janesaddiction.org

The Orange County Register
June 4, 1993
Edition: MORNING
Section: SHOW
Page: p38

PORNO FOR PYROS

WHERE: California State University, Dominguez Hills' Olympic Velodrome. Tickets available through Ticketmaster at $15. Information: (714) 740-2000.

WHEN: Saturday, 8 p.m.

MAIN ATTRACTION: Perry Farrell, of course.

A.K.A.: "Obnoxious Los Angeles glam-punk poseur"; "Poster boy of the new mainstream." (Quotes by the same writer. What a difference five years can make.)

OCCUPATION: Lead singer and songwriter for Porno for Pyros, former Jane's Addiction member, former Psi Com member, artist, concert promoter, visionary, madman, stripper.

RESIDENCE: Venice, Calif.

HAIR COLOR: Varies; last seen, carrot orange.

MAIN ADDICTION: Controversy. Farrell named the first Jane's Addiction album "Nothing's Shocking," then set out to disprove that. From performing the final Jane's Addiction concert in the nude, to flaunting heroin use, to creating nude sculptures for album covers, to writing songs such as "Orgasm" and "Black Girlfriend," Farrell seemingly can't exist without raising a ruckus.

WHY PORNO FOR PYROS? Farrell claimed the name came from finding a fireworks ad in a skin magazine. But the title song talks of Farrell's sexual titillation by the flames of the L.A. riots.

LOLLAPALOOZA: Farrell organized and, with Jane's Addiction, headlined the first Lollapalooza tour in 1991. Upon disbanding Jane's, he formed Porno and played on the second tour in '92. He's organizing this year's tour, but isn't officially scheduled to perform. Can he stay away, especially from the L.A. shows? Don't bet on it.

BEEN CAUGHT STEALING: Before Porno for Pyros' first album was even recorded, bootleggers were selling Pyros CDs recorded at several live gigs last year.

Daily Breeze (Torrance, CA)
June 8, 1993
Section: ENTERTAINMENT
Page: C4

Porno for Pyros: Where's the fire?
Author: Peter LeFevre

It's been said that Western civilization has peaked, and, with nowhere to go, popular culture is doomed to nostalgia.

Anyone looking for evidence to support this theory would have enjoyed Sunday's performances by Porno for Pyros and the Flaming Lips at Cal State, Dominguez Hills.

The concert, postponed from Saturday, disappointed. How predictable, mundane and stale rock has become! If a group named Porno for Pyros fails to be credibly rebellious or frightening, the sun has set on rock 'n' roll.

It isn't that the show wasn't loud, abrasive or angst-ridden. Or that there wasn't a teeming throng of screaming, thrashing fans. Or that the show wasn't postured or hyper-theatrical.

It's only that loud, abrasive and angst-ridden has become the norm. What was once shocking has become quaint. Somewhere between Chuck Berry and today, rock lost its teeth. What music here wasn't vainly trying to recapture a glamorized past was aimless and disoriented.

The Flaming Lips opened the show. The group was exciting but not necessarily interesting. Peel away the distorted guitars and bring down the decibel level, and the band was little more than a flashy drummer and an earnest but out-of-tune singer.

Porno for Pyros followed with a choppy, ponderous set. Despite the high energy of lead singer Perry Farrell -- late of Jane's Addiction -- the show seemed like a drama without a plot. Moments of fury burst into the foreground only to be eclipsed by cheap theatrics. Even the band's signature tune, "Porno for Pyros," was uninspired.

Striving to be an incendiary comment on the L.A. riots, it came off as a bad mood set to a beat.

The show was presented as an anti-circus. A big-tent facade framed the band, and anti-acts (wicked clowns, ballerina/strippers) punctuated the numbers. Meant to shock, they probably shocked the fans more than they would have shocked the fans' parents.

The stage show helped enormously, though, for the music was a crash of forgettable bluster. None of the musicians was more than competent, and Farrell has an aggressively unmusical voice. Then again, music was hardly the point. Rock today exists more as politics or culture than as music. The Rolling Stones served up a rock 'n' roll circus 20 years ago, but at least they added a little musical taste. Porno for Pyros lacked the subtlety to do this, presenting its circus of anger in raucous but hackneyed, nostalgic tones.

Peter LeFevre is a free-lance writer specializing in music.

Press-Enterprise, The (Riverside, CA)
June 9, 1993
Edition: ALL ZONES
Section: ENTERTAINMENT
Page: D05

A circus of sexuality drives Porno for Pyros
Perry Farrell bares his heart and soul, singing songs of desperation, sex and fantasy on a circus-motif stage.
Author: Phil Gallo; The Press-Enterprise

P.T. Barnum never met Russ Meyer. But if the circus ringleader had ever hooked up with the hormonally driven filmmaker, you can bet the result would have looked a lot like a Porno for Pyros show.

