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Kurt Hernon:
August,
2003
Jane's
Addiction, Zeppelin and Feeling 17 Again
I keep smelling graphite; graphite and electric heat; graphite,
the heat of electricity, and the pleasant pungent odor of
hot, hot asphalt; graphite, the heat of electricity, the caustic
scent of hot pavement, and cooking grease - the fatty tangy
fragrance of French fries, hot dogs, burgers, and deep-fried
anything you can imagine. I smell mustard too. Not catsup
or vinegar or melted cheese, just mustard. The mustard is
on my shirt. Graphite, electricity, burning asphalt, cooking
grease and the rank foods it drowned, mustard, and cheap shampoo
- wafting to me on a summers breeze from the head of a young
girl in front of me. She’s probably all of fifteen or
sixteen years old, wearing soffe shorts (those inside-out
cheerleading shorts that usually say something stupid across
the ass) and it a pastel-blue terry cloth. She turns and it
doesn’t take me even a blink of the eye to notice that
there are no words on her ass - thank God. I’m nearly
37 years old. Maybe I’m 17 again. Who knows? I feel 17
today. I really do. But I don’t want to be 17 again.
Not now, not ever. Save for the pleasant eye-candy in front
of me, 17 sucks.
“It sounds like whales
fucking,” my friend Lucas says to me. Lucas chuckles
and smiles at his own smart-assed comment but his proud moment
finds itself cut short by a terse, near nervous yelp: “Here
we go”. Bottom heavy guitars drop out of the sky and
rumble like so many pissed off hard rock Gods. Lucas visibly
shivers. I smile and lean over to turn the car stereo up.
Way, way up. They used to call this heavy metal, but that
was before those queer art-rockers in Jane’s Addiction
fell off the gothic punk bandwagon in the mid 1980’s
and turned hard rock into the most gorgeous and bombastic
pseudo-psychedelic garbage art since Arthur Lee and Love took
the hippy dippy folk explosion of the 60’s and swallowed
it whole.
Lucas’ knuckles turn white when I push the rear speakers
toward their demise. I think he’s saying something but
I cannot hear him. I don’t want to hear him right now.
Not while Perry Farrell is howling with futility about “trees”,
“nature”, and other neo-conservationist nonsense
that somehow, jolted to ecstatic life by this weird and pure
adrenaline vibe that makes utter gibberish resonate like Revelations
A lead guitar line seesaws - no make that just “saws”
- through our heads like a flurry of lead slugs. I feel euphoric.
Lucas only seems afraid. I reach over and place my hand on
his. “Everything’s going to be alright,” is
my sincere intent in such a gesture. Lucas quickly dismisses
it in a manner he might use to shoo away an annoying fly.
The rush of noise surrounds us. I can feel my bones tingling
every time Dave Navarro’s guitar goes back down to the
bottom from whence it came. I close my eyes and revel. Heavy
metal hard rock has been saved - again!
The first and most obvious
thing about the opening track, “True Nature”, on
Strays, the new Jane’s Addiction record (and first in
a dozen years), is that bottom heavy groove guitar line that
serves as the songs foundation. It is, as critic Greg Kot
said in his Blender magazine dismissal of the record (giving
it two rather indifferent “stars”), what you could
call a Nu Metal riff - the sort that became cancerous to rockroll
after being used ad nauseum by so many rap/rock/mad-at-dad
hybridists - you know he culprits: Limp Bizkit, Korn, and
the like. And indeed, at first listen, being such a dead ringer
for this sort of testosterone prone rockroll riff, I admit
to having been more than just a bit disappointed the first
time I heard it. “These dumb motherfuckers,” is,
I believe, what I said (to myself). Let down by one of the
only bands I’d ever truly counted on. I should have known
better. What kind of fool am I? Of course a twelve-year hiatus
while indulging in the trappings of success would soften up
that keen old Jane’s Addiction vision. Who was I kidding
to think that this would be the same band, that band - the
RockRoll Circus on amphetamine overdrive band that thrilled
me like a dangerous and demented carnival ride?
But, oh how wrong Mr. Kot was! And oh, how wrong I was! Sure,
yes, it is a nu-metal riff that feeds “True Nature”
- absolutely! Feeds it, gorges it in fact and fattens it up
until it the whole thing damn near explodes. It’s a huge,
HUGE nu-metal riff…and a damn obvious one at that! It’s
so goddamn obvious that you fully expect an obnoxious prototype
stop/start rap/rant every time you hear Navarro’s guitar
dip down to the depths of a riff like this. And that, my friends,
is exactly the point here! That’s what too many people
seem to be missing. With a sly wink of an eye, a scrunch of
the nose, and a pinch on the ass, Perry Farrell and his happy
band of carnival freak rockrollers grab this nu-metal riffage
by its swollen balls and squeeze the arrogant faux angst right
out of them. You can almost hear Fred Durst squealing like
a little girl. And in the process of this cleansing, Jane’s
Addiction reclaims hard rock riffs of all kinds for everyone
who has always loved hard rock but loathed what the late 90’s
had turned it all into. Strays is a grand rock and roll recording,
and I, for one, welcome the hard rock upon which it is built
with arms as wide open as I can stretch ‘em!
Cotton candy. Soda pop, hot
and sticky, spilled across the walkway under a pitiless and
vindictive sun. Corn dogs and ice cream. Sweat. Sandals. Bikini
tops and shorts. Flip-flops. I still smell graphite. I can
still hear the fading pulsations of trains on tracks moving
60, 70, 80 miles per hour. I’m almost 37 years old and
I am waiting for the bumper cars. Again, I feel 17. Shit,
forget 17…I am 12. I scan my surroundings and find the
girl I will pursue on the ride. I’m gonnna bump her!
