Jane's Addiction - November 20, 1990 - The Ritz, New York City, NY

Date: November 20, 1990
Location: The Ritz, New York City, NY
Recorded: Audio
Status: Confirmed
Type: Concert
Lineup: Perry Farrell
Dave Navarro
Stephen Perkins
Eric Avery
Artwork:
 

Setlist:

Up The Beach
Whores
1%
No One's Leaving
Ain't No Right
Ted, Just Admit It...
Had A Dad
Pigs In Zen
Been Caught Stealing
Three Days
Mountain Song
Stop!
Summertime Rolls
Ocean Size

Show Information:

The Buck Pets opened.

Thanks go out to 'kc' for the multi-date ad, 'ant' for the ticket scan, and Emily Michelson Sahuto for the NYT article.

Review/Rock
Audiences Are Really Lifted When Jane's Addiction Plays

The New York Times
Nov 22, 1990
Cultural Desk
Jon Pareles

The ticket-taker at the Ritz on Tuesday night was saying "No slamming tonight," to no avail. When Jane's Addiction started playing, members of the audience began heaving across the floor and lifting fans up on their shoulders toward the stage, where bouncers repelled them.

Jane's Addiction makes perfect music for such directionless frenzy. On records, the band's music usually imitates Led Zeppelin. Hard-rock riffs stomp and pummel, with an occasional break into funk rhythm guitar and some acoustic-guitar songs that stomp a little more gently. Perry Farrell, the band's lyricist, sings in a high whine about primal traumas, a disintegrating society and wayward self-determination; "Been Caught Stealing," now being played on many radio stations, is about kleptomania for the thrill of it.

The music gets wilder and sloppier on stage. At the Ritz, the band performed amid statuary, photographs and plastic flowers that looked like a funeral-home bankruptcy sale, with strings of Christmas-tree lights dangling above them. The music had the same sense of excess.

Mr. Farrell's voice, with tape-looped echoes multiplying his screams, became an abstract, singsong siren. David Navarro played endless squiggles of lead guitar, while the band churned and squealed and bashed irregularly, often switching suddenly to half-speed or double-speed, proud of its arbitrary stops and starts. The fans were ready for the change-ups, and they shouted along on older songs like "Ted, Just Admit It," a song about media titillation with the chorus "Sex is violent."

Mr. Farrell, taunting the audience between songs and mixing hard-rock gesticulations with elementary mime as he sang, enjoyed his role as a twerp with an arty streak and a chip on his shoulder, determined to transgress.

Jane's Addiction used to come across as a late-breaking, self-conscious update of protopunk bands like the Stooges. More confident now, they sound up-to-the-second: confused, information-barraged, seething with frustration and unchanneled energy. Jane's Addiction is on to something; the band's current album, "Ritual de lo Habitual" (Warner Brothers), reached the Top 40 on Billboard's albums chart. Clearly, Mr. Farrell isn't the only one who sees an American landscape of chaos and a war of all against all.