Jane's Addiction - December 20, 1990 - Hollywood Palladium, Hollywood, Los Angeles, CA

Date: December 20, 1990
Location: Hollywood Palladium, Hollywood, Los Angeles, CA
Recorded: Audio (soundboard)
Status: Confirmed
Type: Concert
Lineup: Perry Farrell
Dave Navarro
Stephen Perkins
Eric Avery
Artwork:
 

Setlist:

Up The Beach
Whores
Standing In The Shower... Thinking
Ain't No Right
Stop!
Then She Did...
Trip Away
Been Caught Stealing
Three Days
Mountain Song
Ocean Size
Jane Says

Show Information:

The Pixies and Primus opened.

Perry's rant about "stealing someone else's girl" on the Kettle Whistle album is taken from this show.

Thanks go out to 'kc' for the multi-date ad, and David Michael Brandt for the flyer and second ticket stub scans.

Daily News of Los Angeles (CA)
December 15, 1990
JANE'S ADDICTION: NO SOUND BARRIERS
Author: Bruce Britt Daily News Music Writer

According to Jane's Addiction singer Perry Farrell, the band "just didn't feel the vibe" during a Nov. 18 performance at the Tower Theatre in suburban Philadelphia. So instead of subjecting fans to a protracted, uninspired set, the postmodernist rock quartet opted to concentrate its energies into an intense 40-minute performance.

To say fans were displeased with the band's experiment would be an understatement. Police were summoned after the throng of 3,000 started brawling. The carnage was documented on the following day's police blotter: 22 arrests, and two fans requiring medical attention.

During a recent phone interview, Farrell expressed regret over injuries stemming from the band's hasty retreat. However, the singer stopped short of apologizing. Farrell said he felt justified after later discovering that bouncers had discouraged fans from dancing at the show.

"That old adage 'The show must go on' might be fine for Basil Rathbone or Sarah Bernhardt, but you've got to remember entertainers were slaves back then," Farrell said. "Who am I trying to please, anyway? I think I did the right thing."

It's this sort of candor that has earned Farrell a reputation as one of rock's most forthright characters. Some might say too forthright. The singer admits he enjoys drugs like heroin and peyote, and he dabbles in unconventional religion. Farrell reportedly insisted Warner Bros. Records finance a trip to Mexico so he could marry longtime girlfriend Casey Nicoli in a Santeria ceremony.

Farrell's fondness for sex is documented in the band's work. "Nothing's Shocking," the band's critically acclaimed debut album, featured a sculpture of bare-breasted Siamese twins on it cover. A sculpture depicting a racy menage a trois graces the cover of the band's new "Ritual de lo Habitual" album. The record has sold over 500,000 copies to date.

Both covers caused minor flaps. Major retail chains refused to carry the band's debut album, while a Michigan record retailer was ticketed for displaying a "Ritual de lo Habitual" poster. The charges were promptly dropped. Curiously enough, the cover flaks are the closest the band has come to controversy - surprising considering Farrell's outrageous eccentricities.

Warner Bros. Records executives hoped to dissuade Farrell from using the sexy sculpture on the "Ritual de lo Habitual" cover, but the singer refused. After much deliberation, Farrell designed an alternative album cover featuring nothing but a reprint of the First Amendment. Though both versions are available to the public, Farrell said the more explicit album cover outsells the First Amendment version five to one.

"What people can handle is not my concern," Farrell said, explaining his penchant for agitprop. "That would be like taking orders at a hamburger stand - you know, 'Make that one with mustard and relish.' If you don't like it, don't buy it."

Farrell does not consider himself as a corrupter of children. He believes youngsters who might happen upon "Ritual de lo Habitual" in record stores will only be exposing themselves to the natural wonders of sex.

"What they'll find is a picture of three people making love to each other," Farrell said. "They'll see that it's possible for three people to lay in bed, and it may inspire them to try it. What's wrong with that?"

Farrell describes a true-life menage a trois on a tune titled "Three Days." The song was inspired by Farrell's relationship with "two beautiful girls" - wife Casey, and another named Xiola Blue. Farrell said Blue was an artist who studied in New York and died recently (he declined to specify the cause of death).

"I met them both when I was very young in the business," the singer explained. "The band owes a lot of its style to both of them. Everybody thinks their friends are the greatest, but these girls were so creative in their observation of things, the way they carried themselves and their opinions.

"People can go to museums and schools and study music, but that doesn't make them great. Casey has it, Xiola had it. Nothing could stop them from coming up with ideas and sharing with the world."

The singer said the jealousies that occasionally occurred within the relationship were actually exciting.

"Jealousy's great, don't you think?" Farrell asked rhetorically. ''That's the drop on the roller coaster."

