So this morning in the car I heard the new Jane’s Addiction single from the forthcoming album, and *ahem* found it online for further listening. At first I was not impressed, but after some time with it, I’m very excited about the new album. I should insert a little personal history here—I saw a freaky video on 120 Minutes for Had a Dad way back in ’88 or so, during the Hair Metal days, and bought Nothing’s Shocking the next day. It was like nothing I’d heard before, and it was great. All my hair-metal loving friends thought I was smoking dope when they saw the cover of the album—remember, these are folks who thought Yngwie Malmsteen was the Second Coming of Christ. When Ritual came out, I played it constantly (Ritual, Zeppelin III and I Against I were the Holy Triumvirate) through my sophomore year of college. When the band busted up after the first year of Lollopalooza, I was pissed off because I wasn’t able to see them live.

The later incarnations of the band were always off, even though I was happy to see them recording together again (don’t get me started on Porno for Pyros); the addition of Flea on bass was cool from a hey-let’s-jam-together standpoint, but his style did not complement the rest of the Jane’s sound—his frantic melodic style doesn’t dovetail with Dave Navarro’s soaring guitar work (see One Hot Minute). I don’t know this new bass player from Adam, but his style seems to fit in the old Eric Avery mold quite well—propulsive, melodic, but not battling the guitar for dominance. It sounds like an updated, logical progression from the ’91 sound. I’m excited to hear the rest of the album, and I hope that Perry Farrell’s proto-new age-shoegazing tendencies lose out to the Rock.

Right on. Seen in the back window of a midsize pickup this morning, under a faded Gore/Lieberman 2000 campaign sticker: a hand-lettered sign reading, “Don’t You Wish?”