Jane's Addiction - December 01, 1990 - Central Park Ballroom, Milwaukee, WI

Date: December 01, 1990
Location: Central Park Ballroom, Milwaukee, WI
Recorded: Audio (audience)
Video (audience)
Status: Confirmed
Type: Concert
Lineup: Perry Farrell
Dave Navarro
Stephen Perkins
Eric Avery
Artwork:
 

Setlist:

Up The Beach
Whores
1%
Idiots Rule
Ain't No Right
Then She Did...
Bobhaus
Pigs In Zen
Been Caught Stealing
Three Days
Mountain Song
Stop!
Jane Says

Show Information:

The Buck Pets and Monkey Bar opened.

Recording Information:

Average quality audience recording. 68:15. Quick cut about 4 minutes into "Three Days", presumably due to a tape flip.
There is also an average quality audience video of this show.

Notable Moments:

Someone in the audience hands Perry a Barbie doll which he talks about for a couple minutes in the middle of "Pigs".

"No kid for me, man. I don't want my kid growing up wearing a gas mask."

"This next song's for all the women who wonder what the fuck they're doing here. They heard about the band and how they play some nice stuff, but all they've been doing is getting crushed. Well, this is a song that shows our real talent. Not musically, I mean. I mean our real talent. What we're best at. This song is called 'Three Days'."

Thanks go out to 'kc' for the multi-date ad, Wojproduct for the 2nd ticket and the ad, SDW for the recording info.

The Milwaukee Journal
December 3, 1990
Jane's is an addiciton [sic] hard to fathom
Author: DAVE LUHRSSEN

Listen up, conspiracy buffs. A sinister cabal of influential, well- connected trendies decides to foist some band on the alternative -music scene. The right wires are pulled, the proper buttons pressed, and into the consciousness of the college radio market plops Jane's Addiction.

That's a plausible explanation for the band's success in light of its recorded output, consisting as it does of leaden music brightly wrapped in smug, arty-smarty gestures. But if the heart of rock 'n' roll is the stage, the special bond that exists between performer and audience, the Jane's Addiction story starts to make sense without recourse to conspiracy theories.

At Saturday night's concert in the sold-out Central Park Ballroom, the band's sound smothered the hall in a vast and formless gray blanket that could not be entirely explained away by the room's deadly acoustics. Occasionally the tempo was raised by a fractured martial beat or a staggeringly lame attempt at a funk rhythm. But only on "Been Caught Stealing," the best song from the band's new album, "Ritual de lo Habitual," did the music come alive.

The focal point was never sonic, but visual. Front man Perry Farrell, his mood as friendly and expansive as his fragile ego would permit, slithered in a snake dance, his head bobbing like a toy doll with a broken neck. Acting every inch the great artist, with face frozen in a deep pout, he struck up the fey, tortured poses of a superior being condescending to appear before our mortal race.

His dancing was unremarkable, his singing nothing more than shrieks alternating with bellows. But the crowd was spellbound, drawn forward in alarming, eddying waves. Bodies bobbed above the sea of heads, carried to the front hand-by-hand, and were hurled with incredible violence onto the stage. Security tossed them back into the audience with equal urgency. Farrell and company carried on through the mayhem, seemingly unfazed.

The evening's best stroke was the choice of Milwaukee's Monkey Bar as the warm-up. Fronted by Steve Whalen, who possessed all of Farrell's self-assurance and twice his talent Monkey Bar rocked through a set featuring precision drill guitar and full-tilt rhythms. Whalen's tightly wound persona was channeled along dangerously effective lines by the disciplined musicians behind him.

Monkey Bar did the impossible: It managed to hold its own before an audience whose only desire was to catch a glimpse of Jane's Addiction.