Farrell and his comrades - guitarist David Navarro, bassist Eric Avery, drummer Stephen Perkins - thrive on agitation, so it comes as no surprise that the band is the focus of a dispute among pop music enthusiasts. Fans claim Jane's Addiction is heir to the Velvet Underground's visionary throne.

But critics contend Jane's Addiction is too artsy to have any lasting influence. The Trouser Press Record Guide, a highly regarded postmodernist rock text, describes the band as "obnoxious Los Angeles glam-punk poseurs." Farrell, of course, relishes the controversy.

"I talk about the people I love about two minutes a day," he said, "I talk about the people I hate for two hours. So being hated isn't the end of the world, especially if you're trying to get your name around."

Nowadays, it also doesn't hurt to proffer controversial opinions about drugs when trying to win publicity. Farrell believes drugs are beneficial, and to illustrate his point he cites the example of the Huichol (pronounced WE- choal) Indian tribe. The Huichol reside in the mountains of Nayarit, Mexico, and have structured their society around the powerful stimulant peyote.

"The children are weaned on peyote, because it's in the mother's milk," the singer explained. "It's a very functioning society, with a very low rate of alcoholism and suicide.

"The funny thing about drugs - most of the opiates, amphetamines and all - is that they possess chemicals like endorphins that are produced naturally in the human body. So I see nothing wrong in trying to enhance what is already essentially supplied by nature."

Farrell was raised in New York City's Flushing district. He started his singing career in a short-lived band named PSI-COM. Legend has it that religious differences led to the band's demise (Farrell turned to black magic after the rest of the band became Hare Krishnas). Jane's Addiction was formed after Farrell met Avery through a mutual friend.

Drawn by the band's manic performances - not to mention Farrell's clever, stream-of-consciousness tirades - Jane's Addiction built a loyal following in Los Angeles. Soon several major record companies were embroiled in a bidding war, with the prize going to Warner Bros. Records in 1987.

Farrell is currently editing a film titled "Gift," which he hopes to persuade Warner Bros. into releasing as a feature film. The singer is confident he'll get his wish.

"We'll sway them," he said. "We know what we're doing."

THE FACTS:

Who: Jane's Addiction, with special guests the Pixies and Primus.
Where: Hollywood Palladium, 6215 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood.
When: 8 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday.
Tickets: $19.50. For more information, call (213)480-3232.

The Orange County Register
December 20, 1990
Jane's Addiction shows weak side of its cult of personality
Author: Cary Darling

Worshipping at the altar of Jane's Addiction, the much ballyhooed LA art-metal quartet, gets down to one thing. It has nothing to do with whether any of them can play (they can), deal with intriguing musical and lyrical concepts (sometimes) or if any of them can dance (they can't). What it has to do with is Perry Farrell, JA's singer/idealogue/provocateur, who has turned his group into a cult of personality so strong that Mao must be smiling somewhere.

How one views Farrell -- known for his outsized ego, sparking controversy with his album covers, dabbling in mystical religions and alleged offstage high jinks -- depends on how his colorful actions are interpreted. Shaman or sham? Brilliant or bogus? Druid or doofus? Idiot savant or just plain idiot? You decide.

At the Hollywood Palladium on Tuesday night (the first of three sold-out shows), Farrell tended to fall toward the less complimentary side of those question marks in a show that emphasized his weakest points. This emperor was not completely without clothes, but he was ill-clad.

At the onset, the performance had the sense of an event undergirded by the palpable electricity of unpredictability. Like Guns N' Roses, Jane's Addiction worked its way up from the alleys of Los Angeles with a sound that helped redefine the whole Hollywood metal scene. The Southern California metal style had ossified under the weight of hairspray and spandex, and groups such as Guns N' Roses and Jane's Addiction helped usher in a more streetwise sensibility. "Jane Says," one of the band's signature songs, ranks as one of the best sketches of '80s Hollywood life.

Also, as with Axl Rose, it's hard to predict exactly what Farrell is going to do onstage. In Philadelphia recently, he walked offstage after 40 minutes, claiming the band "just didn't feel the vibe." An outsider might claim Farrell was bravely flouting concert tradition, but anyone who paid hard-earned cash to see the show would rightly label it a righteous rip-off.

Still, the sense of the unexpected combined with it being a homecoming gave the LA performance an initial shot of energy. At its best, JA's music is a wiry mix of psychedelicized metal, suburban funk and literary pretension. That guitarist David Navarro, bassist Eric Avery and drummer Stephen Perkins can play with power and finesse is a plus. And there was a certain sense of spectacle when, at the start of roof-raisers such as "Been Caught Stealing" and "Pigs in Zen," the packed Palladium floor was turned into a boiling cauldron of shaggy heads.

But these were ephemeral pleasures lost in a sea of obnoxious Farrell-isms. His screech owl of a voice is less palatable live than on record and his tendency to stop the action to speechify is grating -- especially since he doesn't have anything very interesting to say.

