Top 19 -- Jane's Addiction: Jane's Addiction

We've come to the part of the Top 19 where I no longer talked about these albums on Facebook. Even though they're still in the Top 19  I guess you can consider them honorable mentions or runners up to the Top 10 Facebook list.*

* This preamble seems highly unnecessary but so is this list.

By the time I started my second semester of my junior year at Merrimack College, I was done with two of my roommates. And they were done with me. We had lived together for two years and those peccadilloes that we thought were funny and quirky when we were sophomores were now annoying and grating. We spent a lot of time with each other going all the way back to freshman year, but these last four months were a slog or passive aggressive bitterness. 

I was a dick and would get really drunk every weekend at some party and go on and on about how "they missed out" and how the party at the apartments "was just so fucking good." My roommates were homebodies and didn't like going out, so I knew what I was doing and which buttons to hit. They were getting into jam bands like Phish, the Grateful Dead, Blues Traveller and Dave Matthews and I'd constantly tell them how bad these bands were while listening to my music (Led Zeppelin, the Doors, Public Enemy) over and over again at loud volumes. 

And then they'd do stupid shit to me too. Like rearrange the room that my roommate and I shared. One day my roommate let his girlfriend, who I couldn't  stand, wear one my hats--which when I spotted her across campus with it, I went fucking bananas when I got back to our suite. "Who the fuck do you think you are, thinking that your girlfriend can wear my 1961 pinstriped Cincinnati Reds hat? That's my hat, not yours," which is pretty much word-for-word something that I once said in all seriousness and anger.  

So the feeling was more than mutual when around March of 1995, I just wasn't interested in hanging out with them that much any more. One of the guys that I really started hanging out with a lot during this time, was a big Jane's Addiction fan. He especially loved this album and before we'd go out on Friday and Saturday nights, we'd end up playing drinking games and listening to this album over and over and over again. 

When I was doing some research on this album, I found out that this was recorded in late January 1987 and released that May, which seems like a pretty quick turnaround. And it sounds like it. Even though the Wikipedia page said that the crowd noises were goosed by a Los Lobos audience, there is an energy here that you don't get in a lot of debuts. I think that's because most debut albums aren't recorded live. 

Jane's Addiction is very much a Los Angeles band. During their ascent they were sharing the Sunset Strip with all of the hair metal bands that called LA their home: Motley Crue, Poison but mostly the second-wave of hair bands that were coming up in the late 80s like Warrant and Slaughter. For Jane's Addiction not to copy that style of both dress and music is a remarkable tribute to Jane's Addiction classic lineup of Perry Farrell, Dave Navarro, Stephen Perkins and Eric Avery. 

By the time that I had found Jane's Addiction and really enjoyed them, they had released two other albums, headlined Lollapalooza and broken up. So to me, Jane's Addiction was the "band that got away". Between drinks, my friend and I spoke a lot about how awesome it would be to have seen Jane's Addiction and how stupid it was for them to break up. "They had so much more left in the tank," I probably said. 

Over the years, I saw Jane's Addiction twice: once was a really good show, the other was a complete shitshow. They reunited in 1997 and played a college tour. My friend and I went with his girlfriend and a few other friends to see them at Brandeis University, which is outside Boston. Red Hot Chili Pepper bassist Flea was subbing for Avery, so I was incredibly excited about this show. I wasn't alone. The show was held at a smallish gym that was packed with people eager to see the reunited band. I don't think that Brandeis understood what kind of concert that this was going to be because even I could see that security was lax and the barrier between band and audience was barely existent. 

Navarro came out and played the first note to either "Mountain Song" or "Ocean Sized" (I can't remember, it was a long time ago) and the entire audience rushed the stage at once. Farrell begged for the crowd to back up, finished the song and the band left the stage citing safety concerns--who could blame them. About an hour and change later, the band came out and played a handful of acoustic songs and that was it. Curfew came and Jane's was gone. 

A few years later, I saw Farrell's second band, Porno for Pyros during the WBCN River Rave, which was an all-day festival. There was a rumor that Navarro and Flea were going to jet up from Washington DC to reunite with Farrell, but it never happened. I'm not sure where I heard that, but I was taking it as gospel and was completely disappointed when Farrell and his band left without Flea and Navarro playing a note. 

The last time I saw Jane's Addiction was at Lollapalooza 2003. The show was great and nothing went awry. They played all of the songs that I wanted to hear without any shenanigans and it was great. I guess third time is the charm. But after spending money and time waiting to see a good Jane's show, it put to rest any romantic notions of the mercurial band. It sucks when you are disappointed by a performance and there's nothing fun about saying, "Yeah, that show was a complete disaster. But at least I have a cool story!" 

I'd rather have heard a good show. 

To wrap this blog up, I want to say that my roommates and I made up during the following year. We didn't room together and that was for the best and we became better friends. I still text with these guys a few times a week and we joke about how we were assholes to each other when we were younger. It sucks, but it happens. Looking back on it, when you're in your late teens and early 20s, it's probably not a good idea to room with the same people for more than a year. You're way too self-absorbed for anyone to handle you for more than 12 months. Add in the crucible of the cinder block or a small dormitory suite, alcohol, other illicit substances, the pressures of school and the opposite sex and this was  tinder box. I'm surprised that we didn't murder each other. 

