Album of the Day — July 6
Jane’s Addiction — Ritual De Lo Habitual
Jane’s Addiction — Ritual De Lo Habitual
06.July.2020
Jane’s Addiction
Ritual De lo Habitual
1990
The 1990s would take rock and roll, turn it upside down and shake it.
Leading the pack was Los Angeles’ Jane’s Addiction. One of the first band’s to successfully converge art, rock & roll and, yes, commerce … and keep them evenly and effectively balanced.
In 2020, the things that are now commonplace — like tattoo’s and the pre-pandemic American music festival shows — were not so common in 1990.
Perry Farrell, the lead singer of Jane’s Addiction, was behind Lollapalooza. What began as a traveling roadshow that brought together bands of divergent genres, and provided a safe haven for the burgeoning “alternative nation”, would prove definitively that there was a market for large scale festival shows in the United States.
No Jane’s Addiction? No Lollapooloza, No Bonnaroo, No Coachella, No Electric Daisy Carnival, et al.
In 2020, tattoo’s are a rite of passage into adulthood for many. In 1990, tattoos were still relegated to the fringes of societies corners with criminals, ne’er do wells, sailors … and rock stars. As the host of TV’s Ink Master, lead guitarist of Jane’s Addiction, Dave Navarro, would become the godfather of tattoo culture.
Their self-financed 1987 live album Jane’s Addiction (often called the Triple X album) led to a full-court press by every major record label. Eventually, a bidding war took place, and the band signed, for less money, with the one label who promised them autonomy, Warner Brothers Records.
This courtship was documented in Rolling Stone by David Handleman in 1987 as he followed Jane’s Addiction and Philadelphia’s Tommy Conwell and the Young Rumblers through the courtship (great read).
Jane’s Addiction released Nothing’s Shocking in 1988 to widespread critical acclaim. While the song “Jane Says” picked up radio play on Modern Rock radio … in 1988, Modern Rock radio was a radio format in its infancy (classic rock dominated FM) and Modern Rock really meant “college rock” (immortalized by The Replacements with “Left of the Dial”).
MTV was then at the peak of its powers and refused to play the video for the single “Mountain Song” because of some nudity. This meant any widespread commercial success was going to be limited.
Nothing’s Shocking would achieve strong, but modest, initial sales.
When it came time to record their follow-up, the band reconvened with Nothing’s Shocking producer Dave Jerden and got to work on the album that would become Ritual De Lo Habitual (Ritual of the habit).
In 1990, Jane’s Addiction was:
Perry Farrell — vocals
Dave Navarro — guitar
Eric Avery — bass
Stephen Perkins — drums
And on August 21, 1990, the band released Ritual De Lo Habitual.
Any “concept album” that doesn’t manage to sound bloated or ridiculous is a musical unicorn — Ritual De Lo Habitual is a unicorn. Whether anyone wants to admit it or not and even if you find the genre loathsome, one half of Ritual De Lo Habitual would fall under that “concept album” umbrella.
Tracks 1–5 are unrelated rock songs.
“Stop”
“No One’s Leaving”
“Ain’t No Right”
“Obvious”
“Been Caught Stealing”
Tracks 6–10 are songs loosely connected songs about relationships.
“Three Days”
“Then She Did”
“Of Course”
“Classic Girl”
Those first five songs are a blitzkrieg assault designed to bring out the air guitarists, air drummers, and ass shakers en masse. It was wildly successful on all three fronts.
According to Perry Farrell: “We were at the peak of our powers as a band, so I felt that this was our time to really come out and blast people with sonic sounds that they would groove to for the rest of their lives.”
Ritual opens with a female voice speaking in Spanish to what is loosely translated as:
“Ladies and Gentlemen, we have more influence over your children than you do. But we love them. Bred and spread in Los Angeles, Jane’s Addiction.” —it sounds much better in Spanish.
And then Dave Navarro jumps in with power chords and the appropriately named “Stop” is underway. At times more spastic than focused and sounding sonically incongruent, “Stop” works because the song is driven entirely by Dave Navarro and Stephen Perkins.
The caustic “No One’s Leaving”, again driven by Navarro and Perkins is an anti-racist assault on social norms and mores:
No One’s Leaving
I’m a white dread — I’m a white dread, so?
I’m a got a ring and I hang it from my nose
Got a little game and I take it to the park
I don’t care who plays, as long as the game is on
CHORUS
My sister and her boyfriend slept in the park
She had to leave home ’cause he was dark
Now they parade around in New York with a baby boy…
He’s gorgeous!
Ain’t nobody leaving!
Let’s go!
A-a-a-a-h-h-h-o-o-o-o-a-a-a-a-o-o-o…
No one, is leaving…
Blacks call each other “brother and sis’.”
Count me in ’cause I been missed
I’ve seen color changed by a kiss
Ask my brother and my sister
CHORUS
I wish I knew everyone’s nickname, all their slang and all their sayings
Every way to show affection, how to dress to fit the occasion…
I wish we all waved…
All waved…
All waved, I wish we all…
I wish we all!
Wish we all!
Wish we all
waved…
The band had neither promoted nor denied their drug use. This third track “Ain’t No Right” begins with a spoken word intro by Farrell and is allegedly in response to the band’s management company had requested a drug test from Perry Farrell. Suffice it to say, the band and the management company soon parted ways:
my sex and my drugs and my rock and roll…
all my brain and body need…
sex and my drugs and my rock and roll…
are the only thing that keeps me here,
alright, so get your fucking piss-cup out of my fucking face…
my sex and my drugs and my rock and roll are my fucking own business…
I didn’t ask your wife about what position she’d fucking like it…
Channeling Bootsy Collins, Eric Avery then busts in with full fury.
