2012.02.27 Massey Hall, Toronto, ON

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2012.02.27 Massey Hall, Toronto, ON

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Re: 2012.02.27 Massey Hall, Toronto, ON

Post by tvrec »

Got back a bit ago from this show. Hadn't anticipated being in town, but scored a craigslist ticket, and had a pretty good time.

The set list appears from immediate recall to be pretty much the same with "IF" switched out with "EttL." Highlight was "Three Days," but then I am biased. "I Would for You" was also nice, but I am still not sure on the electronic drums on it.

Set (I may not recall the order perfectly since I didn't write anything down)
Underground
Mountain Song
Just Because
Been Caught Stealing
Ain’t No Right
Ted, Just Admit It…
Twisted Tales
Classic Girl
Jane Says
I Would for You
End to the Lies
Three Days
Stop!
Words Right out of My Mouth
Ocean Size
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Re: 2012.02.27 Massey Hall, Toronto, ON

Post by Mike »

According to my friend the set list was as follows with Irresistible Force being swapped for End To The Lies.

Underground
Mountain Song
Just Because
Been Caught Stealing
Ain't No Right
Ted, Just Admit It...
Twisted Tales
Classic Girl
Jane Says
I Would For You
End To The Lies
Three Days
Stop!
Words Right Out Of My Mouth
Ocean Size

Edit: tvrec beat me to it.
Thanks tvrec! :cool:
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Re: 2012.02.27 Massey Hall, Toronto, ON

Post by tvrec »

There was also, I think, a Rush tease in there from Dave--"2112"--coming back from the acoustic break, an attempt to flex the Canadian chops, perhaps.
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Re: 2012.02.27 Massey Hall, Toronto, ON

Post by Mike »

tvrec wrote:There was also, I think, a Rush tease in there from Dave--"2112"--coming back from the acoustic break, an attempt to flex the Canadian chops, perhaps.
That's cool.
I dig it when Dave teases stuff at shows.
He seems to be able to play pretty much anything at the drop of a hat.
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Re: 2012.02.27 Massey Hall, Toronto, ON

Post by Mike »

Jane’s Addiction rocks out at Massey Hall

By Jane Stevenson ,QMI Agency
First posted: Tuesday, February 28, 2012 02:11 AM EST | Updated: Tuesday, February 28, 2012 02:21 AM EST

Image
Jane's Addiction singer Perry Farrell, left, and guitarist Dave Navarro played Massey Hall, Feb. 27, 2012. (Michael Peake/QMI Agency)

Perry Farrell called Jane’s Addiction’s 2011 album, The Great Escape Artist - their first collection of original material in eight years - because he’s always trying to escape his storied past, as the founder of alt-rock festival Lollapalooza, among other things.

And yet, Farrell, now 52, was up to his crazy old familiar ways on Monday night at Massey Hall as Jane’s Addiction - rounded out guitarist Dave Navarro and drummer Stephen Perkins, along with Chris Chaney on bass - put on a 90-minute show big on theatrical production with a muddled middle despite a strong beginning and end.

Note: Before the alt-rock icons played a single note, a large group of women were led across the stage by what appeared to be a roadie and Pink Floyd’s Welcome To The Machine played while ghostly red lights were beamed out into the audience.

What it all meant was anybody’s guess, but it certainly suggested, at the very least, the sex-fuelled night of rock ‘n’ roll that was to come.

Farrell, dressed in head-to-toe black including a black leather jacket, fingerless gloves and designer track pants with a low crotch, began the evening in strong voice with the new song, Undergound, from The Great Escape Artist, an accomplished album under-represented in the set with just four songs.

Instead, the tight-sounding band - it took just 10 minutes for black leather pants-wearing Navarro to lose his shirt and show off his numerous tattoos while displaying his “mighty” guitar skills as Farrell called them - concentrated mainly on their ‘80s-’90s output.

The audience, on their feet from the beginning, lapped up such classics as Mountain Song, Been Caught Stealing, Jane Says (with Perkins on steel drums), and Stop along with fan favourites Just Because, Ocean Size, and a marathon version of Three Days.