Good Songs XXV

Stop! – Jane’s Addiction

Closer – Nine Inch Nails

Ziggy Stardust – David Bowie

Down With Disease – Phish

South of the Border – The Simpsons

The Summer Wind – Frank Sinatra

The Choice is Yours – Black Sheep

Louder Than A Bomb – Public Enemy

I Stay Away – Alice In Chains

Drive In, Drive Out – Dave Matthews Band

Egg Man – The Beastie Boys

Rocket – Smashing Pumpkin

Never Tear Us Apart – INXS

Deeper Shade of Soul – Urban Dance Squad

The Reflex – Duran Duran

Let’s Stay Together – Al Green

Heart Shaped Box – Nirvana

Crush With Eyeliner – REM

Love Fool – The Cardigans

Crazy – Seal

NOTE: When I typed the words "Dave Matthews Band and Phish" into the Google machine, the second picture came up before the first picture. The first picture, if you don't know, is Dave Matthews and Phish lead singer Tre Anastasio. Infer what you will from that.  

This is part two of a two-cassette tape set that I created in the spring of 1997. You read about the first half in Tuesday’s mammoth entry. I don’t think that this Blog post is going to come anywhere near 3,000 words, so let’s dive right in.

This tape has two bands that I don’t like very much anymore: the Dave Matthews Band and Phish. Add the Grateful Dead from last entry’s mix and you have an unholy trinity of jam bands that love nothing more than to waste their audience’s time. That’s my biggest issue with jam bands as a whole, I don’t like being at a concert and waiting 20 minutes to hear the next song.

And this goes double for bands that I do like, I have a Led Zeppelin live CD and there is a 33-minute version of “Dazed and Confused”. You know how many times I’ve listened to that track? Never. Not once. You know why? Because I have better things to do with my time than listen to Jimmy Page act as if he’s never seen a guitar before. Moby Dick is on that album too. Who wants to listen to a 20-minute drum solo? TWENTY MINUTES of John Bonham banging on the drums. You’re right Slater, you do need strong acid to handle that shit.

Actually my problems aren’t entirely with the bands—I likea bunch of the Dead’s studio stuff*, there are a handful of Phish songs I can tolerate and DMB, ugh—but it’s the fans of these bands who, for the most part, drive me crazy. Dead fans are the most benign of this lot, as they get high, trade tapes and stay smiling in the corner. Though there are some exceptions. When I was in college, nothing was worse than the newly minted Dead fan, the guy (and it usually was a guy) who “just found the Dead”. Ugh. There’s not a more annoying person alive than the person who was recently baptized in lake Jerry. And they’re all so eager to convert you. No, I do not want to hear the Dead live in Munich from 1973, Larry—especially if the band is going to jam on a “Box of Rain” for 37 minutes. 

* Do I think it takes talent to jam on a song for more than 10 minutes? Sure. But lots of things take talent and there are a lot of things that I don’t have the patience to watch. Much less spend $100 for a ticket. The Dead have some good music, some nice harmonies and wrap songs up in less than five minutes on most studio albums. I enjoy that. Music isn’t like baseball, I don’t want it to go on forever. Like David Spade once said, “Play the song like it is on the record. NO TRICKS!” Ugh. I can’t believe I quoted David Spade. See what you’ve done to me, Grateful Dead fans?

On a personal note, I had to live through that very sad day in August of 1995 when Jerry Garcia died. That was a truly troubling day. Not because Garcia died, but because I had to listen to every two-bit Dead fan cry about how “Jerry” and how his death was “really going to affect them”. No. You got over it, just like people got over the death of Kurt Cobain, John Bonham and Shannon Hoon. You just got extra high that night, because “that’s what Jerry would have wanted”. The same Jerry Garcia who died of a drug overdose, yup that’s exactly what he would have wanted.

I was working in the Merrimack College library that summer and my friend came in all dejected. I lived with this guy for a year and he knew about my musical taste and he solemnly said, “Dude. Dude, did you hear? Dude, did you hear about Jerry? What a bad day. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I can’t sit in class.” Ugh. You just started liking this band six months ago, which was a year after your Saigon Kick phase. You’re going to be fine.

The one interesting aspect of the day Jerry Garcia died was that Dead member Bob Weir was at the Hampton (NH) Beach Casino that night performing with his band. Since I lived six miles from the venue at the time, I took a drive to see what the scene was like.

I wasn’t a big fan (obviously) but the scene was sad as hundreds of people from around the area came to sit outside the small theater to pay their respects to the man that they loved so much. That was amazing because Hampton Beach is about as far away from the Dead’s stomping grounds as you could get. But people were sad and didn’t know what else to do with their grief but they collectively thought to go to a place where they knew that there would be a collective of their people. And that was nice. There were tons of television crews outside, interviewing Deadheads and talking to them about Garcia and his impact on their lives. That was therapeutic too, I imagine.

I did try hard to be a jam-band guy when I was in college. I did. I tried my best to grow my hair out*, not care about my appearance, and really get into the music, man. But I couldn’t. I just don’t have the patience. And no band tested my patience more than Phish.

* This was a disaster. When my hair gets long, it gets incredibly bushy. I already have a long head, I don’t also need a house plant sitting on the top of it.

The first few dozen times I heard Phish, they were okay. They had some interesting melodies, clever-ish lyrics and a nice mythology. “Dude. They’re from Vermont and they love their fans because they let them tape their shows for free and someone I know knows someone who knows them and he says they are really good people.” But my college roommate was really into Phish and he got my other roommates really into Phish and he got some of my hallmates really into Phish. After a while, it was wall-to-wall Phish, around the clock. And when they weren’t playing Phish, they were talking about Phish. “Do you know that Phish drummer John Fishman plays the vacuum cleaner on stage?” That makes sense, because they both suck.

After a few months of listening to Phish and the endless supply of bootlegs* that my roommates procured, I couldn’t take it any more. The interesting melodies had become ponderous, plodding guitar solos that had become boring and masturbatory. The clever-ish lyrics had devolved into a bunch of random words thrown on a page and sung quickly to masquerade the fact that they held zero meaning. By 1995, the sight of the Phish logo made me want to gut some neo-hippies.