“Obvious” was the first taste of what awaited listeners of the last four songs, a mix of music as art and rock and roll.
“Been Caught Stealing” — their first “hit” … and a song with an intro that’s been irritating dogs since 1990.
The best review I’ve read about “Three Days” was from Newsweek (I think) and it said something like “On ‘Three Days’ Jane’s Addiction out Zeppelin’s Led Zeppelin.” — which is a spot-on description.
An eleven-minute opus that finds the band firing on all cylinders. Eschewing their somewhat poetic ambiguity, “Three Days” is exactly what you think it’s about — Perry Farrell’s three-way that lasted three days. The song rolls out as a slow build before exploding halfway through.
Reaching its crescendo, Farrell bellows his bravado:
Erotic Jesus lays with his Marys
Loves his Marys
Bits of puzzle, fitting each other
and then the orgasmic release:
All of us with wings!
“Oh my Marys!
Never wonder…
Night is shelter from nudity’s shiver…”
All of us with wings…
While lengthy songs were nothing new to rock and roll, the content and structure of “Three Days” was entirely new territory. In 2015, Dave Navarro said of the song: “It doesn’t give a fuck about structure; it doesn’t give a fuck about verses and choruses, but every part is memorable — you get lost in it.” — also a spot-on description.
“Then She Did” pays homage to both Perry Farrell’s mother who took her own life when he was a child and for his friend/lover Xiola Blue, who he asks a favor of in the last verse:
Then She Did
Will you say hello to my ma?
Will you pay a visit to her?
She was an artist, just as you were
I’d have introduced you to her
She would take me out on Sundays
We’d go laughing through the garbage
She repaired legs like a doctor
On the kitchen chairs we sat on
She was unhappy, just as you were
Unhappy, just as you were
Unhappy, just as you were
Unhappy, just as you were
Traversing family dysfunction, “Of Course” is also the song that highlights the band’s dysfunction. Eric Avery refused to play bass on the song.
Closing out Ritual De Lo Habitual is “Classic Girl” — a celebration of women … and of love.
Modern beauty is often attached to the physical, which we know can be achieved or constructed through restrictive diets, fitness indulgences, or plastic surgeons.
Classic beauty cannot be created or constructed. While beauty can manifest itself physically, in its traditional sense, its origin is much like the soul— it radiates from inside a person — it either exists or it doesn’t.
A woman of “classic” beauty may have elements of the “modern” beauty but they ignore the pedestrian constructs and pitfalls of modernity.
Their embrace of the original source of beauty (knowingly or not) is what makes that woman, or “girl” in this case, something more than just “another girl”. There is nothing more beautiful than finding a person who knows who they are, knows what they want, and knows who you are. It’s that transference, that communication that builds bonds.
And that bond is as old as time itself … it’s classic.
However, love will forever remain shrouded in mystery. But without classic beauty, finding love is nothing more than a Sisyphean task.
Classic Girl
4:05; in my neighborhood,
When shots go off, no one bothers
A “POP,” and a reply
“POP,” and no reply…
Dinosaurs on the quilt I wore, with a girl
Such a classic girl…
Such a classic girl…
Such a classic girl, gives her man a great idea
Hears you tell your friends,
“Hey man, why don’t you listen to my great idea!”
It’s true, yeah I am a villain when you fall ill, that’s probably because men never can be
Not like a girl
Such a classic girl…
Such a classic girl…
They may say, “Those were the days…,”
but in a way, you know for us these are the days
Yes, for us these are the days, and you know you’re my girl!
Such a classic girl…
Such a classic girl…
You know for us these are the days
Hey, hey!
“The name of the game of life is love. If you can love and be loved, if you can accomplish those things in this lifetime, then you can die happy.” — Perry Farrell on “Classic Girl”.
Critics were mostly in favor of Ritual De Lo Habitual when released. Over time, however, its stature has improved and respect for the album has grown — usually ending up on many “best of” lists:
In his original review for Entertainment Weekly, Greg Sandow gave Ritual De Lo Habitual an A- and said: “The songs come in great crashing waves, barely stopping for niceties like shapely melody or coherently changing chords. Toward the end, the waves slow down and the songs grow more tender, …”
Surprising no one, Robert Christgau called Ritual De Lo Habitual “junk syncretism (kitchen-sink eclecticism? styleless mish-mash?)” in the annual 1990 The Village Voice Jazz & Pop list. [syncretism?!…jaysus christ]
Jonathan Gold in The Los Angeles Times said: “But “Ritual” is oddly compelling, sort of an art-rock tour de force …”
Eric Davis in Rolling Stone gave it two-stars and said: “Split into a hard-rockin’ side and a prog-rock side, the album doesn’t cohere — whatever the band members have been doing for the last two years [88–90], they haven’t been practicing much.”
Jane’s Addiction as a band is an amalgam of many things, but uniquely their own. Alice Cooper said: “I can spot traces of other people, but that’s all they are: traces. They were a really original band. I can actually feel the band pushing themselves to their limits [on Ritual De Lo Habitual].”
By 1991, the rock renaissance was well in motion. Further up the West Coast, in Seattle, a tectonic shift was about to take place. Almost one year to the day after Jane’s Addiction released Ritual De Lo Habitual, Nirvana would unleash Nevermind on an unsuspecting population.
However, it was Jane’s Addiction that struck the match that lit the fire that set the world aglow with the “alternative nation” — and the album was Ritual De Lo Habitual. It set the template for rock music in the ’90s … and the template said “anything goes.”