T A B L E__T A L K

Female singers: Are they more interesting than men? Who's your favorite? Join the discussion in the Music section of Table Talk.

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R E C E N T L Y

DJ Krush
Milight
London
(11/24/97)

Various Artists
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: Music From and Inspired by the Motion Picture
Malpaso/Warner Bros
(11/21/97)

Judy Collins
Forever: The Judy Collins Anthology
Elektra
(11/20/97)

Stanislaw Skrowaczewski
Bruckner: Symphony No.9
The Minnesota Orchestra
Reference Recordings
(11/19/97)

Lisa Loeb
Firecracker
Geffen
Juliana Hatfield
Please Do Not Disturb (EP)
Bar None
(11/18/97)

BROWSE THE
MUSIC ARCHIVES

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V O W E L L

Sound Salvation
By Sarah Vowell
The presidential suite
(11/14/97)

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B O O K S

The Rolling Stone Book of Women in Rock
Essays on women's role in rock history, and on artists ranging from Tammy Wynette to Courtney Love
(11/18/97)

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"Please Do Not Disturb"
Juliana Hatfield -->

Nostalgia, as they say, isn't what it used to be. For starters, it's tougher to keep up with. Just the other week, before witnessing the regrouped Jane's Addiction and after trawling through new CD retrospectives of the Replacements and the Pixies, I shuffled into the time machine with the Rolling Stones and Pearl Jam at the Oakland Coliseum. It was not pretty. First, there were Eddie Vedder's hairshirt anthems. Listening to them, even the new ones, made his group's one-year hiatus feel like five. Was this the sound of a generation? What was the name of their hometown again?

As for the Stones (whose nostalgic "Steel Wheels" tour I remember nostalgically), their old-time bacchanalia was mostly casino-grade. Didn't this old dandy once sing, "Time waits for no one/And it won't wait for me"? That number wasn't in the set, but a helium-puffed version of "Last Time" was, its lasciviously deliberative rhythm -- which constitutes the song's entire meaning -- coldly recalibrated into an assembly-line arena bounce. The rest of the set was pretty much the same. Sad. It reminded me of that Philip Larkin poem where he talks about the way time transfigures people into Untruth.

But I digress. Jane's Addiction, like the Stones before them and Pearl Jam after, were "a time and a place," as Henry Rollins puts it in the notes to the new Jane's Addiction odds 'n' ends CD, "Kettle Whistle." That time and place was America in the late '80s, when the AIDS panic was shrill and the best rock 'n' roll (Prince excepted) was curiously desexed: Paul Westerberg intractably unsatisfied; Bob Mould and Michael Stipe both in the closet. Along comes Perry Farrell in full-on fetish gear, and never mind the heavy-metal bollocks -- this was rock that wanted to fuck, and the soon-to-be alternative nation was way down with it. JA packed 'em in through their headlining stint on Lollapalooza 1, after which Farrell broke the group up to pursue his muse elsewhere, to no great effect.

Fast forward to the Enit Festival, 1997, where -- against all odds -- Farrell hosts one of the greatest rock 'n' roll circuses in memory. How did this happen? Time and place. Sure, the Jane's Addiction reunion reads like another In Memorium cash grab. But in the context of Rock 1997, something about them feels pretty essential. I mean, Oasis? Radiohead? Stereolab? Prodigy? What popular rock bands, even the good ones, signify anything beyond their own sound and brand name anymore? Which of them, in the broadest sense, really want to fuck? Even the almighty Beck leaves you with little more than the satisfaction of being let in on a very groove-wise joke.

Jane's Addiction, pretentious old-school bastards that they are, preach and practice the sort of hard-core bacchanalian spirituality you associate with the Stooges, the early Stones, pre-retirement Patti Smith and even the Grateful Dead back when they were dangerous, say '69-71. Now that jaded rock audiences can't even wiggle their skinny asses without a sense of irony, this kind of shamanism is déclassé. But it's moved over to DJ culture, where it's alive and well. And so it makes perfect sense that Farrell would align himself with both rave and the old Acid Test pioneers, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, for his Enit Festival (named, in case you care, for an interplanetary celebration of "cosmic peace and sexuality" from an obscure sci-fi novel).