* I will say this, Phish fans were one of the first to understand the power of the internet. One of my roommates used to logon to Usenet (a prehistoric Reddit) and scour alt.music.phish for people trading tapes. He’d contact them, they send a tape (often for free) and my buddy would have two hours of new music to listen to. That was Jetsons-like in 1995.

This leads me to the question: if I hated a band so much in 1995, why did I constantly add them to a mix tape over and over and over again? I can’t answer that question. Maybe I just liked these particular songs. Maybe on some level I enjoyed being the only anti-Phish outsider* and listening to the songs reminded me of my college friends. I don’t know why I did it then, but listening to Phish now, maybe I took my hate for the band a little too far.

* To be truthful, I did enjoy being the Big Bastard on this one. I remember one night where my frustration got the most of me and ripping into Phish in front of my roommates, deriding the bands’ entire catalog as a “four assholes mindlessly noodling on their instruments”. I had to leave the room because I thought that they were going to hit me. And looking back, they had every right to. I was being the asshole that night, not Tre Anastasio.

I’ve seem to have made my peace with Phish and the Dead in the last few years, but I can’t do it with Dave Matthews. I don’t know whether I just outgrew them or what, but listening to a DMB song now is like fingernails on a chalkboard. Like the Phish phungus, DMB was brought into my life by the same college roommate – he also was fond of Blues Traveller (before they went commercial), Rusted Root (I still can’t believe they nabbed a national commercial), God Street Wine, New Riders of the Purple Sage and another band whom I can see the cover of their CD but can’t remember the name. Each band was terrible, aside from Dave Matthews.

We played “Under the Table and Dreaming” a lot in my room during the spring of 1995 and I liked it. In fact, I liked Dave Matthews quite a bit; eagerly anticipating their follow-up to UtTaD, “Crash”, watching their videos on MTV and seeing them in concert in the fall of 1996 (which was really good—though the next day I saw Pearl Jam in concert and that was wayyyyyy better). Yeah, DMB were a jam band, but they were an interesting jam band – they had a saxophone AND a violin! That made for some totally different music.

I don’t consider myself a hipster—and if you look back at these Good Songs entries, I’m sure you don’t either—but as DMB got more and more popular, I liked them less and less. Which is dumb, I know, but I couldn’t stand to be lumped in with the same people who I saw at the second Dave Matthews Band show I went to. I stood behind one girl who screamed for “Satellite” for the entire show. By the end, she was losing her damn mind pleading and yelling for “Satellite” over and over and over and over again. Side note, the group did not play “Satellite” that night and the wailing banshee went home very sad.

It was at the very moment that I decided, “I don’t want to become part of this” and started to distance myself from the band. I bought the group’s third album and half-heartedly gave it a listen, but I was done. My friend was a super Dave fan at the time and he got a bunch of tickets to a show in Foxboro* which I went to. But I only stayed for the opening acts (Ben Fold Five and Beck) and then I went back to the party bus that he rented to transport us to the gig. I’m a notorious cheapskate, if I paid money to see a movie that turns out to suck, I’ll stick with it, but I didn’t feel bad about leaving that show early on that night.

* The Dave Matthews Band is the first band I’ve ever seen in concert where the shows moved to progressively larger arenas. First one was at the TD Garden, second was at GreatWoods and the last one was at the old Foxboro Stadium.

I am all done with Dave.

The rest of this tape is still really good. Some quick hits:

The Simpsons – they actually didn’t sing “South of the Border”, Gene Merlino did, but I first heard it on the “Kamp Krusty” episode and it blew me away. Maybe it was because that episode was one of my favorite episode endings of all time, “Get ready for two weeks in the happiest place on Earth! TIAJUANA!” and then the drum hits. What a song.

Beastie Boys – this song reminds me of a lip sync my friends did in high school, but aside from the high school nostalgia the song itself is pretty awesome. This whole album (Paul’s Boutique) was the beginning of a long stay at the top for those guys—even though no one knew it at the time.

Duran Duran – “The Reflex” is the best pop song of the 1980s. I believed it when I was in fifth grade and I continue to believe it now. DD may have bottomed out in the 90s (find their album of covers) but they knew what they were doing when they were famous.

Good Songs XXII

Strange Days – The Doors

Suzy Greenberg – Phish

Over the Hills and Far Away – Led Zeppelin

Only Happy When it Rains – Garbage

Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite – The Beatles

Ants Marching – Dave Matthews Band

Run Through the Jungle – Credence Clearwater Revival

Glorified G – Pearl Jam

Theme from Shaft – Isaac Hayes

March of the Pigs – Nine Inch Nails

The Golden Road (to Unlimited Devotion) – Grateful Dead

Who Will Save Your Soul – Jewel

Tears of a Clown – Smokey Robinson

Supernova – Liz Phair

Free Ride – Edgar Winters Group

In Bloom – Nirvana

Is There Any Love In Your Heart – Lenny Kravitz

Kids in America – The Muffs

Unbelievable – EMF

Comfortably Numb – Pink Floyd

I’ll Stick Around – Foo Fighters

Take the Money and Run – Steve Miller Band

I really didn’t want to graduate college. Like at all. My last semester of college was supposed to be my funnest, a culmination of 17 years of school, but I spent a lot of time dreading May 19 and worrying about the days beyond. I enjoyed Merrimack College, especially my senior year when I really liked the classes I was taking, loved where I was living and had a lot of fun with my friends. I had no idea what I was going to do with my English major (and Visual Arts minor!), had zero job prospects* and did not look forward to moving home with my parents.

* When I think of how I used to apply for jobs back in 1996, it feels like I’m talking about 1892. Every Sunday night I’d open the Boston Globe Want Ads, circle the jobs that I wanted, print out a cover letter and resume, stuff it into an envelope and mail it to the company. Sometimes, I’d open the Yellow Pages and send an unsolicited letter and resume to every publishing company I could find. Before companies discovered the ultranet, it was hard as hell to find a job back in those days.

