Jane's Addiction - December 16, 1988 - Theater of Living Arts, Philadelphia, PA

Date: December 16, 1988
Location: Theater of Living Arts, Philadelphia, PA
Recorded: No known recording
Status: Confirmed
Type: Concert
Lineup: Perry Farrell
Dave Navarro
Stephen Perkins
Eric Avery
Artwork:
 

Show Information:

The Executive Slacks opened.

Philadelphia Daily News (PA)
December 16, 1988
LIVE! THIS WEEK
Author: Jonathan Takiff, Daily News Staff Writer

Southside Johnny Lyon has dropped the "Asbury" from his group's name - now they're just the Jukes.

Another switch - his latest (11th) and most introspective album, "Slow Dance," doesn't even employ the horn-happy, soul-stomping group - though the latest incarnation of the Jukes will be with Southside Johnny at the Chestnut Cabaret Saturday night.

Nor does Lyon live by the seaside anymore, preferring the proximity of Essex County, N.J., to New York City, "where I go and pretend I'm a responsible adult working in the music business - making record deals, getting commercials and movie soundtrack work," he said recently.

Still, you can't take the Asbury Park out of John Lyon, as I recently discovered during an interview in which Lyon touched on the special nature of Jersey music and came to the defense of his old buddy and sometime songwriting collaborator Bruce Springsteen.

"I really feel a kinship with guys like Bruce and Steve (Little Steven Van Zandt)," says Lyon, who first worked with those gents two decades ago in Asbury Park bar bands like the Sundance Blues Band, Studio B, Southside Johnny and the Kids, the Blackberry Booze Band and Dr. Zoom and the Sonic Boom.

"You know Patti Scialfa" - now Bruce's backup singer/guitarist and main squeeze - "was in the Jukes for a while, too. She's a nice girl and a good addition to Bruce's band. And they do seem to really care for each other.

"I even feel close with Jon Bon Jovi, even though his music is somewhat different from ours.

"We all went through the same bars, ate the same bad food, rode the same buses," Lyon explains. "Most importantly, we all played to a shore audience that was accepting of new music that was different from Top 40. That gave us a lot of room, an easy way to grow."

At the moment, Lyon is pushing the cause of "Slow Dance" - a laid-back set (on the Cypress label) that's gotten the most radio attention for his cover of "Ain't That Peculiar," but also includes strong original material like his town-without-pity blues wailer "Little Calcutta," and his moody ballad collaboration with Springsteen "Walking Through Midnight."

"I wanted to try something different, something less aggressive," Lyon says. "The world's full of aggressive music right now. This album's romantic, all mid-tempo music. It's not that I wanted to distance myself from the Jukes - and the next album with them will certainly be very bluesy. But it's just that I had certain songs, certain musical ideas I wanted to try, wanted to get out of my system. All bands have to mutate, try other styles. You have to die like Glenn Miller to stay the same for 30 years."

His buddy Springsteen is under fire in this month's Esquire magazine article "Saint Boss," written by former Philadelphian (and my onetime mentor) John Lombardi. The character assassination suggests that this ''suprastar" has been unduly manipulated by his handlers (liberal rock critics Jon Landau and Dave Marsh), and that Bruce plays his politics very safely and mostly for commercial gain. The article also implies that the Boss isn't even such a nice guy managing his business and inner circle.

"None of us Jersey guys are very calculating people," responds Lyon, ''but this article makes Bruce out to be so calculating. Yes, he's smart and he likes to be in control. He wants things to be right. But he also likes to let things just happen. All that commercial calculation stuff is a lot of crap. Bruce is not out there thinking of ways to make you love the record. He's thinking about making it great and hoping you'll like it."

Lyon characterizes author Lombardi as "having a tremendous ax to grind." And he suggests that "he's hanging all the criticism about the Springsteen organization on Bruce, because he's the obvious target. But I don't think that's fair. I don't think you can impugn one person's integrity because you don't like what others are doing around him. When you're that big, selling millions of tickets and records, you won't be on top of all things. You do the best to make sure people are treated with dignity, but you have to delegate some responsibility. And if others are abusing the privilege, he shouldn't be knocked for it.

"I'll tell you what kind of guy Bruce is. A few years ago, his band and mine both wound up at the Cleveland airport early one morning to take an 8:30 flight. We're sitting there, dragged out and tired and nobody wants to deal with anything. Then these guys come over to Bruce - who's all slumped over - and they ask if he could do them a big favor. They've got a friend who's crippled, confined to a bed, who couldn't see his concert, and would be so happy if Bruce would call. Bruce didn't say a word. He just got up, went to the phone and called the guy. It was an immediate reaction that it was the right thing to do and he did it. I'd have said, 'OK, I guess so, but can I do it later?' I was impressed by how fast he responded."

To Lyon - an old-line, heartfelt soul belter brought up on the likes of Billie Holiday, Jimmy Rushing and Wynonie Harris, the Flamingos and the Cadillacs - the phonies of the music business today are "the people who think art rock is the way. Their music is so lacking in emotion, all intellectual. I'm not anti-intellectual. But a lot of these people got involved in rock because it's almost a 'camp' thing. They think of it as silly and that if they're doing it silly, then they're making an 'art statement.'

"I hear vocalists singing in this 'I can't sing' style. That's a nice statement, but a hell of a way to hang a career. I understand you're making a statement of overblown hero worship and debasement of culture. But if you're not absolutely interested in purveying an emotion, the power of songs, then a couple of your songs will be plenty, thanks. I'll laugh and you can beat it."

GETTING A DOSE

Call Jane's Addiction psychedelic metal. Or thinking person's speed rock.

