (!) pace is better suited for Perry’s relatively limited bag of tricks. As was the case during the slower moments of album opener Trip Away, I find that he has a voice better suited for balladry, which wasn’t a discovery I expected to make at all. Though he’s obviously quite fond of reverb laden barking atop a more frenetic beat, this slower tempo allows him to actually croon. Add some sweeter lyrics than you would have guessed him capable of up to this juncture, and this sum total represents his true wheelhouse. Even as I’m sure almost nobody whose identity is wrapped up in saying it’s cool to listen to Jane’s Addiction will admit as much.
The above excerpt is but a sliver of my extended essay on Jane’s Addiction, found in my latest music history book, Stop Rewind Fast Forward: 1993. If this grunge-era recap seems like your cup of strong, independently brewed java, you can order it direct from me in a couple different places:
As always, thanks for reading – and be sure to have a quirky, indie rockin’ week!
