Been Caught Squealin'

Tonight, I confront a combination
of two of the greatest forces of popular music I just don't get: Perry Farrell and turntables. I have nothing particular against either, in fact I think they have both been catalysts for very interesting thing outside of themselves. Janes Addiction, while being an OK band at best in my view has encourages a generation of shoegazing mumblers that you can rock out without having to give in to Cro-magnon masculinity, and I see turntablism as a form of distended folk art, with roots as DIY as cigar-box banjos and diddley bows, but it is now a field clogged with "geniuses." I don't buy into the Myth of Talent, I don't view music as a Van Cliburn competition, but dude, samplers are kinda easy. I'm more impressed with just plain DJ's that anonymously produce a perfect soundtrack without needed an ironic name attached. It could be jealousy, my college DJ name that somehow stuck was the Lord of the Bored, so it is possible I'm throwing stones at Perry's glass DJ booth.

But Janes Addiction. In the late 80's when they broke, they formed a trimuverate of really irritating music that blasted out of every crappy stereo as its owner and his buds peed in the yard. The pre-dub 311, Janes Addiction and pre-Rubin Red Hot Chili Peppers was a three-way clusterfuck dubbed Asshole Music. I hated this stuff. I remember seeing a hungry young Janes open for Love and Rockets at Tipitina's - one of the more inspired bad-booking-ideas ever. We superior Love and Rockets fans viewed this dreadlocked, shirtless howler monkey, bellowing "somebody give me a girl I can fuuuuuuuuck" at us with furrowed brows and furtive glances at our Swatches. We wanted our batcave denizens polite and aloof, thank you.

My next co-occupation of space with P-Fa was at Lollapalooza in the early 90's where all I remember about the Porno For Pyro's gig was: 1) it sounded like they had never played together, 2)Farrell was incredibly cut and 3) his gigantic serpentine penis he produced at unnanounced intervals and wagged at us.

Fast forward a decade, and I am sitting in a crappy bar/restaurant in Kansas City with fellow doughy office drones, waiting for our chicken finger baskets when P4P's appearance on SNL was being rebroadcast on the bar TV. My country bumpkin togolodyte co-workers were a tittering cacaphony of "WhatinthehellisTHAT" to P-Fa cavorting in what looked like a burnt Mardi Gras headdress. I answered their highly orginal assumptions of the performer's homosexuality with an assurance that the man in the exploded geisha costume up there had seen more pussy than the combined experience of the table. So he finally did me a little good, helping to bug the squares, but still, Jane will never leave Sergio no matter how bad he treats her, and I'll never think Janes is avery good despite pulling out my copy of Ritual de lo Habitual and old girlfriend left behind every six months, thinking I came around to Led Zeppelin, maybe I'll come around to this. Nope, still irritating. OK, "Jane Says" I've come around to, I like the steel drums vs heavy acoustic guitar in the dope haze aura. but you can have the rest of it.

But I'm on the list, and it should be a heartwarming freakshow mix of Baton Rouge's disco elite and some goth chicks hoping to ask him if he still has the painting they sent him years ago.

I tried to find the Da Capo Players version of "Been Caught Stealing" from The String Quartet Tribute to Janes Addiction, so this DeanMartin redux offa Richard Cheese's Appertif for Destruction will have to do.