I love my parents and it was cool as hell for them to take me back, but I had just spent the better part of four years living in close proximity to my best friends and didn’t have to answer to anyone. Now it was back to a world of free food, free laundry service and no bills to pay. Ugh, the agony.

My parents also were nice enough to buy me a car after I graduated school. I’m not what you call a car guy, at all. I use my vehicles to get from Point A to Point B and I honestly don’t care what it looks like, as long as it’s reliable. My first car was a light blue 1988 Ford Tempo that my dad (who was a traveling insurance adjuster) beat the hell out of before it was passed down to me. It ran, though not always at the times I wanted it to. So when I was able to get my own set of wheels I wanted something fast and I wanted something sporty—something that was the complete opposite of my personality. I got that when I purchased my 1987 Honda Prelude Si.

I know that we’re not talking a Ferrari or Camero, but that car was the first and only car, that I really loved. Jet black and fast as a rocket, my ride was essentially a two seater (the back seat was technically there but it was extremely tight) and with the seats being so low to the ground, I felt as if in I was in the most supped-up sports car. However, less than eight months after I bought it, I blew out the engine*, but after a new one was put in, the thing ran like a dream for years.

* This was to the only malady to happen to Jet Black (which is what I called my car--my first car was called Baby Blue [because I thought I'd get a ton of babes] my third car was called Norrin Radd because it was silver and Radd is the real name of the Silver Surfer. Yes, I know.), the first week I had it, I had to replace the driver’s side door when I jumped out of my car and forgot to put it in gear—the Dukes of Hazzard were on and I was pumped. The car lurched forward into my friend’s father’s boat and there was a massive hole in the door (the boat was fine). Apparently this was a thing with me and new cars because the very first day I had Baby Blue, I smashed into a DPW truck when I was too busy staring at a girl in spandex and not watching what was in front of me. I smashed the truck’s light and busted up my fender. Did I mention I took the car after my parents told me not to because it was without plates? Because that’s exactly what I did.

I did what any person with a new car and no job did, I delivered pizzas. And this playlist was the Good Songs tape* I created when I was bringing pizzas and subs to the fine people of Newburyport, MA in 1996.

* The only difference between this playlist and the actual Good Songs tape is that I included TV theme songs between every other song. The 90210 and a majority of the 70s and 80s crime themes were particularly awesome driving music. BTW, I bought five TV Theme CDs (they were kind of expensive too) one year because I thought it would be a cool conversation starter if a girl looked at my disc collection. No one ever mentioned them.

That summer was the best that I ever had as I either aimlessly floated around my pool on Fun Island (a gigantic yellow tube), played Wiffle Ball, went to the beach or watched TV until it was time to deliver pizzas from 4:00 to 8:00. After that, I went drinking with my friends. I do wish that I saved some of that money and went to Europe that fall, but I didn’t have the courage to go by myself, so I essentially threw the cash away. But this tape was the sound track of my summer. I think that there was a part two of this playlist, but I can’t seem to find it.

The song on this tape that sticks out like a sore thumb is Jewel’s debut, “Who Will Save Your Soul”. I am pretty sure that I chose this song mainly because I found Jewel extremely attractive because as a song, it’s not very good. The lyrics, the guitar playing; it’s all really basic and clichéd. I think that this was a hit because of Jewel’s story, she was a homeless in Alaska! and made her way to California where she was discovered and given a record contract. Or something like that.

People love stories like that and if they star a good-looking girl, even better. And I was caught up in that. I remember using some college graduation money to buy “Pieces of You” at Newbury Comics and trying really hard to like it. I thought that it might say something about me if I could like this album. But I couldn’t do it. I thought that it was terrible and couldn’t stand the over-serious writing, the elementary guitar playing and her voice wasn’t pleasing either. I didn’t hate Jewel, but by the end of the summer, I was pretty sick of her.

Another CD I bought on that Newbury Comics excursion was Garbage’s premiere effort, “Garbage”. Unlike “Pieces of You”, I thought that this CD was excellent. I loved how lead singer Shirley Manson’s voice paired with the rest of the band’s sound. It was sexy, it was unapologetic, it was really awesome. “I’m Only Happy When It Rains” was one of three popular hits from the CD (“Queer” and “Stupid Girl”), but the whole album is something that you should check out if you haven’t.

Their sound softened a bit over the years, but Garbage’s first album was something special. One of the things that were so cool about the group was how innovative it was, and with super producer Butch Vig (he was behind such bands as Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Sonic Youth, among others) it’s no surprise that Garbage had a sonic sound that was unlike anything on the radio at the time.

Pearl Jam might be one of my favorite bands of all time and I’ll probably write more about them in another entry, but I am conflicted about “Glorified G”. The first time I bought “Vs.” this was the one song that I came back to again and again and again. I liked the bouncy rhythm, the guitar riff, the lyrics were something I was interested in and it was just a good tune.

But one day my roommate was making fun of another friend of ours and he said something to the effect of, “Yeah, I bet that your favorite Pearl Jam song is ‘Glorified G’!” With the implication that GG was not “serious enough” for real Pearl Jam fans and was thrown on the CD to please teeny-bopper PJ followers. You know, the ones that don’t really get “Daughter”. In any event, that throw-away line from a long-forgotten fight, got to me and I never told anyone that I liked that song, lest they think that I wasn’t a true fan of Eddie and the boys*.

* Yes. This is something one contemplates when one doesn’t have anything to really worry about.

But my love for this song didn’t go away and I felt pretty bold putting this song on a tape that was going to get a lot of airplay. Especially in the summer with the windows and moon roof rolled down. But by then, I had a boxful of Pearl Jam bootlegs and if anyone attacked my fandom, I could show them my collection. “Would a teeny-bopper fan have Pearl Jam, live in Atlanta from April 1992? Huh?”

