everybody has their own opinion: the jane's addiction NOTHING'S SHOCKING poll

i think i might possibly love this album more now than i did when it came out. it still sounds great. and it's from such a weird in-between era. right on the cusp of college radio turning into mainstream rock, or vice versa, or something.

(included "pigs in zen," even though it wasn't on my original vinyl copy. but it's de facto part of the album now.)

and i have no idea what to vote for. i think i went through phases of being mildly obsessed with almost every song. "up the beach" is such a great opener, the way that huge chord just comes swamping up with perry farrell's voice. "ocean size," "mountain song," "had a dad," "summertime rolls," "standing in the shower." and obv. "jane says," if you can overlook the endless airplay overkill.

(this poll is part of a mini-obsession the last few days with that niche of late '80s l.a.-weirdo-junkie rock. i even downloaded an inger lorre album the other night, although it turned out to only have a few good songs on it.)

Jesus how do you make me pick JUST ONE

Wow, I had forgotten this album. When it first came out, I used to play it to drive the metalheads out of my apartment when I wanted to go to sleep. A short time later, all the metalheads got hold of it and Been Caught Stealing was all over MTV. Bah!

'had a dad' with 'summertime rolls' not so far behind.

Absolutely, totally obssessed with this when it came out. I've loved every song at some point (apart from Thank You, Boys obviously). Really hard to pick an absolute favourite, but went with Ocean Size.

up the beach ftw

Anything but "Jane Says."

Which one is the one where they say "Sex is violent"? Almost voting for that one because of such a weird line.

Geir, that is

Ted, Just Admit It

summertime rolls:
i mean it's serious, as serious can be

Ted Just Admit It is the spiritual core of this album. Esp the way it rises to a boil. Reznor knew it and used it in the Natural Born Killers soundtrack. Plus perk's drums are so good in that one

Had a Dad

"Ted Just Admit It" followed by "Summertime Rolls" for sure. The latter ("She says 'stop'/I'm a girl...") reminds me of fooling around with my super cute and innocent gf when she came to visit during the summer after my sophomore year in high school (summer of '89, I believe). We spent hours listening to this record just laying around my room at dusk...

in retrospective, Janes Addiction "ballads">>>>their "rock songs" imo

"ted, just admit it" is the best psychedelic cod-reggae serial-killer sex-criminal epic ever.

but on reflection i think i'm voting "mountain song."

CASH IN NOW HONEY

Wow, I had forgotten this album. When it first came out, I used to play it to drive the metalheads out of my apartment when I wanted to go to sleep. A short time later, all the metalheads got hold of it and Been Caught Stealing was all over MTV. Bah!

Exactly! I hated the whole "Ritual de lo Habitual" sellout, all the fun was over. I was sortof embarassed to like this album when it came out. It didn't fit in with anything else I was listening to. I did love it, though, and I still enjoy Mountain Song & Jane Says (which I heard in a bar during the World Cup) but I don't know that I really want to play the entirety of the album now. My senior year in high school I remember bringing old NME & MM clips to school to make copies of (yes I got away with this) and I listened to this album on my walkman as I was copying them.

But yeah, there were all these awful metal bands around at the time and somehow these guys did something that was 20 times cooler and some mix of metal and punk or whatever the hell it was.

ritual has a bunch of good songs -- "stop," "ain't no right," "three days" -- but this one is obviously the best thing anybody involved ever did.

but this one is obviously the best thing anybody involved ever did.

That's an understatment.

about to flip a coin between up the beach & summertime

Went with Mountain Song because I'm finding it hard to remember the finer points (haven't listened to it in a long time). Summertime Rolls was runner up.

Hahaha. Me too. Don't remember most of it!

had to go with ted just admit it. i decided based on which song would disappoint me the most if it had a scratch on it and wouldn't play while i was driving across the country.

This really is a great album and I wish I still had a copy to listen to before voting! My impulse I guess is for summertime rolls? But Ted Just Admit it and Mountain Song and yes, Jane Says, are all contenders.

Ritual De Lo Habitual is better imho. It's NOT their sellout album! "Stop!" and "Been Caught Stealin'" are the exceptions. Well, each of them are kinda like exceptions. "Classic Girl" is their best song. "Three Days" comes close.

Anyway, Nothing's Shocking is great too. Even the first self titled one on XXX is alright. I prefer the "Jane Says" on that one more.

voted "Mountain Song".. most memorable bass line since "Public Image"

Yes! I said this elsewhere on this board but Ride's bassist played the bassline to that during their soundcheck in Washington D.C. 1991/2. I was there.

