A New Addiction: Fumbling Toward Ecstasy

Calling Jane's Addiction a bastion of integrity makes them sound like an American motor vehicle company, but the sentiment rings true, from the smallest details to the big shebang. Part of a tour scrupulously dubbed a "relapse" and not a reunion proper--Red Hot Chili Pepper Flea fills in ably for original guitarist Eric Avery--the band overcame the dead-end venue of the Gosman Center at Brandeis to produce frankly beautiful wide-open soundscapes charged through with Perry's idiosyncratic timbres.

For all the full, pure sound that would occur by set's end, the venue at first threatened to crumble up the concert and slam-dunk it in the trash: during a thrillingly explosive opener, "Ocean Size," the first crowd rush collapsed the plainly insufficient band cage. The crowd--a mixture of 12-year-olds impersonating 15-year-olds, 15-year-olds imitating 21-year-olds and the walking braindead successfully being themselves--moaned and groaned at the subsequent 45-minute delay as a new cage was assembled. Woe betide the band that starts a concert thus; momentum at this point would have seemed a foreign country with heavily armed, very mustachioed and very grouchy customs officers.

Not so for resilient Jane's Addiction. With amiable chatter and manner that was to foreshadow later, beneficent but mesmerizingly awful Hopi-Tahitian mysto-babble, Farrell preened the feathers of the ruffled crowd in its raucousness (and I almost got to see a grown woman take her shirt off--naked as a babe).

"I know it's been so exciting," he crooned with good-natured sarcasm, and then in all seriousness: "But some people have been hurt up here, and if you all could just...."

They did, mostly as the band's second stage was dismantled for use as a second band cage. The agonizing wait--and its cause--only underscored the insufficiency of the venue and made one ache for the return of the band's organic sound.

It was tough going, but salvation did eventually come. First working the superhuman task of reviving a crowd dead in a glorified gym, Perry and friends rumbled through adequate renditions of a speed-metal-like "Ain't No Right," "Then She Did" and a well-punctuated "Stop!" Compared to the superb later fare, all this would in fact seem somewhat haphazard, even throwaway, but the imperative of regaining the audience's attention made it all worthwhile. By that odd slower, leisurely drum-pulsed section in "Stop!" the crowd was about as enthused as one could reasonably expect them to be.

Then the weaving and crafting truly began: layer by layer, the poppy-filled, sexually charged atmosphere of "Three Days" filled the air. Farrell found his voice as he hadn't since the ill-fated opener.

And it's quite a voice--almost possessing multiple chords in and of itself, almost dimensional and palpable. Some of us acquire a fuzzy other-worldliness when recorded on answering machines; Farrell, judging from his intermittent spiritual chats, always has this quality. The wheeze-buzz of an asthmatic--but electronicized and amplified--runs through it, buttonholing the ear on contact, and even more so with reverb.

Together with the expert riffs of Dave Navarro and, here, the now seductive, now speedy bass plucking of Flea, the meaning of "soundscape" and "integrity"--in the literal sense of fullness--becomes clear. With the exception of something like "Been Caught Stealing," with its eminently marketable dog barks and MTV mock-shock video, Jane's Addiction has always had the ability to make one forget about the asphyxiating, essentially D.O.A. verse-refrain structure of the rock song. The proof is in the aural pudding--smooth, textured, not strung together.

And in concert, from "Three Days" on, the distinction of Jane's Addiction only became clearer and clearer--thankfully no "Been Caught Stealing" here. Nuance and new life gave a glow to the songs, making the studio form of their main sources (Nothing's Shocking and Ritual de lo Habitual) seem downright claustrophobic and cluttered in comparison. A good band like this can always avoid rehash and make one never want to hear them canned again. The goods?

"Classic Girl" gained a renewed pride and updated ode-like feel (even if it was serenaded to a sheer body-suited Amazonian goddess on a catwalk), with Navarro getting the lightly capering riffs just right. The dreamily pastoral "Summertime Rolls" responded particularly well to the limitless dynamics of the concert; Farrell tweaked nostalgic into near-wistful, letting that "me and my girl-friend" just hang.

The traditional, crowd-chummy highlight "Jane Says" suffered from the lack of steel drum, which was visibly pining away on the unused, chop-shopped second stage. Steve Perkins gamely took up that sad, child-like tin-role with normal drums, to surprisingly good effect. The old favorite, although inevitable, was actually made a surprise through Farrell's roundabout, shaggy-dog introduction. His lyrical patter with the audience was, in fact, more a highlight to the concert than not: however dippy, they were drenched with sincerity and often reached unexpected beauty.

But the end came unexpectedly, after "Ted, Just Admit It...": suddenly, after bringing the audience to a climax Jane's Addiction had left the building. People wandered about, waiting for another announcement about some other structural deficiency of the Gosman, but none came. Milling about, the crowd stared at the flowery Tahitian motifs of the stage.

Jane's Addiction hadn't played anything from the somewhat popular Kettle Whistle, but they did improve upon the tried and true. This was concert as subtle interpretation, a process of intelligent selection that brought out trademark opening bass riffs, for example, but chose to twist slightly the solemn hollering of "Mountain Song." Overcoming the odds, the band and the man who founded Lollapalooza had a very convincing, very good relapse, with music so full you could breathe it in.