But the distractions were many, including nonsensical talk from a potty-mouthed Farrell, who swigged from a bottle of red wine - “tonight we all get circumcisions!” was the tamest of his proclamations - and ‘50s-era S&M pornography that was projected onto three video screens during oldie but goodie Ted, Just Admit it.

Farrell, who has always liked the idea of two women, going back to the provocative album cover of Jane’s Addiction 1998 debut, Nothing’s Shocking, was dwarfed by a sculpture of two naked women behind him, and there were also two live women on stage who alternately sat on swings, donned S&M gear and spanked each other (Farrell also spanked one of the girls), or strode around wearing black leather bustiers while wielding canes.

There was also a stuffed bear, a man dresssed in a white hood and white tux and tails who alternately hung or beat up baby dolls on stage during the new song, Twisted Tales, before his own mock suicide, a guy dressed as a human sized crow and a creepy robot-slash-human who pushed a baby carriage across the stage.

It was meant to be thought provoking, but not all of it worked.

And the show took a turn for the worse when it slowed down considerably in the middle as the musicians gathered at the front of the stage to perform slower songs like Classic Girl, and I Would For You, with both Navarro and Chaney seated.

As for Farrell, when he wasn’t talking, he was a hyper, whirling dervish of energy, whether he was twirling, tap dancing, shaking a tambourine or maracas up on speakers or hi-fiving audience members at the front of the stage.

I left the venue thinking Perry Farrell, still crazy after all these years, God bless him.

SET LIST:

Underground

Mountain Song

Just Because

Been Caught Stealing

Ain’t No Right

Ted, Just Admit It

Twisted Tales

Classic Girl

Jane Says

I Would For You

End To The Lies

Three Days

Stop

ENCORE

Words Right Out Of My Mouth

Ocean Size
http://www.torontosun.com/2012/02/28/ja ... assey-hall
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Re: 2012.02.27 Massey Hall, Toronto, ON

Post by Mike »

Concert Review: Jane’s Addiction brings a taste for the theatric to Toronto

Jordan Ginsberg Feb 28, 2012 – 12:34 PM ET

Image
Singer Perry Farrell of Jane's Addiction performs with guitarist Dave Navarro (L) during a concert in New York October 17, 2011.

“I just decided we’re all getting circumcisions after the show,” Jane’s Addiction frontman Perry Farrell announced, bug-eyed and grinning, around the halfway mark of the band’s Monday-night set at Toronto’s Massey Hall. “By me,” he clarified, drawing a roar of approval from the outpatient surgery enthusiasts who clearly made up the bulk of the crowd. “Meet me out back.”

This is the sort of levity you worry may be absent when you go to a rock show described as an “immersive theatrical experience,” which was indeed how this, the “Theatre of the Escapists” tour, was promoted. Granted, after 27 years of being a band (albeit 27 years punctuated by long stretches of not being a band; their first of several breakups occurred in 1991), injecting some variety into live performances — even variety of the haughty, too-serious, embrace-your-inner-drama-kid sort — could be necessary for long-term survival. But this is a band that has always had a sense of humour and revelled in its own raunchiness. An “immersive theatrical experience,” on the other hand, portended some real Cirque du Soleil wizard nonsense.

That, mercifully, was not the case. No offense to Cirque du Soleil! (Or, to a lesser extent, wizards.)

Theatrics were on display from the beginning, though. The band, playing in front of some sort of haunted-barn edifice and a pair of 25-foot-tall naked-lady statues, opened with Underground, the first track off their 2011 album The Great Escape Artist, while two women in long white gowns (one of whom, Etty Lau, is Farrell’s wife) were raised to the rafters on wires as a man in a bizarre black crow costume rocked out on a riser stage-left. This whole package set a reasonable tone for the evening. Rather than drama club, this stage setup was going to occupy the space between Farrell’s nightmares and his unbridled id. Underground, meanwhile, for a new song, served as a fine introduction, letting Farrell show he can still hit the high notes nearly 30 years on, giving drummer Stephen Perkins and bassist Chris Chaney some room to lay out the low end and allowing guitarist Dave Navarro to test the sonic properties of pristine Massey Hall with a beefy guitar riff and a screaming solo.