I like her sunglasses. And yes, she looks to be close to my
true age. Something has my brain twitching…a song…that
song…what is that song?
“Just Because”
is the best summer song I’ve heard this year. In fact,
it is the summer song…that summer song. You know the
one: that insanely addictive tune that gets under your skin
and into your bloodstream and pulsates throughout your being
constantly; the song that brings on the smell of coconut sun
lotion mingling with sweat; the tune that makes an 84 degree
day feel like it’s suddenly 90; the one cut that, no
matter how old you are at the time, plants your psyche in
perpetual teendom for the summer; the raving and raging music
of summertime living that convinces you that those three stone
cold foxes (there you go…I dated myself!) in the bikini
tops and shorts are looking at YOU and whispering a few “he’s
soo hot’s” to each other. Maybe it’s a Midwest
thing because summer is summer here, but Jane’s Addiction’s
“Just Because” is that song this year. Aural Viagra!
Not that I need to dope it up just to get things up, but ya’ll
know exactly what I’m saying or otherwise you probably
wouldn’t read my malarkey. You’re just like me,
face it pal.
Which really cuts right to the chase with these Jane’s
Addiction fellows, the whole sex thing. It is their trade.
Jane’s music has first and foremost, like nearly all
rockroll, always been about the sex. As far back as the mid
80’s when I’d first seen them play a rather turgid
set at a sparsely attended L.A. gig you could flat out feel
that sex vibe flying off of the band like so many drops of
their sweat. Now that ain’t to say it’s a “come-hither”
sexuality that inhabits their music (a rather ridiculous notion
that has me laughing at the thought as I type this), theirs
is far, far away from being a seductive sound. This isn’t
music made for one on oneness but rather it’s a hedonistic
racket that stakes itself to the orgy. It’s flesh, lots
of flesh. Hot, sweaty flesh. Hands. Grasping, groping, touching,
feeling hands. Many hands. Lips and limbs. Twisting and turning.
Intertwined. The volume of the music undulating. Throbbing.
Panting. Moaning. And one great big WHEW!
“Just Because” is an endless barrage of breathless
“whew’s” in a three or four minute span. Dave
Navarro’s guitar screams out a heart rate rising pace
as it opens…zigging and zagging…dodging the relentless
pump of the bass and drum he knows are on his heels. They
catch him and everyone tumbles to the ground by the time Perry
Farrell wheezes through his nose, “If I were you, I’d
better watch out. When was the last time you did anything?
Not for me or anyone else. Just because.” It’s an
exhilarating run and it’s nearly twice as fun in the
tumble. The song gleefully reintroduces the sort of hyper-sensual
possibilities that have always existed in hard rock but, until
Jane’s revivified them in the late 80’s, had gone
forgotten since the salad days of early Led Zep*.
But “Just Because” isn’t the be all and end
all here. Strays swells with rapturous rockroll moments. The
title tune is a classic Jane’s drama-piece meandering,
hammering away, daydreaming, losing itself in itself and then
finding its way once again. “Price I Pay” weds Farrell’s
ersatz social commentary (which is a huge chunk of the Jane’s
charm - how they deliver this bullshit with a straight, albeit
wasted, face) to the modern cautionary fable “The Riches”
and gives the album’s ten-plus-minute middle some serious
psychedelic heft (is that a goddamn flute in the breakdown
on “Price I Pay” or what?). “Superhero”,
“Wrong Girl”, “Suffersome”, and “Hypersonic”
fill out the back half of the record with a pretend hard funk
pout that seems somewhat lightweight when put upon to stand
up to the first half of the record, but the tracks are more
than worthy, quality and raging rockroll that suffer only
as the innocent victim of the lost art of song sequencing
in this CD age (front loading the platter with the choicest
tracks because that’s where people spend their listening
time is the ultimate in unfortunate reality of the digital
age). In the end, Strays is as king-hell a hoot as pure rockroll
escapism has been in a long, long time. Sure it’s as
nonsensical as it is bombastic, but that’s the way I
always want my hard stuff - hard on the ears but easy on the
mind; pure rip-rollicking and twisted fun. These cats in Jane’s
Addiction are one of the very few bands that have never, ever
let me down.
Standing in line, waiting for the bumper cars, I figure out
what’s got my head so giddy. “Just Because”
is blaring over the ride’s sound system and the fabulously
fit babe in pink top and matching short shorts - the one who
I assume to be around my age - is singing along. She’s
knows the song. Every last word of it. Watching her lips and
hips move to the music is hypnotic.
Man it’s hot. Very, very hot.
Must be this goddamn Midwestern humidity…right?
*Never having
been a true Led Zeppelin fan, I had to research my claim by
picking up How the West Was Won, the recent release
of Zep’s glorious SoCal shows in the very early 70’s.
I own all of Zep’s “proper” albums and had
never been captivated by any of them. I gave up and gave in
to believing that I just wasn’t a Zeppelin man. Well,
let me tell you this, How the West changed all of that in
about 55 seconds. “Live” is how the Zep was meant
to be experienced, and the early 70s are when they needed
to be heard - that is quite obvious to me now. So to all of
you former punk/post-punks like me who’d figured Led
Zeppelin to be another dinosaur of Rock’s Dead Period,
git yer hands on this amazing platter and reassess your prejudice,
you can worry about thanking me later.
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