I’ve made my peace with the song (I’m still a supporter!) but during the last five or six years, the song has taken on a new meaning. The number one sports radio show in the state is “Felger and Mazz” and as far as sports talk goes, the show is okay. There’s your typical daily HOT SPORTZ TAKE but sometimes they can dial it back and have good conversation about the day’s event. The song that opens up every hour on the Felger and Mazz tape is a loop of the opening guitar rift, so when I heard it today I expected to be assaulted with a diatribe on why the Patriots are so cheap or why David Ortiz is a wimp or why the Bruins and Celtics are hopeless suckbags.

I was pleasantly surprised to not hear any of that.

Trent Reznor moved to 10050 Cielo Drive Benedict Canyon in Los Angeles when he was working on “The Downward Spiral”. You might remember that address as the home of Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski. And you might remember that a very pregnant Tate and her pals were brutally slaughtered by Charlie (no relation to Shirley) Manson’s zombie death squad in August 1969. The word “Pig” was written  in blood on a door of that particular house. You might also remember that the day after the Tate killings, another of Manson’s group mutilated Rosemary and Leno LaBianca. Before leaving the house, Susan Atkins carved the word “PIG” into the stomach of Leno with a fork.

Reznor wrote a song called “March of the Pigs”.

I’m not sure how I feel about it. I know that when I was younger I thought that it was cool that Reznor did this because it was spooky (okay) and anti-authoritarian and all that fight-the-power bullshit. But now that I’m a little older, glorifying a mass murder might not be the best thing to do. And I’ve read interviews where Reznor essentially feels the same way.

The song is still really good, I love the driving, industrial beat – it was a staple of any gym mix that I’ve made through out the years. But the sentiments behind it may be a bit off. 

Good Songs XIX

Box of Rain – Grateful Dead

Would? – Alice In Chains

No Excuses – Alice In Chains

Low – Cracker

Loser – Beck

Killing in the Name Of – Rage Against the Machine

Me and Julio – Paul Simon

50 Ways to Leave Your Lover – Paul Simon

You Can Call Me Al – Paul Simon

New Style – The Beastie Boys

Verse Chorus Verse – Nirvana

Spin the Bottle – Juliana Hatfield

Mrs. Robinson – The Lemonheads

Into Your Arms – The Lemonheads

L.A. Medley – Jane’s Addiction

Been Caught Stealing – Jane’s Addiction

My Time – Jane’s Addiction

Rock & Roll – Jane’s Addiction

Sympathy – Jane’s Addiction

Fee – Phish

Linger – The Cranberries

If this playlist or mix tape had a smell, it would reek of Keystone Light or Milwaukee’s Best. This tape was created sometime in the spring of 1994 and it features a lot of the songs that my friend Archie and I would listen to while we sat in our dorm rooms, played cards or Sega Genesis and drank.

When I went to Merrimack College in the mid-1990s, the school was in a strange place. It was beginning a transition from a small Catholic college that didn’t have many students living on campus, to what it is now: a medium-sized Catholic college with a good amount of kids living on campus. There were advantages to attending a small college: most people knew who you were (which could also be a disadvantage) and the classes were smaller. But there were disadvantages; mainly the social life could be incredibly dull*. 

* Merrimack did have fraternities, but there was no need for them. Merrimack was located in North Andover and Andover, MA and both towns had laws strictly forbidding frat houses – not that it would matter, the rent for places in those two towns were astronomical. Many of the fraternity houses were located in the next city over: Lawrence. Freshman year, the parties were fun but as we got older, the parties became lame. The frat dudes didn’t want us there, which is understandable since we were guys. Who wanted more guys at a party? We’d end up paying $5 for a cup of skunky beer, which was refilled after you waited in line for 20 minutes, the cops would inevitably show up around 10:00 and we’d have to go home. After awhile, it wasn’t worth the trip to leave campus.

There were parties in the on-campus apartments, but we were sophomore guys and never got invited because, again, who wants more guys at a party? And most of my friends didn’t have the cash or the fake IDs to get into Boston bars. Therefore we had to drink in our tiny dorm rooms—which by the way, were dry, so we had to sneak our alcohol past resident assistants working the front door, days in advance*.

* I’m not even going to front and nostalgically say how sweet each beer tasted because you had to work to bring it up to your room. It sucked. There was nothing fun or romantic or cool about sneaking beer into your dorm room. Take this from a person who was busted doing this.

Archie had good music taste and we listened to a lot of Jane’s Addiction that spring – he was a big fan of the band. And I became obsessed with the group too, especially their first CD. Their first CD makes up a bulk of this tape and I’m surprised that I didn’t include “Jane Says” because I listened to that song a lot when I was a college sophomore.

Like I wrote about during the last entry, “L.A. Medley” hit me in a couple of areas: it comingled my old obsession (the Doors, most of the song was an “L.A. Woman” cover) with my new obsession (Jane’s Addiction), it was from a live bootleg CD (so exciting, so rare!), Perry Farrell was cool (he was the face of Lollapalooza) and the band had broken up (so I could wallow about missing them – I saw them play live twice in the coming years). Basically it had everything 1994 Byron was looking for in a group.

And I still think that 1994 Byron is right as Jane’s Addiction is a great group to listen to—especially their pre-Kettle Whistle/pre-reunion stuff. “Been Caught Stealing” was their break-through hit and was on heavy rotation on MTV back in the day. When I first saw it, the video seemed strange in that it featured a bunch of weird-looking people* ripping off food from a dimly lit and dirty supermarket. Added to that montage were quick shots of Farrell with nylons stretched over his head singing, which is an image that’s difficult to forget.