He came out against the build-up in the Persian Gulf and preached non-violence until someone in the crowd threw a shoe at him and the tone of his rant changed abruptly. Later, he went on about how great LA crowds are -- something every third-rate bar band does when it comes through a town.

Musically, Jane's Addiction tends to let its songs meander, a style not helped by the Palladium's historically horrific acoustics for amplified electric music. When Farrell was hit with another shoe, he walked offstage and the 90-minute show was over, ending on a sense of pouty tempestuousness instead of homecoming victory.

The Pixies also were driven offstage by a flying projectile. The Boston quartet's lean, severe brand of rock topped by singer Black Francis' obsessive vocals can be hypnotic in a live situation. Yet, partly due to the sound and partly due to the Pixies' stoic stage presence, the 45-minute set didn't really connect.

The only act to be given a proper farewell, instead of a hail of footwear, was Primus. The band's funk-metal isn't particularly original but, at its best, the music developed a sense of brutal power.

Who: Jane's Addiction, the Pixies, Primus.

Where: Hollywood Palladium, Los Angeles.

When: Tuesday night.

Next: The same three groups play again tonight at the Palladium. The show is sold out.

Los Angeles Times
December 20, 1990, Thursday, Home Edition
Op Music Review;
Jane's Addiction Puts A Foot In Its Mouth
By Chris Willman

Like most great L.A. rock bands of the last 25 years, Jane's Addiction -- which headlined the first of three sold-out nights Tuesday at the Hollywood Palladium -- chronicles a kind of aimless moral drift often viewed as endemic, if hardly exclusive, to this area.

The group's unique X-meets-Zeppelin stomps are matched with lyrics in which singer Perry Farrell does an unusually sensitive job of sketching life without a working compass. "Been Caught Stealing" is an unabashed ode to shoplifting. "Ain't No Right" suggests that life is without ethical absolutes, only "pleasure and pain." This material is all curiously unemotional for music so physically, post-punkishly aggressive.

But with the funky rhythm section of drummer Stephen Perkins and bassist Eric Avery and guitar by Dave Navarro that has Jimmy Page-like, metallic sweep and grandeur -- in addition to Farrell's not inconsiderable Plant-ish howl, nearly as powerful at half the range -- Jane's Addiction packs more visceral punch than just about anything else on the radio right now. Their tight musical ship crashes waves with an even greater false sense of reckless abandon than funk/metal contemporaries like Faith No More.

By all rights, their live shows ought to be thoroughly intoxicating.

Unfortunately, each time Farrell opened his mouth to speak Tuesday, he came off as such a pretentious, profane, ill-informed Valley lad that it nearly spoiled any illusion about this being a significant band with useful ideas to impart. His bandmates ought to slap a gag order on him.

In true alternative-band-goes-gold fashion, Farrell mocked the band's recent success (which includes an album, "Ritual de lo Habitual," that reached the national Top 20). "Hey, will you hate us if we're popular?" he teasingly asked. But at times it seemed as if the success really has given him a Bono-like swelled sense of importance.

"There must be a reason why," he mused about fate's role in their success -- usually a bad question for any performer to start asking himself. He settled on a reason: "Can we spread some truth around here? Can we talk about the war?" And with that, the erstwhile amoralist began looking for his compass, bringing an otherwise fine show to a thudding halt every time he launched into a new monologue.

The singer devoted two rambling speeches to advising youngsters to stay out of the military. He repeatedly invoked the spirit of the '60s: "What happened, Timothy Leary? What happened, Jerry Garcia? . . . Let's show 'em a heavy movement." So far so reasonable.

But it's not that Farrell is actually opposed to killing Iraqis -- just to doing it in person. "There's no need to fight hand to hand," he explained, suddenly a strategist. "They don't need our help. They have missiles that can do the job, so have a good time and stay home." Farrell then went on to mock Barbara Bush's looks at great, tasteless length.

At that point the wiry, dreadlocked singer got smacked in the head by a shoe thrown from the audience, about which he complained at even greater length, unappreciative of the irony that he who lives by the missile dies by the missile.

It's this kind of loutish thinking out loud -- with a muddle-headed mix of hippie-ism, hedonism and insults -- that makes Axl Rose sound like a politically informed intellectual by comparison.

But if Farrell could keep his foot out of his kisser and just sing -- and certainly he's a properly agitated, powerful front man when he gets to business -- the Jane's Addiction show would be a consistent display of force instead of a spotty ride.

Following a puerile, unremarkable opening set by Primus, surprise added attraction the Pixies turned in a fun 40-minute set full of favorites not played at their headlining Universal Amphitheatre show last week. They, like Jane's Addiction, abbreviated their set because of the projectile factor.