Feb 29 Auditorium Theater, Rochester NY
Posted: Wed Feb 29, 2012 10:58 pm
review of the Cirque de Satan Soleil
(from http://www.democratandchronicle.com/art ... um=twitter)
Concert review: Jane's Addiction slowly comes to full boil
Ohhhh, so that’s what they mean by “immersive theatrical experience,” the language that Jane’s Addiction was using to describe its “Theatre of the Escapists” tour.
Wednesday night’s Auditorium Theatre show for 2,000 people who bought seats but didn’t use them at first appeared to be everything you’d expect of a 27-year-old band that proudly thinks of itself as the progenitors of alternative rock: A set dominated by two 20-foot-tall naked ladies unlimbering in front of a creepy barn backdrop. A band of degenerate farmers, maybe? No, no, the men of Jane’s Addiction are not farmers.
Opening with “Underground” from the on-again, off-again band’s most recent album, The Great Escape Artist, the Cirque de Satan Soleil night opened with two regulation-sized women being raised to the ceiling as their voluminous white dresses trailed from them like silk contrails. One of the women was Perry Farrell’s wife, Etty Lau, who for a few moments had the best seat in the house.
Fussing around the fringe of the stage as the women swung from the rafters was someone/something dressed in a bizarre black crow outfit. Or, maybe it was a real crow, and a big one. What all that was supposed to mean escapes even this master of metaphor.
A band from Brussels, The Black Box Revelation, set the tone nicely for the evening. A duo, drums and guitar, just like The Black Keys or The White Stripes, but feeling more like Blind Faith than the blues. It worked with this retro crowd, which before the show beered up while reminiscing about the last Jane’s Addiction show here, 1991 at the War Memorial.
The Black Box Revelation set the tone, but Jane’s Addiction didn’t really arrive until maybe 40 minutes after it showed up. But they had the right idea. Mystical and dark, old mixed with new. “Ted, Just Admit It…” the creepy story of serial killer Ted Bundy from the 1988 album Nothing’s Shocking, was paired with The Great Escape Artist’s “Twisted Tales.” It was theatrical, in a Dada kind of way, with plenty of doll abuse and video screens flickering with non sequitur images. And it was, frankly, rather slow and undistinguished rock and roll in the early going.
But the show, and sound, improved as the evening moved on, the machine-like thrum of a well-oiled band following a set that had Jane’s Addiction nicely re-positioned at the front edge of the stage, creating an intimate set of songs and an opportunity to show off monster drummer Stephen Perkins on a wide array of percussion. All of the crow costumes and weirdness was amusing, but for the final 40 minutes or so, Jane’s Addiction earned its rock-band paycheck.
After a quarter-century, are these guys showing their age? No, actually. The 44-year-old guitarist and reality-show dilettante Dave Navarro is a master of rock posturing, for the first three songs strutting around the stage in a black jacket with no shirt. Then the jacket was magically gone, confirming that this fellow does indeed work out.
And while Jane’s Addiction bassists have had the same lifespan as Spinal Tap drummers, Chris Chaney, who’s been with the band off and on through its many lives and resurrections, was not only steady, but produced some low-end, showoff rumbling that shook the crowd’s large intestines into a lather.
Lead singer Perry Farrell sounded as he should, with that high, keening kind of voice as he waved what appeared to be a bottle of wine like a sailor on shore leave. He was Skippy the kung fu yoga instructor. “I’ve got some advice for old people,” the 52-year-old Farrell advised. “You either keep (expletive deleted) dancing or die.”
(from http://www.democratandchronicle.com/art ... um=twitter)
Concert review: Jane's Addiction slowly comes to full boil
Ohhhh, so that’s what they mean by “immersive theatrical experience,” the language that Jane’s Addiction was using to describe its “Theatre of the Escapists” tour.
Wednesday night’s Auditorium Theatre show for 2,000 people who bought seats but didn’t use them at first appeared to be everything you’d expect of a 27-year-old band that proudly thinks of itself as the progenitors of alternative rock: A set dominated by two 20-foot-tall naked ladies unlimbering in front of a creepy barn backdrop. A band of degenerate farmers, maybe? No, no, the men of Jane’s Addiction are not farmers.
Opening with “Underground” from the on-again, off-again band’s most recent album, The Great Escape Artist, the Cirque de Satan Soleil night opened with two regulation-sized women being raised to the ceiling as their voluminous white dresses trailed from them like silk contrails. One of the women was Perry Farrell’s wife, Etty Lau, who for a few moments had the best seat in the house.
Fussing around the fringe of the stage as the women swung from the rafters was someone/something dressed in a bizarre black crow outfit. Or, maybe it was a real crow, and a big one. What all that was supposed to mean escapes even this master of metaphor.
A band from Brussels, The Black Box Revelation, set the tone nicely for the evening. A duo, drums and guitar, just like The Black Keys or The White Stripes, but feeling more like Blind Faith than the blues. It worked with this retro crowd, which before the show beered up while reminiscing about the last Jane’s Addiction show here, 1991 at the War Memorial.
The Black Box Revelation set the tone, but Jane’s Addiction didn’t really arrive until maybe 40 minutes after it showed up. But they had the right idea. Mystical and dark, old mixed with new. “Ted, Just Admit It…” the creepy story of serial killer Ted Bundy from the 1988 album Nothing’s Shocking, was paired with The Great Escape Artist’s “Twisted Tales.” It was theatrical, in a Dada kind of way, with plenty of doll abuse and video screens flickering with non sequitur images. And it was, frankly, rather slow and undistinguished rock and roll in the early going.
But the show, and sound, improved as the evening moved on, the machine-like thrum of a well-oiled band following a set that had Jane’s Addiction nicely re-positioned at the front edge of the stage, creating an intimate set of songs and an opportunity to show off monster drummer Stephen Perkins on a wide array of percussion. All of the crow costumes and weirdness was amusing, but for the final 40 minutes or so, Jane’s Addiction earned its rock-band paycheck.
After a quarter-century, are these guys showing their age? No, actually. The 44-year-old guitarist and reality-show dilettante Dave Navarro is a master of rock posturing, for the first three songs strutting around the stage in a black jacket with no shirt. Then the jacket was magically gone, confirming that this fellow does indeed work out.
And while Jane’s Addiction bassists have had the same lifespan as Spinal Tap drummers, Chris Chaney, who’s been with the band off and on through its many lives and resurrections, was not only steady, but produced some low-end, showoff rumbling that shook the crowd’s large intestines into a lather.
Lead singer Perry Farrell sounded as he should, with that high, keening kind of voice as he waved what appeared to be a bottle of wine like a sailor on shore leave. He was Skippy the kung fu yoga instructor. “I’ve got some advice for old people,” the 52-year-old Farrell advised. “You either keep (expletive deleted) dancing or die.”