* Looking at the video now, the people weren’t really strange looking, they looked like folks you run into every day. Twenty five years ago, that looked “strange” because MTV was wall-to-wall beautiful people. On MTV, a person with normal body proportions and regular facial features looked grotesque and odd.

When grunge and alternative music exploded, I don’t know if Jane’s Addiction ever really got the mainstream credit that they deserved and that’s probably because they weren’t in the spotlight for too long. Both them and the Red Hot Chili Peppers were both LA-based bands that didn’t kowtow to the glitzy, hair-metal music that was popular at the time. Their sound wasn’t as polished, it was a bit more funky and sludgy at the same time (if that makes sense). The guitars were still fast, but the song lyrics were a bit more thoughtful, a bit more real than anything that Poison or Motley Crue were putting out at the time.

Jane’s Addiction broke up just a hair before the alternative music wave crashed into the mainstream. If they had stayed together, would they have been as popular as the Red Hot Chili Peppers? I don’t know. But it is interesting to think of a world where the RHCP broke up in 1991 and the JA kept making music together for over 30 years.

The Paul Simon tracks aren’t me thinking that I was Merrimack College’s answer to Lorne Michaels, but those songs were the ones that we listened to most when we were drinking. Now that I have children, “Me and Julio” has taken on a different connotation. The song was included on “The Muppets” (the Jason Segal remake – which was actually quite excellent) and my kids begged us to listen to this song over and over and over again. A request my wife and I complied with because, this song is awesome.

The Nirvana and Beastie Boy tracks are from an album called “No Alternative” which collected many of the best acts of the day—there was at least one song from every one of my favorite bands (Beasties, Nirvana, Soundgarden, the Breeders, Matthew Sweet) at the time, except for Pearl Jam—and the money was donated to AIDs relief. The Beastie Boy song is a live version of “The New Style” and the Nirvana cut is one of the “hidden tracks” that bands used to do back in the day.

A hidden track referred to a song being at the very end of the CD. It was never listed on the track list but sometimes, if you let a CD continue playing after the end of the last song, it would pop up. Sometimes, you’d have to listen for up to 20 minutes to get the hidden track, which was annoying (and scary – if you forgot that there was a bonus track) as hell, but it was a precursor to DVD Easter Eggs.

I told you that the 90s were a magical time!

It’s not often that something lives up to your imagination, but for one brief speck of time: I felt as that I had correctly foreseen my college experience. I made it through high school with decent grades, but I never studied for one test (aside from chemistry – God, I was terrible at chemistry). My philosophy was: I paid attention in class, I took notes, I did the homework; if I didn’t know the material at that point, then studying wasn’t going to help me. This is the rationale of a very lazy person.

However, I knew that college was going to be a different ball game, as I’d have to get serious and study because things were going to be much more difficult. The summer before college started, I was lying in my bed thinking about going to school outside of Amesbury for the first time and I began romanticized about late-night walks home from the library after cramming for a test. I had seen this scene a million times in countless movies about college and it seemed so cool: broken pencils and balled up papers, coffee cups stacked to the roof, the tell-tale signs of a person working his ass off to get a good grade. There was something very satisfying about it.

Fast forward to December of my freshman year, I was through studying for final exams (quick aside: not as glamorous as I envisioned!) and I was on my way home. It was snowing, but not very hard, there was a nip in the air and I was listening to the Cranberries “Linger” on my Walkman. And as I was walked down the street lamp-lined path to my dorm, it occurred to me that this was how I pictured this moment many months ago. Maybe not exactly, but the feeling of accomplishment that I imagined was exact. I felt good that I actually studied, I felt like I accomplished something, that I was finally becoming a responsible person.

After coasting through life and not really giving a shit, it was an amazing feeling that I did care.  

I once read that the sense of smell is linked most strongly to memory. But I think that a close second is your hearing, because every time I hear “Linger”; I feel that chill in the air, the snow falling gently on my face, the feeling of solitude and that sense of pride that one gets when they work hard and they’re prepared for the next day’s test.

As I was listening to that song this morning, I thought things may not be that great today, but they will be better tomorrow. It always is.   

Good Songs XVIII

Here Comes the Sun – The Beatles

Suck My Kiss – Red Hot Chili Peppers

Cut Your Hair – Pavement

Crush with Eyeliner – REM

Undone (the Sweater Song) – Weezer

Summer Breeze – Seals and Croft

Here and Now – Letters to Cleo

Rock N’ Roll All Nite – KISS

Down With Disease – Phish

Like a Rolling Stone – Bob Dylan

Run Like Hell – Pink Floyd

Would? – Alice in Chains

Do You Feel Like We Do – Peter Frampton

Head Like a Hole – Nine Inch Nails

When I Come Around – Green Day

Crazy – Seal

Type – Living Colour

If I Only Had a Brain – MC 900ft Jesus

For some reason, the theme of television, and to a lesser extent movies, weaves its way through this edition of Good Songs. And that makes sense because TV is awesome. 

When I was a kid—and I’m talking really little, like three or four-years-old—I loved television. I love television now, but when I was a kid, I really loved TV*. However there was one problem with television back when I was younger, at around 1:00 am a majority of TV stations would stop broadcasting--especially the UHF stations (which were the only stations that broadcasted cartoons during the week). At the end of the day, there would be an announcement letting watchers know that the TV station was done with its broadcasting for the day, the National Anthem would play and that was it. Sometimes there was static, other times there was a test pattern.

If you’re too young or woke up after 6:00, a test pattern looked like this:

I’d wake up really early (5:00 or 5:30 am) and run into my parents room and demand that they’d turn on the small TV that sat on a little table at the foot of their bed. Chances are I wanted to watch New Zoo Revue or Romper Room or Underdog, but it didn’t matter. I just wanted to watch TV, however there was no TV to watch. The only thing that was on was the test pattern. So I’d watch that for an hour (I thought that the test pattern was a show and I called it “The Wheel”) and wait for real shows to come on. The good thing was that WLVI was kind enough to simulcast an easy-listening AM radio station while their test pattern was running.

