Lollapalooza

Trechos de “Just Another Show With Sex And Violence”, por um certo Gil Kaufman, misto de história e release pra neófitos, no da coletânea “Up From the Catacombs: the Best Of Jane’s Addiction” (2006):

“‘GIVE ME SOME MORE… MOTHERFUCKER!’
They were the pied pipers of the alternative nation. A velvet car crash that sped you to the brink only to peek over the edge then zip off in another, equally bizarre, direction.
Before they introduced the world to the concept of a Lollapalooza, Jane’s Addiction volunteered to lead a generation into na enchanted musical forest with their combustible mix of alien charisma, sex, drugs, and a heaping dose of anarchy.
Mashing up rock, punk, funk, folk, heavy metal, and psychedelia, the unpredictable Los Angeles band was desperate to turn the world on with their theatrical vision. In seven short years, Jane’s blew open the doors for music that fed your head and your feet, released a pair of classic albums, headlined the debut of the Lollapalooza festival, and sparked a revolution whose ripple effects can still be felt today.

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‘HUM ALONG WITH THE T.V.’
In 1990 the band once again courted controversy over cover art, with Ritual De Lo Habitual. A number of record chains refused to carry the album with Farrell’s anatomically correct sculpture, which featured him in bed with two women. As a protest the band issued an alternate version with the First Amendment printed on a white background. The final album by the original lineup was a revelation in songwriting and composition, no matter which cover you ended up with.
While the smash lead single, the frenetic, playful ode to shoplifting “Been Caught Stealing” became the band’s first radio (and MTV) hit, songs like “These Days”, a languorous 11-minute tale of a ménage à trois, found Jane’s perfecting their unique style. Reining in much of the profane, chaotic blurt of their early days, the band allowed the compositions to spread to proglike lengths and shift through a range of emotions. Not that Ritual was completely blurtless. Blitzing opener “Stop!” became an instant live favorite for its turn-on-a-dime rhythms, as did the mockingly masochistic “Ain’t No Right” in which Farrell boasts, ‘I am skin and bones/I am pointy nose/But it motherfuckin’ makes me try’.
At the peak of the mountain, Farrell launched his dream Project in 1991: Lollapalooza, a multi-act summer tour with sideshow diversions and a lineup that cut across musical boundaries. The main stage featured such diverse acts as Nine Inch Nails, Ice-T, The Butthole Surfers, Siouxsie & the Banshees, and Henry Rollins, as well as Jane’s, who, torn apart by drugs and internal squabbling, announced that it would be their farewell outing.
But what a way to go. Tweaking racial and musical tensions, Farrell teamed with Ice-T on the tour to perform a playfully evocative cover of Sly & the Family Stone’s “Don’t Call Me Nigger, Whitey” (with Farrell answering “Don’t call me whitey, nigger”). As much as their music, the band’s last stand served to cement their reputation as leaders of a new school of anything goes, the masters of the mash-up.
Just weeks after Ritual became the band’ first platinum álbum, garnering a Grammy nomination and winning Best Alternative Music Video for “Stealing” at the MTV Video Music Awards, Jane’s played its final show in Honolulu in September of 1991: Farrell performed nude.

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‘GIVE ME MY TIME’
Maybe it’s because of Jane’s Addiction that nothing’s shocking. That alternative music grew to be the dominant force in the early ’90s, allowing the outcasts to feel the glare of the spotlight, if only for a moment. That European-style music festivals like Lollapalooza became the norm, from the jam-inspired H.O.R.D.E. tour to the female-centric Lilith Fair, the punk WARPED juggernaut, and their modern equivalentes, Bonnaroo and Coachella. That a whole new generation of rock bands feels free to blend metal riffs with hip-hop scratching, cathartic lyrics, beats, and atittude.
Alternative radio has been dismantled, hip-hop and R&B have taken over the charts, and having a bleeped curse in your single is about as dangerous as it gets these days. But Jane’s helped a generation realize that it’s OK to taste the rainbow of musical flavors. Or maybe they just inspired us to dance to their perverse siren song as Rome (or Iraq, or Bosnia, or Afghanistan) was burning.
We’re still looking for a new pied piper, and there might be times you forget about how these songs moved you, but that seed’s been planted. When you hear the again it’ll come back to you, or turn on your kid brother, maybe even your daughter. They’re the songs that even after all this time beg, ‘Give me some more… motherfucker!’“