I always liked Ritual De Lo Habitual more than this one, I never got into it. I never heard the first album.

TBH Jane Says is my favourite song on this. I guess I like their "sell out" stuff more in general!

12/14/2008, the day jane's became cool again

this album is classic, i'm going with mountain song. that bassline wins.

iirc i was big upping janes addiction on the noise board circa 2004/2005 and getting laughed at.

all the best ones get laughed at, ian.

you were there.

Ritual De Lo Habitual is better imho. It's NOT their sellout album! "Stop!" and "Been Caught Stealin'" are the exceptions.

"Been Caught Stealin'", sure, but how is "Stop!" a sellout? If that's selling out then so is half of "Nothing's Shocking".

I'm also not sure that "Ritual" isn't the better album, and it's been so long since I heard either that there's no way I can pick between them right now. I think it depends on whether the "Three Days"-type proggy epics still hold up. If they do, then Ritual > NS. (also depends on whether the passage of time has made "Classic Girl" likable again)

Ritual def. has a thinner sound. For me, the jewel on the second side is the one about his mother committing suicide: "She was unHAPPY! JUST AS YOUUUUUU WERE!/unHAPPY! JUST AS YOU WERE!!"

big fan of second side of ritual here, and i still can get down with the s/t (check 1%, Whores, the cover of R&R, Chip Away)

"...Then She Did" x-post

OT: after transformation from whiz kid musician to pop personality has anyone outed themselves as a bigger tool than dave navarro?

Idiots Rule

Ocean Size, but theses are close seconds:

Had a Dad
Ted, Just Admit It
Summertime Rolls
Pigs in Zen

i love the sound of the album, so huge but also kind of intimate and odd -- it keeps skittering off into corners.

OT: after transformation from whiz kid musician to pop personality has anyone outed themselves as a bigger tool than dave navarro?

i kind of enjoyed him on celebrity poker... but, yeah. he's pretty embarrassing. otoh, everybody in the band is still alive, which counts as either luck or an achievement of some kind. (one thing i didn't know: eric avery has a blog.)

This album along with Pixies Doolittle and Nirvana Bleach really turned my head around about what underground "alternative" could mean at its best.

I went with Mountain Song because it is so heavy and succinct.

It makes me laugh that there are folks on this thread who defend Ritual (ugh) but have not even heard the first album.

think it depends on whether the "Three Days"-type proggy epics still hold up.

They do. I listened to this again about a year ago and I was really happy that Three Days was still amazing. Navarro's shredding, which probably had the biggest chance of making it sound dated, still contributes really well to the song.

As far as this poll, Summertime Rolls was my favorite song for years running. Ocean Size and Had a Dad were pretty close.

but this one is obviously the best thing anybody involved ever did.

not to be pedantic, but Perkz played on The Downward Spiral

...and The Plague That Makes Your Booty Move...It's the Infectious Grooves.

haha, i definitely like this better than the downward spiral. but that could be mostly a funcition of being 19 when i heard nothing's shocking and 25 for downward spiral.

(something similar may be at work in pretty hate machine being my favorite nin.)

missed this when it came out: catching up with jane

"They jumped into my room one day and said, 'We're going to name it Jane's Addiction!'" Bainter recalls. "I thought it was sort of a lackluster name. I didn't take it as a tribute at all."

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

surprised by all the hatred for Ritual. Stop never got old, and still sounds good to me. And that whole rainy day second side was brilliant. Yeah there were some stinkers like Been Caught Stealing, but just because it isn't perfect doesn't mean it sucked.

voted for Ted.

i actually think "been caught stealing" is a classic-ish pop song. i just don't need to hear it again for a long time. (inevitably i will hear it again, long before i want to.)

but ritual was one of the first albums that the frat kids all ran and bought after nevermind made the "alternative" breakthrough, which i assume accounts for the hate. (even though ritual obviously helped start the breakthrough -- it was a top 20 album and "stealing" was all over the place on mtv.) plus also it's the weakest of their albums. any time the best-seller is also the least, it's a recipe for disdain.

mountain song.....first song by them i heard.

this quote from rolling stone's review was what sold me back in 1988::
But another comparison is even more instructive, and just as flattering. Forget about clones like Kingdom Come and Whitesnake: as much as any band in existence, Jane's Addiction is the true heir to Led Zeppelin, creating music that's simultaneously forbidding and weighty, delicate and ethereal. But it's never – well, hardly ever – slavishly imitative, and Jane's Addiction's version of Zeppelin is stripped of Robert Plant's fairy-tale whimsy: even when the sound is contemplative and plaintive, the sensibility is hardheaded and realistic.
http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/119704/review/5942383/nothingsshocking

see I didn't really know any frat kids at the time Ritual was out, and probably wouldn't have cared if they were listening to it or not.

