Guilty pleasure: Jane's Addiction - playing in Richmond VA at the National tomorrow night!

I can remember the first time I heard Jane's Addiction - it was almost midnight, and my parents were asleep and I was probably supposed to be in bed... Then I caught the premiere of the video for Mountain Song on MTV's 120 minutes. The video totally blew my mind... and apparently was banned from MTV shortly after I saw it. (for mild nudity .. actually, girls in diapers - in the video) Having been a punk fan thanks to my sister, and a metal fan, thanks to my friends at the time - this band seemed to be exactly what I was looking for. I remember asking my friend, Jerome, to pick their album up for me (Nothing's Shocking - released on August 23, 1988 ) the next day because he was going to the record store (Peaches) to get, uhhh.. Danzig's first album i believe. . I can remember listening to Ocean Size, and all the other songs that followed on that album on a "cassette walkman" many times (in my backyard after a snowstorm that fall and winter, on long wandering walks through woods, riding my bike through the city, and at dusk alone in a tent in the mountains once... etc)


Actually, I have similar memories of the album "Ritual De Lo Habitual" which I also picked up right after it was released (also on cassette) - it had rained hard all afternoon, and I had skipped the bus from school and taken a detour on my way back home to stop at local record store, Plan9 -- I left with Jane's Addiction's Ritual De Lo Habitual - on cassette. When I got home, I went upstairs to my room and discovered sections of my bedroom ceiling had been leaking all day and plaster and water was everywhere.... I popped in the tape into my walkman and commenced to cleaning up the mess.... this song, "Of Course", and actually, pretty much the whole album, takes me back to all of those colorful, magical memories of my teenage years, where the future was unwritten - and the world seemed very strange. The album still remains to this day one of my all time favorites.

So anyway, this band, Jane's Addiction, who captivated me so much as a young punk/metal/hippie teen is playing here in Richmond tomorrow night at the National as part of their Escapist tour. Ive seen them a few times in recent years (last time was the NIN/JA tour), and though their sound has changed quite a bit, their shows still fill me with a certain awe and ecstatic love for life....

here's one of my favorite songs from "Ritual".. it transports me back to that feeling every time....



UPDATE: here's a video I took at the show -