Since the crowd has come to see Jane's Addiction and is well-schooled in the regimen of Rock Shows, the "festival" gets off to a slow start, and the early evening is mostly about gawking. DJs from the Funky Techno Tribe collective pound the main auditorium, while two alternate performance spaces showcase experimental films, electro-acoustic trance bands, hip-hop DJs, light shows and more moonlighting sex club dancers than a Two-Live Crew video. That's just the ground floor. Up on 4, you have the Merry Pranksters freaking-out acidheads and confusing onlookers with portentous, mostly incomprehensible group babbling and a charmingly low-rent light show. Other rooms feature masseuses and body painters, and there is plenty of food and alcohol and contraband to be had. It's what the Dutch have done for years in club spaces like Milkeweg, and what rave promoters have done for years in warehouse spaces. It's what Farrell tried to do on a grand scale with 1995's abortive Enit tour, which crashed due to venue curfew problems, among other things. He tried it again with this year's Lollapalooza, but failed again because of early curfews and a feeble dance music component.

But for this one-night, all-night, medium-scale event, Farrell finally gets it right. The DJs fade out into Goldie's set, and his romantic, dystopian drum 'n' bass sounds glorious through an arena-scale sound system. He could be more well-received (few people dance), but he could also be a bit more compelling. Drum 'n' bass acts like Lamb have got the live performance thing figured out. But Goldie, especially if he aspires to arena-scale art -- which he obviously does -- has still got some work to do.

In a strangely poignant bit of standup, Kesey and the Pranksters -- dressed in plastic trash bags like homeless Haight Street hippies -- wander onstage after Goldie, dementedly chanting, "Let the Sun Shine In" while processed video footage of the Kennedy assassination flashes overhead. Finally, in an inspired goof, the DJ heralds Jane's Addiction with an impromptu techno remix of Lynyrd Skynard's "Freebird."

But if JA make no apologies for their Zeppelin-scale rock excess, their set also shows that they spoke a hedonist's brand of Esperanto. Playing nothing but their own oldies, they magnify the psychedelia of wanky epics like "Three Days" and "Chip Away," which becomes an extended drum jam on a little junkanoo stage at the back of the hall. The addition of Red Hot Chili Pepper bassist Flea (replacing original bassist Eric Avery, who apparently wanted no part of the reunion) only makes the band's grooves larger. A pug-faced little rhythm monster, he will no doubt join Mike Watt and Sid Vicious in some future dissertation on the spiritual archetype of the punk bassist.

Flea looks pretty sexy in his flowy red raiments. Not as sexy, though, as Dave Navarro, in a silver feather-trimmed robe, black mini-skirt and hose that manage to hold up throughout the show without a single run. Still, Farrell dominates the runway in a multi-piece ensemble, gradually stripping down to a skin-tight blue micro-mini and matching gloves. Somewhere, Gianni Versace is grinning.

I mention the outfits because they say a lot about where the band is at. I mean, Kurt Cobain wore housedresses, but not miniskirts. And while he occasionally french-kissed his bandmates onstage, he never did it on his knees, at length and while humping the other man's leg, as Farrell does with Navarro this evening. These guys take their genderfuck seriously. There is also something about the sight of Farrell slithering across the floor between two of the show's numerous thong-clad pole-dancers, looking like a debased trio of Rockettes, that defuses accusations of sexism. As my female companion comments, "As sexual empowerment goes, this definitely beats the Michigan Womyn's Festival."

Not surprisingly, the crowd on the floor is a writhing mosh pit throughout. But what's most remarkable is what happens after the final encore (a perfunctory acoustic "So I Would"). Unlike every arena rock show I've ever attended, the lights do not go up and the staff do not herd people out like cattle. Instead, the Funky Techno Tribe cranks the sound system up even louder and starts dropping those heavy beats. And the crowd, their pelvises loosened, finally begins dancing, and they're still going strong when we leave around 3:30 a.m. (the event was licensed to run to 6 a.m.).

Not everybody was in the main hall, though. Up on the fourth floor, and only recently out of the hospital, a white-haired Kesey led a ramshackle psychedelic jug band through what began as the most hilariously bad version of the Grateful Dead's "I Know You Rider" that I'd ever heard. The cheesy light show was still sputtering on the walls, and the junior hippies packing the room, most a few generations younger than the ones onstage, started singing along. And for just a minute, that creaky old tune blossomed into something really transporting. It proved what Farrell evidently knows: In rock 'n' roll, music is only half the game.
SALON | Nov. 25, 1997