And this:

Wow, I had forgotten this album. When it first came out, I used to play it to drive the metalheads out of my apartment when I wanted to go to sleep. A short time later, all the metalheads got hold of it and Been Caught Stealing was all over MTV. Bah!

― Ironic Erection - LOLFAP LOLFAP LOLFAP (Masonic Boom)

All my friends and I were either punks or metalheads and we picked up on Nothing's Shocking immediately. It was advertised in the metal mags I was reading at the time which was what got me to give it a chance. Our band used to play Mountain Song in my garage... fond memories. I guess we all have different experiences, but mine was that I was the only person in my group of friends who embraced Ritual. I think Nothing's Shocking had way more crossover metalhead appeal.

Wish I could vote for Up the Beach/Ocean Size as one track b/c, really, the segue from one in to the next is one of my favorite rockmoments. As it is, I'll go with OS.

tipsy, Ritual came out a year before Nevermind.

yeah Ritual was def. pre-grunge...proto-alternative if you will...

ted spawned the album title, but jane says spawned the band name. jane says wins.

(i actually don't like this album all that much...and now i'm leaving)

yeah Ritual was def. pre-grunge

tipsy, Ritual came out a year before Nevermind.

i know, that's why i said (even though ritual obviously helped start the breakthrough -- it was a top 20 album and "stealing" was all over the place on mtv.)

but i wasn't clear enough, what i meant was that once nevermind happened there was a sort of retroactive adoption by the mass mainstream of a lot of stuff that had sort of hovered at its edges, and jane's was one of the big immediate beneficiaries. they were already popular, but ritual pretty quickly became one of the 10 cds in the average college dude's travel pack -- which i think helps account for the "ugh" factor it induces for some people.

i have to vote for mountain song because of the intro bass riff

but i wasn't clear enough, what i meant was that once nevermind happened there was a sort of retroactive adoption by the mass mainstream of a lot of stuff that had sort of hovered at its edges, and jane's was one of the big immediate beneficiaries. they were already popular, but ritual pretty quickly became one of the 10 cds in the average college dude's travel pack -- which i think helps account for the "ugh" factor it induces for some people.

Ah ok, clear now.

I still disagree. Jane's became huge right after Perry started Lolapalooza, and made that the farewell tour for Jane's addiction. Nevermind came out immediately after Jane's put themselves to rest. I'd say Jane's breakup, and specifically Lolapalooza, among other factors, allowed "alternative"/"grunge" to become this huge thing.

It's easy to laugh at Lolapalooza now, but it was a force of festivals in the 90s.

the thing is, you are BOTH right..

yeah i don't really mean anything different than what mackro's saying. there was a wave breaking and jane's was on it early but then also benefited from its later cresting. they were broken up, but it still took a year or two i think for ritual to achieve its full level of cultural saturation.

it is funny in retrospect how nevermind doesn't seem like some big turning point, just the logical culmination of a progression that included r.e.m.'s gradual superstardom, jane's rise, lollapalooza and various other steps along the way.

(i think what distinguished nevermind was just that it was so big so fast, and bleach notwithstanding there wasn't any sense of nirvana having been around plugging away like there was with r.e.m. and even jane's addiction. nirvana wasn't there at all and then they WERE -- even though they were certifying a shift more than creating it, from the market standpoint they seemed like first movers.)

^^^ very much agree with this. It took a few months, but when the video for "Smells Like Teen Spirit" hit MTV, it was a whirlwind.

But at the time Nevermind came out, I was thinking "Yeah, this album is good, and it's more accessible. I still like Bleach more", then saying that became weird until Sub Pop re-released Bleach because all of a sudden Nirvana fans didn't necessarily know what Bleach was!

