#Jane's Addiction #Perry Farrell #Dave Navarro #alternative rock #hard rock #heavy metal #alternative metal #funk metal #neo-psychedelia #psychedelic rock #Los Angeles #1990s
Alternative rock legends Jane's Addiction broke the alt-rock mould when they released their debut album, Nothing's Shocking,
in 1989. With scant regard for LA's spandex-clad genre conventions,
they turned rock'n'roll on its head by throwing elements of funk, goth
and punk into the mix. With their follow up album Ritual De Lo Habitual, released in August 1990, they built upon that template and subsequently broke alt-rock to the masses. They made it perfectly okay to love Led Zeppelin and The Sex Pistols. From: https://www.loudersound.com/features/jane-s-addiction-the-first-alternative-band-to-break-not-nirvana
Jane’s Addiction might be the ultimate “you had to be there” band. If you weren’t somewhere between 16 and 20 in 1988-90, their music is likely either totally foreign to you or a somewhat baffling memory, a misty relic of the pre-Nirvana age. But if you were there, as I was, they sunk a hook into you that will never come loose — and gestured toward a much wider world of possibilities than “punk” or “metal” or what was still called “college rock.”
Jane’s Addiction were unique, but they weren’t alone. There was a whole movement bubbling up on the West Coast in the mid to late ’80s. Between roughly 1987 and 1991, LA bands like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Fishbone, and even Suicidal Tendencies — plus Bay Area peers like Primus and Faith No More — combined punk, funk, ska, thrash, prog, art-rock, and more into genre-shattering records and volcanic live performances. Metal and heavy rock were displaying a sonic broad-mindedness that really hasn’t been equaled since. Indeed, looking at what’s become of some of these bands since, it’s hard to believe it was ever that way.
I wasn’t a fan of Jane’s Addiction at first. Their independent 1987 live album — which they only released that way to buy themselves credibility; their major label deal was already in place — and their Warner Bros. debut, 1988’s Nothing’s Shocking, passed me by. But then Ritual de lo Habitual came out August 21, 1990 — 30 years ago today and two months after I’d graduated high school. I was fully onboard. I’d seen the video for “Stop” and loved both the high-energy psychedelic metal of the music and the band’s patchwork image. With their mismatched clothes, their manically/joyously headbanging drummer, their thrashing guitarist and head-down bassist, and their singer’s weird serpentine dancing and hoarse, crow-like vocals, they seemed like three different bands in one. I bought the cassette the day it came out and listened to it obsessively all summer.
Ritual de lo Habitual was divided neatly into halves. The album kicked off with a friend of the band’s, Cindy Lair, giving an introduction in Spanish: “Ladies and gentlemen, we have more influence with your children than you do, but we love them. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Jane’s Addiction.” That launched “Stop,” the first of five fast, aggressive punk-funk-metal songs. The music was less thuddingly heavy than it had been on Nothing’s Shocking. Dave Navarro’s guitar was thinner and sharper; Eric Avery’s rumbling post-punk bass, always the heart of their sound, was louder and more physically present; Stephen Perkins’ drumming was wilder and looser. Perry Farrell, meanwhile, was more or less the same guy he’d been thus far — a scrawny, dreadlocked wannabe prophet, preaching indulgent amorality (“There ain’t no wrong now, ain’t no right/ Only pleasure and pain”).
From: https://www.stereogum.com/2095287/janes-addiction-ritual-de-lo-habitual-review-anniversary/columns/sounding-board/
