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Concert review | Jane’s Addiction: Band melds funk, rock in dizzying blend

The great African drummer Babatunde Olatunji played in what seemed an interminable loop on the sound system before Jane’s Addiction took the stage in the Lifestyle Communities Pavilion on Tuesday night. Unlike most programmed music heard before the headliner, Olatunji caught plenty of ears, creating a surprising tribal spirit in a crowd waiting to witness the return of a classic ’9 0s LA rock quartet.

If the loop began to wear thin as the gap pushed 45 minutes, Jane’s Addiction made up for the wait, creating a dizzying blend of funk and rock-and-roll, much of which revisited the band’s 1988 album Nothing’s Shocking. A classic collection of Los Angeles pre-grunge, it flew anew thanks to the spectacular trio behind lead singer Perry Farrell, which included original guitarist Dave Navarro and drummer Stephen Perkins, as well as longtime bassist Chris Chaney.

Tuesday night, the three sounded like the hardest thing this side of Led Zeppelin.

Farrell was more of a ringleader, albeit one who likely imagined this whole thing in the first place. (During break-ups for the band, Farrell was the bright guy behind the original Lollapalooza Festival.)

Tuesday night, his pinched vocals, as unique and branding for the group’s sound as they were, took a back seat. Static onstage compared with, say, the Stones’ Mick Jagger, he spent a lot of time twiddling knobs on a synthesizer bank of controls and reacting like a kid who put his finger in the light socket.

It mattered not, though. If Farrell is not exactly Robert Plant, the other three make a good suggestion of Led Zeppelin.

From Ocean Size early on, Navarro was on fire, playing runs that sometimes sounded like caricatures of Zep’s Robert Plant and other times might have made the master blush. Chaney dug deep into the beat, pulling the groove from a deep, dark place.

Perkins was like an animal in songs such as the album’s title track, shirtless and unleashing delicious violence on his kit.

Directing it all, though, was Farrell, a frontman with mysterious power onstage who can transfix with very little effort.

Deadline called before the end of what has in other recent shows been a rather short set. Surely it wasn’t one that failed to satisfy when the smoke cleared.

LA compatriots Failure came on before with a set forged from the nexus between post-punk and grunge.

Mingo424 wrote:What did you guys think of Failure?
I thought they were ok..reminded me of STP and Bush morphed together.
I did think RadKey was badass! I believe my son said the oldest was 18? Youngest (drummer) was 15. I was impressed that at those ages they had landed opening act for Jane's and sounded like that; reminded me of a modern day Lenny Kravitz sound.