Porno For Pyros - August 17, 1996 - Garden State Arts Center / PNC Bank Arts Center, Holmdel, NJ

Date: August 17, 1996
Location: Garden State Arts Center / PNC Bank Arts Center, Holmdel, NJ
Recorded: Audio (soundboard)
Status: Confirmed
Type: Concert
Lineup: Perry Farrell
Stephen Perkins
Peter DiStefano
Mike Watt
Artwork:
 

Setlist:

Good God's Urge
Wishing Well
Pets
Bad Shit
Porno For Pyros
Porpoise Head
Mountain Song

Show Information:

ENIT Festival. The audio recording for this show was taken from a webcast, which includes only part of the show. The above setlist is incomplete.

The venue's name was officially changed just before this show took place.

Rolling Stone
Oct 3, 1996. , Iss. 744;  pg. 34
Nathan Brackett

PERRY FARRELL'S LATEST grand enterprise, the ENIT Festival, managed to sell out its debut at the Garden State Arts Center, in Holmdel, N.J., but not without a few kinks. Three of the festival's main attractions - post-goth band Love and Rockets, dance-hall-reggae don Buju Banton and British dance-rockers Black Grape - pulled out at the last minute. Meanwhile, high overhead costs had forced the festival's organizers to cut what was originally a 13-show tour down to four dates.

Despite everything, ENIT managed to bring a variety of 'nonrockist" sounds to a large number of American teens. Not all of the crowd responded well to the eclectic New Orleans swing of the Flying Neutrinos or the heady Crescent City stomp of the Rebirth Brass Band, but earthly tastes seemed irrelevant as twilight descended and the avant-jazz travelers of the Sun Ra Arkestra delivered an otherworldly set. Veteran industrial-dance duo Meat Beat Manifesto met with less success; with their light show and echoing beats, they might as well have been a loud TV in a dark room. The crowd warmed to Lady Miss Kier, of Deee-Lite, however, who was returning to the public eye with new material and a live band; if anything, she proved that one can play the dance-diva role convincingly in an arenasize setting.

Porno for Pyros were the stars of the night. Farrell's group delivered a taut, percussive set complete with firebreathing women on stilts. Dressed as a space cowboy in red and white, Farrell told the crowd that this was the "happiest night of my life." Ironically for an event that focused on new sounds, the audience didn't become truly galvanized until Porno pulled out "Summertime Rolls" and "Mountain Song," two tunes from Farrell's former band, Jane's Addiction.

But don't write off the future of music yet. Two-thirds of the crowd stuck around for ambient prestidigitator the Orb, who slunk onto the stage amid a calliope of sampled musical and spoken-word bits, followed by the postrave circus act Rabbit in the Moon. The line at the smart bar was still long at 2:30 am; whether it was because there was no beer available seemed almost be side the point. -NATHAN BRACKETT