Speaking of Navarro, for a guy who spends so much time screwing around on reality television shows in his spare time, he is remarkably not-ridiculous on stage — a fact made even more impressive considering his insistence on wearing studded leather butt-huggers (he is 44 years old) and his inability to don a shirt for more than 10 minutes (he popped off his oppressive top, which began the evening unbuttoned, before the third song). Despite these ostensible deal-breakers, every live performance seems to serve as penance for, among other things, his two seasons as a judge on CBS’s Rock Star series. He preens, he poses, he marches shirtlessly and shows off a chiseled body trapped in time while pealing off distorted pentatonic scales, and yet, it’s mesmerizing: He’s earned every inch of the Rock God aura he exudes, and he embodies it so fully that he makes it impossible to hate what is, at face value, a grab-bag of such thoroughly detestable traits.

Balancing Navarro’s maddening coolness, though, is Farrell’s manic, vibrating energy, which, at least on stage, comes across as something like pure joy. During a break in the third song of the night, Just Because off 2001′s Strays, he took a moment to say hi the crowd, bouncing from side to side and waving and smiling in a way that, for many 52-year-olds, might have carried a whiff of affected childlike preciousness, but here came off as legitimate excitement. He’s also heartwarmingly filthy; about 95% of his stage banter revolved around crude non sequitur sex jokes. (“Can I f— you? … For all you know, I already am.” Cool, thanks!)

The show explored the darker side of this preoccupation with sex during the back-to-back Ted, Just Admit It…, off 1988′s Nothing’s Shocking, and Twisted Tales, a new one off The Great Escape Artist, which together formed a depraved suite. Ted saw the stage washed in red and black as the video screens played light BDSM clips that were slowed down, sped up and filtered to ensure they were as sinister as possible. Farrell’s wife and the other woman, previously seen floating to the top of the theatre, returned to the stage as well — or, rather, to the riser, where a large porch swing now sat. Farrell joined them, stalking the pair before mimicking grabbing his wife’s hair and spanking her multiple times before returning to the ground level for the song’s refrain of “Sex is violent!”

Twisted Tales, lyrically speaking, is far tamer fare, but featured a performance in which a man dressed head-to-toe in white and carrying a sack full of baby dolls set up on the riser and proceeded to engage in all manner of violence and otherwise inappropriate behaviour with said dolls — hanging, beating, thrashing, and even ill-fated breast-feeding — before appearing to hang himself as the song ended. This felt much like weirdness for the sake of weirdness, but there’s a certain fortitude in breaking up a series of guaranteed singalongs with a concerted attempt to disturb and alienate at least part of your audience.

The singalongs did return, though, as the band powered through Classic Girl, a dozy Jane Says, a stunning Three Days and others before wrapping up with Ocean Size, another Nothing’s Shocking cut which ends, fittingly, on the line, “No talking and all action.” Not that Farrell ever seems to be at loss for words, but for a show whose promotional materials were so fit to fill a person with misgivings, in the end, the spectacle really spoke for itself.

Verdict: After almost 30 years, most bands would be forgiven for veering too heavily into either novelty or nostalgia. Jane’s Addiction seems to have found a happy medium — a happy, dirty, doll-abusing medium.

Set list:

Underground
Mountain Song
Just Because
Been Caught Stealing
Ain’t No Right
Ted, Just Admit It…
Twisted Tales
Classic Girl
Jane Says
I Would For You
End to the Lies
Three Days
Stop!

ENCORE

Words Right Out Of My Mouth
Ocean Size
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2012/02/28 ... o-toronto/
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Re: 2012.02.27 Massey Hall, Toronto, ON

Post by Mike »

There's a nice photo set from this show at the link below:

http://www.aux.tv/2012/02/photos-janes- ... ssey-hall/
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Re: 2012.02.27 Massey Hall, Toronto, ON

Post by mornoiz »

tvrec wrote:There was also, I think, a Rush tease in there from Dave--"2112"--coming back from the acoustic break, an attempt to flex the Canadian chops, perhaps.

In Rochester 2/29/12 Dave played a Riff from Xanadu...
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Re: 2012.02.27 Massey Hall, Toronto, ON

Post by Mike »

Here's some crappy cellphone footage from the backstage jam room.

Standing in the Shower… Thinking

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XozekKLS02Q[/youtube]

Superhero

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcE7CkUd6LQ[/youtube]
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