perfidy

It's hard to overstate how much, as a pimply and earnest teenager from Ohio with a serious jones for escapism, heavy-duty philosphizing, and wailing guitars, Jane's Addiction meant to me. By 1991, I'd gotten pretty far on my own, crawling past Warrant, Poison and Def Leppard to artier stuff like Zep and Tull, and finally discovering Nine Inch Nails and Ministry. By that time, the creepy din of Trent Reznor and Al Jourgenson had my adolescent mind primed and ready for the decadent racket of Jane's.

I remember the winter of 1991-1992, driving around in cars with my friends. Shawn had the treacherous old Chevette with no floorboards he'd gotten for $35, and Tom had the tiny Toyota truck and then the boat-sized woodpaneled station wagon. We'd be tooling around the barren back roads of Northeastern Ohio, tuning the radio obsessively, searching for another dose of "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

No fooling, when Alternative Rock hit, it was like the dawn breaking through a permanent midnight. Sure, we already had what we in my area called "progressive music," our Information Society, Depeche Mode, Cure, Violent Femmes, and so on. But as good as that stuff was (and is), the incurable Britishness of most of these bands failed to really connect with something primal inside me. As a red-blooded briarhopper (that's 'flatland hillbilly') my need for rock (the same primal urge that fuels my enduring love for NASCAR, demolition derby, and NFL football in the rain and mud) just can't be satisfied for long with synthesizers and doggerel about blisters in the sun.

Rising out of the same trashy, glammy El Lay scene that gave us Motley Crue, Black Flag, X, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, and even The Eagles, Jane's Addiction combined parts that just should never have worked together into one messy machine. Stephen Perkins was a clattery, sticky drummer who played like he'd be as much at home in some tweeked-up bebop band, Eric Avery's bass was just a little too metal to be funky, Dave Navarro was a metal guitarist with an amazing head for dissonant rhythm parts and bluesy leads, and Perry Farrell was... well, what he hell was he? An androgynous little walking id with a thin whine of a voice who keened and snarled and bled lyrics that in anybody else's hands would have been painfully earnest, high-school jottings somehow given dignity through sheer force of will and questionable sanity. They were like Guns 'n' Roses' arty little brothers, hanging out smoking pot in the high school art room while their big bro lurked behind the school beating up nerds.

Together they made two absolutely classic albums, 1988's Nothing's Shocking and 1991's Ritual de lo Habitual that threw together art-school pretension, metal, a few nods to prog-rock, and a heavy dose of Mexican mysticism.

And then they were gone. That was the end of the road for them. Three albums (counting their rarely-heard debut) and gone. Perry Farrell threw his energy into the diminishing returns of the Lollapalooza festivals, and into his next musical project Porno for Pyros. He seemed to be trying to throw his arms around the world and give everyone a big patchouli-scented Los Angeles hug. Dave Navarro retreated into a sleazy demimonde of drugs and prostitutes, eventually shacking up with Baywatch babe Carmen Electra and engaging in some legendary feats of debauchery while cutting himself off from the world. Just like in Jane's Addiction, his darkness and rock energy pulling in the opposite direction of Farrell's utopian guttery poetry. Avery and Perkins launched projects that few people seemed to want to hear. But between their music and Farrell's brilliant idea for Lollapalooza, Jane's Addiction did as much as anyone to usher in the sea-change that overtook popular music in the early 1990s, the decade or so where rock was young again.

Frankly, I can't think of a single band in the world more deserving of a best-of compilation than Jane's Addiction, and I'm shocked that it took until 2006 for one to show up. I'm also shocked that it's goddamn fantastic. The good people at Rhino, who must surely rise every morning amazed that they can do the work they do while drawing pay from their resolutely mainstream masters at Warner Brothers, have put together Up From The Catacombs: The Best of Jane's Addiction, a seventeen-song retrospective of the band's history that actually manages to do justice to their legacy.

I can't believe it: everything works.

The song choices are practically bulletproof, with the highlights of both the big albums present, plus a couple choice tracks each from their debut and 2003's "comeback" album, Strays. Wisely skipped is the fairly awful and decidedly inessential Kettle Whistle, a 1997 stopgap (Janes' own The Spaghetti Incident?) that did more to tarnish the band's legacy than could ever have happened if Perry Farrell, say, had suddenly turned up in Vegas doing lounge versions of "Jane Says" and "Had a Dad."

The sequencing is inspired too. The first three songs progressively raise the ante, skipping from the clattering "Stop!" (the lead track on Ritual) to the huge drama of "Ocean Size" (the lead track on Nothing's Shocking) to the metal attack of a live version of "Whores" (an early favorite). We then detour to the bad hangover of "Ted, Just Admit It...," a disjointed and, I suppose, arty offering off Nothing's Shocking that ably showcases that side of the band's identity. After a couple more heavy rockers (including the unjustly ignored "Just Because" from Strays), the compilation veers into the contemplative almost for good. Here is where we find the eight-minute epic of "Three Days," the pastoral lurch of "Summertime Rolls" and the quiet devotion of "Classic Girl." The comp ends (naturally) with the snarling "Pig's In Zen" (which closed out Ritual) and an absolutely fantastic live version of the band's signature "Jane Says."

Absolutely anyone who doesn't have any Jane's Addiction already in their collection should run right out and pick up Up From The Catacombs. Actually, anyone who doesn't already own them should pick up both Nothing's Shocking and Ritual de lo Habitual, but since I can't tell you how to spend your money, I suppose all I can do is tell you that ownership of either the best-of or the two great albums is more than just highly recommended; it is required. I'll be checking.