One moment they resound like early King Crimson doing "21st Century Schizoid Man." Or something blurry and furry from the Rolling Stones' ''Satanic Majesties Request." Talk about dense production! Bombs bursting in air. Screaming guitars and vocals to match. A percussion section so heavy it could bring down Led Zep.

Next moment they're a variation on Metallica, loaded to the gills with 1988 teen-age angst. "If you see my dad/ tell him my brothers/ all gone mad/ they're beating on each other."

Last year, they were lumped with Tommy Conwell in Rolling Stone mag as the two hottest unsigned bands in rock and rolldom.

Are you curious? If so, check out L.A.'s latest music fashion, Jane's Addiction, in concert tonight and Saturday at TLA.

WINTER WHAT???

Wildman around town Jack Quigley and His Mom are tossing the 6th annual ''Walking In Our Winter Underwear" spectacular at J.C. Dobbs on Sunday at 5 p.m.

As you might already suspect, this is one holiday happening with an emphasis on humor. Big Daddy Graham will be there, plugging material from his hysterical new album, "Most Likely To Go Insane." A ditty called "Jesus Owes Me Thirty Bucks" should go over especially well. Spins Nightly, another musical comedian, is also on the bill.

Jack Quigley and His Only Friend - the Band will be wearing the traditional red underwear, natch. His only mom will be playing keyboards and threatening to sing. WMMR Morning Zoo regular Pat Godwin is working up some parodies, and the radio station's nighttime fixture Michael Tearson may be persuaded to sing the touching "Christmas in Jail."

I'm also told that Santa and His Elves will be on the premises, and comedian Clay Heery will make a special appearance on video. The one serious aspect is the charity that will benefit from the suggested $5 donation at the door - the Soviet Armenian Relief Fund administered by the American Red Cross.

Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA)
December 16, 1988
L.A. ROCKERS JANE'S ADDICTION AT TLA "NOTHING'S SHOCKING," THE BAND'S DEBUT LP, HAS SHOCKED QUITE A FEW. Author: Tom Moon, Inquirer Popular-Music Critic

Perry Farrell, the lead singer of Jane's Addiction, has been thinking lots about career development lately.

For the first time, his Los Angeles-based band, once a mainstay on that city's underground scene, is playing to large groups of strangers. Many of them happen to know the words to the songs on the band's debut LP, Nothing's Shocking (Warner Bros.).

That is shocking to Farrell. "Some of the things I say are so preposterous, I can't even imagine making a song out of them. It's pretty weird. It's like being at a Genesis concert and looking to my left and seeing someone sing 'Abacab,' they really become that. And what is it? A nonsense word. Of course, Genesis is sold by all the chains, on MTV, the whole works."

And Jane's Addiction is not, Farrell says. Observing what has been a ragged but attention-getting debut, he rattles off a scorecard that some rock bands angling for quick notoriety would be proud of: Only four of 12 major nationwide retail chains have stocked the record, citing the racy sculpture on the cover; MTV refused to play the video; recently a radio station in Los Angeles yanked the record after playing it for weeks.

The record's disappearance from the Los Angeles station stemmed from an onstage incident on the other coast. "One night in New York we were playing, and me and Dave (guitarist David Navarro) started kissing. Just did it, like Mick and Keith on Saturday Night Live." A man connected with the Los Angeles station was in the audience, and told the group he was offended. "He pulled our music off the air. In our own home town - he should have known about us."

If Farrell and his cronies get their way, sooner or later everyone will hear about Jane's Addiction, performing tonight and tomorrow at the Theater of Living Arts. "The record company began to get worried about the sales," Farrell says, sounding like the voice of industry wisdom. "I told them to stay with it, we're gonna be around a long time."

Where does this confidence come from, you ask? This is a rock-and-roll band that exists on dry humor and sarcasm and the ability to send a message without necessarily pounding it through the skulls of its audience. This is a band whose evocations come on acoustic guitar ("Jane Says") nearly as often as wrenching, high-distortion electric, and whose vocalist sounds as if he was sent factory-fresh from Hard Rock Headquarters.

Nothing's Shocking is a group of songs whose directness, small-scale insights and taut rhythm patterns are a perfect antidote to the posturing, bloodthirsty excess of bands such as Guns 'N' Roses.

Not surprisingly, Farrell, 28, doesn't like interviews. He believes the songs should do the explaining. Indeed they do, sometimes: "Idiot's Rule," powered by a horn section, is a self-explanatory whine; "Standing in the Shower . . . Thinking" aspires to epic proportion but ends up being a long, well-organized blast of hot steam.

"When you write a song," Farrell says, "you try to say things in an interesting way. You try to be simple without being obvious. So you take all this time building something, then you do an interview and that's when you become obvious."

Jane's Addiction has had plenty of experience masking the obvious. The band began in 1985 as the house band at Scream, which grew into the Los Angeles area's focal point for alternative rock. The band started to pursue a contract in 1986, because, Farrell says, the club scene was changing around them: ''Metal and glam had infiltrated into punk. They pretty much wiped out punk and alternative ideas in L.A. When the alternative scene disappeared, we didn't have any place to play."

Farrell is not disillusioned about the major-label record business. The band knew, he says, when the decision to record for Warner Bros. was reached, that the prevailing attitude in the industry was to avoid trouble.

"We knew we'd have to build from the ground up, where we started," says Farrell, who clearly acknowledges that creative compromises often travel along with nationwide recognition. "We want to make people realize what's expected of us right off the bat. And how hard it is to preserve your integrity.

"You're almost penalized for trying to maintain freedom in the way you work. We're not gonna give in to that. We don't wanna be crammed in with Debbie and Madonna. That's not the side of town where we play."

Jane's Addiction with Executive Slacks at the Theater of Living Arts, 334 South St., at 8 tonight and tomorrow. Tickets: $12.50. Phone: 922-1011.