Okay I totally need to have a fanboy moment...Jane's Addiction, fuck yeah!

I haven't really been paying much attention to what's happening in the music world lately, preferring instead to explore artists I've been curious about for a while (Dresden Dolls -- awesome) and artists that come up in my social networking forays (Zoe Keating -- hello!). So it was with tremendous excitement and surprise that I learned that the original line-up of Jane's Addiction was reuniting, recording new material with Trent Reznor producing and going on tour with Nine Inch Nails on what is to be, most likely, NiN's last tour for a long while.

I first got into Jane's Addiction the first night I ever dropped acid. The blotter paper had musical notes on it, and we were sitting in my friend Brian's room and he was like "you have to check this out" and he pulled out a copy of "Nothing's Shocking" and played "Jane Says". He then proceeded to flip the tape (cassette!!) rewind it to the beginning, and started it over. Those first notes of that lilting bassline from "Up the Beach" grabbed me and haven't really let me go ever since. In that altered state, the thrumming music and Perry Farrel's whiny yet compelling voice worked their way right into my cells. It was like my brain contained the neural receptors to receive this -- just this -- music and the connection was designed to send my imagination flying out into the cosmos. Shortly after that was spring break. I didn't make any plans, and instead opted to go home, where I proceeded to get baked, drive around with my good friend Scott listening to "Nothing's Shocking" really really loud in his Toyota hatchback and wrote a sonnet sequence about unrequited love. That was a pretty awesome spring.

My first Jane's show was at the Springfield Colliseum in Springfield, MA. The band -- all 4 of them -- walked out onto the stage in long hippie skirts, all of them shirtless. The stage was festooned with Christmas lights and flowers and incense. I had previously experienced the rock show as heart-filling community experience (U2) but this show was my first experience of the rock show as hedonistic transcendent shamanic cosmic mindfuck. I had shared a joint with the friends I was with and drank some Jagermeister but my buzz was well within "normal." It was that beautiful, raw, throbbing, seemingly channeled music that sent my mind and spirit flying out of my body into that other place. I've never really been the same since and that show (and the two other Jane's shows I experienced during those years) set the standard by which I gauge live musical performance, by which I gauge rock -n- roll.

In my current life, I am surrounded by people who adore whompy glitchy twitchy stuff, and dancehall, and various versions of techno and house, and hip-hop and strange post-rock abstractions, all deconstructed and floaty. And it's all about the beat, the beat, the beat. And I appreciate that stuff, I really do. But in my mind, nothing compares to these four men, psychicallly in-tune, channeling the ancient gods with those pounding polyrhythmic drums (talk about a fucking beat!!), and those lilting, melodic yet menacing basslines, and that crunchy surging guitar and that caterwaul of a voice with songs about summertime, and sex and drugs and hookers. Pagan, profane and the most transcendent musical experiences I've ever had.

It's been twelve years since I've seen them, and they've grown up as I have. But to see the original line-up together again playing those songs (and I'm curious about the new ones too) just makes me giddy with joy. GIDDY. I can't fucking wait.