* My kids are just as obsessed with TV as I was, to the dismay of my wife. I understand their fascination and I do my best to stop them from watching so much TV, because I guess TV is bad for you (though I don't believe that at all). But it’s almost impossible to change something that is hard-coded into their DNA. Sorry about that Aly, at least they aren’t watching digital paint dry.

While watching The Wheel the one song that I most recall listening to was “Here Comes the Sun” by the Beatles. As a kid I loved this song and I thought that it was programmed specifically to coincide with the early morning when the sun rose. I can vaguely recall sitting at the end of my parents’ bed (they were asleep, or at least they had their eyes closed) staring at the tube and once this song came out, I’d look out the window to see if the sun was rising yet. The way I have it in my head, this song meant cartoons were coming on soon (after a message alerting us that the broadcasting day was beginning, the National Anthem and a daily prayer). But that's probably not 100% true.

This is one of my all-time favorite Beatles songs and I’m sure it has a lot to do about my initial exposure to the tune. I’m 40-years-old and I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t get a half second of excitement that cartoons are going to be on real soon when my brain recognizes that first guitar chord. But it’s not just that, at the same time I’m getting that cartoon anticipation, I also feel a warmth that I don’t get too much any more. The warmth one has when they’re three-years-old and they’re sitting cross-legged at the foot of their sleeping parents’ bed. I hope that my children get that feeling 20 or 30 years from now and they run across an old episode of “My Little Pony” or “Avengers Assemble” and remember watching TV together in mom and dad's bed.

Speaking of obsessions, as I was looking over this play list I noticed that there were three songs from the “Dazed and Confused” movie soundtrack. Like I said in my last entry, I was completely consumed by this movie, so it’s really no surprise that I included this many songs on one tape.

“Rock N’ Roll All Nite” is a defensible entry, I think at this point it’s beat out NWA’s “Straight Outta Compton” or Public Enemy’s “Bring the Noise” as the song that’s been on the most Good Songs tapes. Although the live version is much better (Ace’s guitar solo is so awesome, I can’t believe they didn’t add it to the studio version) the studio version is fun too. I probably have listened to this song over 10,000 in my life and today was the first time I noticed that someone screams “Woo!” at the 1:53 mark. KISS, you always surprise!

When it comes to Peter Frampton, I was influenced by Janeanne Garofolo’s character in “Reality Bites” who said that everyone had that album. Also, it’s a pretty good song. It almost makes me want to see Frampton in concert. Again, defensible entry.

But “Summer Breeze”? I’m not sure what I was thinking here. I could say that I added as a mood changer, slow the tape down, in case I was with a lady and we were staring at my lava lamp and relaxing to some good songs. But that never happened. I could say that, like “Here Comes the Sun”, it harkened back to my days of watching the Wheel. And there’s some truth to that, I suppose. But I guess I really just liked this song, which is kind of embarrassing.

When it comes to finding the “next big thing”, I’m not that great. I was terrible at prospecting baseball cards*, a lot of the TV shows that I jump on early usually get cancelled and bands that I think have the whole package usually are one-hit wonders. Letters to Cleo was one of those bands that I thought were going to be gigantic and they never received any notoriety aside from this single. I remember seeing their video on MTV and just being blown away. 

* For those that don’t know, prospecting baseball cards involve finding a rookie at a low price, buying as many of the same cards as you possibly could and then when the rookie turns into a Hall of Famer, selling that stack of cards for a tidy profit. This never worked out for me and I’m stuck with dozens of Mike Greenwells, Wally Joyners and Todd Benzingers.

My take on LTC was that they had a really pretty vocalist (Kay Hanley) who sang well and looked great on camera, good musicianship and well-written songs. They came from Boston (always a plus in my book) and made a splash on MTV when women were making huge strides in the rock world. I bought their debut “Aurora Gory Alice” and was impressed with what I heard, unfortunately no one else was and they kind of faded into the ether of the 90s.

Hanley is a die-hard Red Sox fan, so she’s fun to follow on Twitter especially during baseball season. She’s a favorite of Peter Gammons and will perform at his annual Hot Stove Cool Music festival in Boston and Hanley writes the music for the kids’ show Doc McStuffins – which is where I hear her the most now. On the TV show “Parks and Recreation” one of the characters (Ben) wore a LTC t-shirt and they regrouped for a special Pawnee concert.

Oh well, like Todd Benzinger, Letters to Cleo had their moments too.

Quick hits:

There’s only one song on this playlist that I don’t particularly like any more and that’s Green Day’s “When I Come Around”. Like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, I’m just sick of Green Day being ubiquitous. I don’t even care that they are “serious artists” now, that’s an inevitability. You can’t be a 40-year-old married dude with a couple of kids and still act like an irresponsible 23-year-old. People would see right through that and it’s a pretty pathetic mask. After the release of “American Idiot”, I needed a Green Day time-out. Ten years later I still do.

Is there a better name than MC 900ft Jesus? I wish that he was more popular. We need more 900ft Jesuses.

“Cut Your Hair” is still my favorite song on this tape—and did ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption ever admit that they stole that show’s opening theme from Pavement? It’s the same damn song and someone (probably Stephen Malkmus) needs reparations! One of my friends was a die-hard Pavement fan from the very beginning. I told him that I wanted to buy “Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain” because I liked CYH. He told me that I wouldn’t like the tape, everything else was way different. He wasn’t being a jerk about his assessment but I took it the wrong way and it only emboldened me to buy the tape and prove to him that I liked Pavement.