Head Pyro Perry Farrell, the firestarter if you will, is pulling a dream world out of his overactive imagination and putting it on a stage to frame his songs of desperation. It's a place where sex and fantasy find a home under the big top; where the music is a modern take on the bass-drum bump and grind and where show business and sexuality meld into freak-show titillation.

Sunday at the Cal State Dominguez Hills Olympic Velodrome, Porno for Pyros gave its first Southern California headlining concert after months of hype and a one-day postponement. What the approximately 8,000 fans in attendance got was a standard Farrell show - short (55 minutes), protagonistic, flamboyant, forceful and extremely similar musically to the work he did while leading Jane's Addiction.

Farrell has found his tintinnabulation in an underbelly of fetishes and phobias and exploits them in a three-ring rock 'n' roll show that tries to do in less than an hour what it takes the average Lollapalooza concert to offer in half a day.

On Porno for Pyros' debut album, the approach is so bare bones that the performances suggest that songs haven't been fully developed. Farrell's drive is pure rhythm - better to amplify his thoughts on doing drugs, carrying a gun, dating a black woman and the excitement of fire. With former Addiction drummer Stephen Perkins and bassist Martyn Le Noble creating a tribal beat for Farrell to rant over as guitarist Peter DiStefano weaves in semipsychedelic guitar lines, the circus-motif stage is filled with a parade of dancers, strippers, actresses, trapeze artists and "the world's largest hermaphrodite."

The evening started with the slow and eerie mood piece "Orgasm," before the band plunged into the rowdier turf of "Sadness" and the song "Porno for Pyros," which featured fireworks being set off in the middle of the outdoor venue and a fire-breathing woman in a G-string and pasties. The maddeningly pulsating "Meija" set the mood for much of the thrashy funk that followed, most of which appears on the band's debut album along with a few unreleased tunes.

Farrell has figured out how to overwhelm the listener with extravaganza to hide flaws in songwriting and musicianship and the musical sameness that defines Porno for Pyros. Yet despite all the onstage visuals, Farrell still emerges a naked performer - one who has opened his mind and is now baring his soul. He takes images that would make most people look away and makes them engrossing - a sure sign of success for any modern artist stretching boundaries and exploring frontiers.

Press-Telegram (Long Beach, CA)
June 9, 1993
Edition: AM
Section: LIFE/STYLE
Page: C5

PORNO FOR PYROS STORMS THE OLYMPIC VELODROME
Author: Theo Douglas / Special to the Press-Telegram

Nero reportedly played the fiddle while Rome burned. When rioters burned Los Angeles in 1992, several hundred years later, it inspired another musician, Perry Farrell, so much that he formed a band.

Farrell named his band Porno for Pyros, after the riots, and away they went amid much hoopla for the respected ex-Jane's Addiction lead singer and his enterprising nature.

Not quite a year later, Porno for Pyros is selling out venues such as the Olympic Velodrome at Cal State Dominguez Hills, where it played Sunday.

Since the band began, though, Farrell's initial vision of a music influenced by diversity and serving alternative lifestyles seems to have become twisted.

A year ago, he mentioned influences as varied as Duke Ellington, and spoke at length about his new creation. Today, however, one of Porno for Pyros' biggest influences seems to be that of Farrell's former band, Jane's Addiction, which broke up in 1991. At times, the two outfits sound very similar.

Sunday night, Farrell and company's appearance before a sold-out Generation X-age crowd was more of a token gesture than anything else. Performing on a circus-style set as they did, with fire-eaters, trapeze artists and go-go dancers, only served to hide the music. There was no encore.

On stage, Farrell took the high road, as he almost always does. The band opened with "Orgasm," its ritualistic paen to the virgin female. In the current climate of sexual realism, this song represents something of a full frontal attack on today's mores.

But Farrell has a knack with slow songs dating back to his days with Jane's. He sang forcefully under an intense blue light, repeating the chorus until it became a sort of mantra; behind him, a dancer pirouetted slowly.

After grinding through "Sadness," another album track, Farrell asked the attentive crowd, "Remember the riots?" In answer to this, virtually a rhetorical question, the band began hammering away at "Porno for Pyros," its title track. Farrell alternated between singing and wailing on a harmonica.

The choppy rhythms of the chorus were lost amid the roar of the band, but the harmonica rose above the noise and above the fireworks timed to various portions of the song.

In their next selection, "Meija," the band came alive and managed to balance the almost eerie feeling of a storm about to break. The show had been rained out the night before; Sunday night, the storm was on stage, in the amplifiers.

The current threesome backing Farrell, which includes an ex-Thelonious Monster bassist and former Jane's drummer Steven Perkins, is well-versed in the art of alternative music.

But even these veterans were somewhat dwarfed by the ceremonies on stage, which continued apace, with go-go dancers, fire-eaters and, of course, Farrell.

"I'm only 35, I'll party your ass under the table," Farrell told the crowd midway through the show.

By then, it was already 9:30 p.m., though, and carnival folk - Farrell included - seem to go to bed early. Both the Pyros' set and that of openers Flaming Lips started right on time.

The Flaming Lips, an all-male four-piece, turned in a real solid set of alternative rock, which fell somewhere between that of Westerberg and that of Sonic Youth. These guys are a band to watch out for and to listen to in the future.

Press-Telegram (Long Beach, CA)
June 9, 1993
Edition: AM
Section: LIFE/STYLE
Page: C1
Column: What's Hot!

NO SINGING IN THE RAIN FOR PYROS
Author: Tim Grobaty

So, would we have gone to see Porno for Pyros last Saturday at Cal State Dominguez Hills? Who knows? That's not the point. The point is, we couldn't have seen 'em because they didn't play because it rained and flooded the stage.

Flooded the stage: ooooooh. Get wet feet, plug in, run 10,000 volts through a hyper-conductive, wet-like-seal body, turn into a this-is-your-body-on-drugs poster. Whatever happened to taking it like a man? Instead, Porno played Sunday night. Sorry: couldn't make it. We were swamped.

What would've happened if Woodstock had been called off on accounta rain? Too scary to think about. And the show went on Saturday at the Troubadours of Folk Festival crosstown at UCLA.

But our Porno for Pyros were keeping their footsies toasty elsewhere. In fact, we ran into the band's bass player warming his hands around a hot cider at McCabe's Guitar Shop in Santa Monica Saturday night near the end of Evan Dando's late-night set.

That's right. We scored tix to the Dando thing via a fine mixture of harassment, whining, false promises and terrorism, and let us tell you, it was worth it.

The McCabe's experience is what MTV's "Unplugged" should be, and isn't by a long shot. McCabe's frequently features players who are part of bigger groups, or who are accustomed, at least, to playing before larger crowds and playing a lot louder than they do in the tiny backroom of this guitar shop on Pico in Santa Monica. At McCabe's, people take chances, perform strange tunes and strip down their more familiar songs to their stocking feet.

The difference between "Unplugged"ness and McCabe'sedness was illustrated best in the difference between the Dando show and the recent "Unplugged ... and Seated" MTV show and subsequent CD, just released on Warner Bros.

Dando, who's the brains, voice and guitar (generally loudly electric) of the Lemonheads, put on a simple and subdued, but often challenging set of new tunes, cool covers, and Lemonhead numbers, accompanied only by his acoustic guitar, which he strummed softly. The more familiar stuff necessarily sounded different given the lack of amps and backup musicians. "My Drug Buddy" became even more wistful than the version on the L-heads' "It's a Shame About Ray" LP, and his "Stove" from the band's "Lovey" record was way more heartbreaking than any other song we've ever heard about a replaced kitchen appliance. His covers ranged from a Charles Manson number to Carole King's hit for the Shirelles. "Will You Love Me Tomorrow?" Among the new songs was a substance-abuse poser about how "I don't want to get high, but I don't want to not get high."

Stewart's "Unplugged" LP, on the way other hand, is more excessive than stripped down. Sure, it's unplugged, but it's not understaffed. There were four guitarists on hand, plus a couple-three keyboardists, a string section and three backing vocalists. Nor did Stewart take anything approaching an adventurous chance in this megaproduction.

That isn't to say it's not without a few swell moments as he turns in some nice versions of some of his early classics, including "Handbags and Gladrags and Tim Hardin's "Reason to Believe." But there's nothing insightful here, nothing that lets you know about the artist. We betcha Dando would play in the rain. Stewart, not.

Ants in their France

Fans of our local heroes, Giant Ant Farm, can now keep track of the wildly eclectic rock band's comings and goings thanks to the group's new hot line. There's not too much in the comings category; most of the news is of goings.

The band plays its last show for three months Friday night at 10:30 at Anastasia's Asylum, at 11th Street and Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica. After that, it's off to Europe, where the band "has business in France," which is always the excuse we use, too, when we don't feel like going into work. The Anastasia bash is free, so go.

Other localites, the Alvin Brothers, Phil and Dave, will be patching things up musically Friday at Bogart's, whose new slogan is: "Yes, we have Zima!" Tickets are $12.50, which is $12.50 more than Giant Ant Farm, but the Alvins won't leave you for business in France.

What's Hot! runs every Sunday, Wednesday and Saturday.