He was right, I didn’t like it that much. It’s weird how when you’re younger innocent remarks like what my friend said could get under your skin and how you need to prove to others that they were wrong. There are a lot of great things about being young, but things like this aren’t one of them. 

Defending the Doors

Chuck Klosterman, recently released a new book of essays on pop culture. This isn't much of a surprise because, aside from one novel, the only books or magazine articles that Klosterman writes are ones about pop culture. Since he is one of my favorite authors, when I saw that he had an interview with the Onion's AV Club, I was happy to read it. You can read it here too.

One of the questions lead to a Klosterman musing about classic rock radio and how the scope is getting larger when it should be getting smaller. This lead the interviewer to ask which bands should be dumped, and Klosterman suggested the Doors. Here's a bit of the interview:

AVC: Are you scared of a world in which Weezer is viewed as part of the classic-rock canon? You write about them in the new book.
CK: I would like that, although I would have to concede that if that happened, the rock canon would have to be a lot bigger. I’m a fan of Weezer, but if they’re looked at as one of the greatest bands of all time, we must have expanded the definition of greatness. Which is always happening a little bit. The rock canon is bigger now than it was in the ’70s, and it’ll always get a little bigger. We add people more often than we kick people out.
AVC: I can’t think of any that have been kicked out recently.
CK: I feel like The Doors are on the cusp of being kicked out.
AVC: I would kick The Doors out. Would you?
CK: I would be one of the people advocating their removal from the canon. [Laughs.] As if I have any say in it!

It's not just Klosterman, during the last couple of years the backlash against the Doors has grown and I'm not exactly sure why. Are they the greatest group that ever walked the planet? No. Their lyrics are a bit pretentious, Jim Morrison really can't sing very well, keyboardist Ray Manzarek seems like a humorless prick who's way too impressed with himself, you can't really dance to their tunes and their songs are not fun for parties—except for “Peace Frog”.

Having said all that, they're really not a bad band. The drumming and guitar work by John Densmore and Robbie Krieger are excellent. Their sound is unique—it's hard to confuse the Doors with anyone else and that has a lot to do with Mazarek's organ playing—and their lyrics reflect a time in the United States where a lot of people were pretentious. Morrison may not be able to sing very well, but if you look up the definition of a rock star, his picture would be next to it. The man was a larger-than-life counter-culture figure who could be infuriating, but that's rock and roll.

When I was younger, I went through a phase where the Doors were my absolute favorite band in the world. I had a few Doors posters plastered on my walls at home and at school, I played their CDs constantly, I thought that it was awesome to get absolutely plastered like Morrison and I must have watched the Oliver Stone movie at least once a weekend. I bought into the whole image of what I thought that a Doors fan should be.

Yes, there were some embarrassing moments—walking down the freshman girls hall acting like Jim Morrison is not one of my fondest college memories—but for the most part, my infatuation with the band was harmless*.

* Though, I suppose that if you ask my roommates the same question, they'd give you a different answer. Much like they would say that their infatuation with Phish was harmless, though I'd say that listening to “Junta” or “Hoist” 50 times in a row almost drove me mad.

I look back on that portion of my life with fondness (even the embarrassing incidents) as it was a big part of the soundtrack to a great chunk of my life and it made me who I am today. Jim Morrison is probably not the best role model for a young teenager or a father, but for a college kid who just lost the parental shackles, he's one that many have had. And while he lived on excess and being uncontrollable, acting like Morrison wasn't my thing and that's an important discovery to make. Finding out what you like is easy, finding out what you don't like is a bit more difficult and just as important.

To be honest, the reason why I started liking the was band because I wanted to impress a girl. I had never even heard of the Doors until early 1991, and this was after Stone's movie was a hit in the theaters. As luck would have it, the hottest girl in our school had a last name that began with the letter M, which is the same letter that begins mine. We were in the same home room and our lockers were right next to each other. One day she began talking about the Doors and how much she loved them, especially Jim Morrison. She asked me if I had heard of them before and of course, I said yes.

For some reason, my younger brother had the Doors movie soundtrack on CD, so I swiped it that night and listened to it over and over and over until I felt like I was able to talk to that girl about the band. The plan sorta worked, the next day I spoke to her about songs and the band and Morrison and I think that she may have been impressed. However, it never went any farther than that—though the songs wormed into my head and I began to really like them. I kept buying more and more albums, read more books, watched as many documentaries as I could—by the time I went to college, I knew as much about the Doors as I did about anything else.

It seems that every music fan goes through certain phases as they try to figure out what type of music fant they're going to be: there's the Beatles phase (hardly anyone loses that), there's the Led Zeppelin phase (ditto), there's the KISS phase (that peters out by the end of junior high school), there's the rap and hip hop phase (take that, mom and dad!--especially if you're a white kid in the suburbs.). Somewhere there's a phase for “adult rock” like the Doors or Pink Floyd or Rush. These are bands that to a high school or college-aged kid sounds a bit more sophisticated (both musically and lyrically) than the stuff that they listened to before.

Most of the discussions tend to be about how “deep” and “meaningful” the lyrics are and how Jim Morrison really “could be the last great, American poet”. These conversations between teenage fans seem to be mature because the topics being discussed are high-brow stuff like poetry and the symbolism of lyrics, but most people get past this and move on to other things. And while I did get past these sort of discussions, I never got past the music—so I suppose I'm stuck in this phase, but that's not the worst thing in the world.

Like I said before, the Doors' songs are interwoven into my life and memories, so it's too hard to simply pick that thread out and throw it away. The fact is, no matter how hip a person claims to be and how “into music” that they say they are, there's always going to be a band that a person loves, though many people actively despise. Klosterman is unapologetic about being stuck in his KISS phase, so I'm not even sure why I should be expected to dump the Doors.