When I was still considering being a music major, I was planning to pitch a music history thesis on how Nothing's Shocking killed hair metal and paved the way for alt-rock's domination of the American top-40 charts in the early 90s. Sometimes I regret not making that switch but then I remember that I didn't have to do a thesis. ^_^

You guys will slay me for saying this, but I'm think Nothing's Shocking was actually eclipsed a bit by Appetite For Destruction, as far as the former not being as popular as it could have been. If there was no G'NR, Jane's Addiction might have taken G'NR's place. Sometimes i damn G'NR just because of this alternate universe potential we will now never see, but then I'm thinking that Perry's anti-Climax is only marginally less weird than Axl's anti-climax, so maybe it all worked out.

There are lots of similarities between those two records. But Appetite for Destruction is simply a better album.

guys i really thought Jane's Addiction were pretty much hated by everybody on this board. gald to see this is not the case.

glad

galled

If there was no G'NR, Jane's Addiction might have taken G'NR's place.

i can see that. appetite definitely sucked up the oxygen at the time, and it felt different and edgier enough than the pop-metal norm that it seemed like something new (in retrospect it looks like an apotheosis, i guess -- or maybe "november rain" is the real apotheosis).

xpost:
hard for me to rate shocking vs. appetite. (i've started polls for both of them...) i think shocking may be a better album, or anyway a more interesting and inventive one, but i have listened to appetite more over the years. at the time, i was obsessed with both of them.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

lol poor "Standing..."

i know. unfair, i like that song. "the water is a-piping hot!" i'm guessing it suffered for being the most "been caught stealing"-ish track.

that was my second choice after "had a dad"

mountain song was off the list for me due to the completely superior version from the (lol) "Dudes" soundtrack. best soundtrack for the worst/best movie ever.

We should poll that soundtrack, it changed lives.

How is that version different?

DUDES: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

I just listened to this record a week ago for the first time in ages and loved it so much. I'd have voted Summertime Rolls if I saw this poll. My high school friend Meegan got dubbed "Meegan My Girlfriend" for about a because of that.

I actually had Ritual first so I still love a lot of that one - Three Days and Then She Did were the regular soundtrack to me and my cousin driving around getting high. I saw an animated Gandalf on the side of the road once, shooting big jiggly pink music notes out of his staff at us while we were driving on a road in the woods, super baked.

Also, Eric Avery might be my favorite bass player ever and is totally underrated.

^ for about a year because of that, I should say

Dave Navarro is one of those dudes that peaked at about age 19, when Jane's Addiction cut this record.

nothing's shocking about the poll results.
BUT who will be the one that will do the: such a classic poll:the jane's addiction "RITUAL" POLL?

The second half of Ritual is so so so so wonderful.

I need to get these records again, because I kind of put them away was "LOL, early 90s" but perhaps they could do with reexamination.

Thing is, I think, personally, that Jane's Addiction did capture a time and a place - the place that was cusp of the 90s Alternative just before Alternative went mega. Far more for me than Nirvana. I think they were the first band that I thought of as "Hey, this is *my* band!" that were suddenly mega-massive with the kids that used to beat me up in high school.

...which is, let's face it, what everyone hated about the grunge explosion.

I mean, you could say that Sonic Youth got there first, but as big as they got, they never went Mega in the way that JA did. Nirvana were definitely later. As was Beck - I can remember that Beck happened *after* the alternascene had already gone overground, because I remember sitting with my sisX0r in her bedroom, painting t-shirts, looking up as the Loser video got played for the first time and thinking, for the first time, "holy shit, I'm being *marketed* to, as a demographic."

Went to see JA at the RPI Fieldhouse (with Lush supporting) - and there was this little cache of us, people that I knew from the punque rocke scene and the indie clubs - totally swamped by loads of frat boys - who had the gall to make fun of us for the way we were dancing.

not being argumentative, just not sure ... in what sense did jane's addiction go "mega" that sonic youth didn't?

I'm mainly talking chart positions and MTV airplay and stuff like that. The highest SY ever charted was 34 - I'm trying to find the exact chart position for JA because of multiple chart placements, but I'm certain it was much higher than that.

Been Caught Stealin' was on heavy rotation on MTV in a way that Sonic Youth was only ever really on 120 Minutes and Alternative Nation and the like. But, erm, my memory of that period is admittedly hazy due to age.

I remember being in my brother's and my room during the summer between my sophomore and junior years in college looking for some random thing and finding a ticket stub of his from a JA show in 1986 at First Avenue. I was mad jealous.

I think the secret to why Ritual is good, especially the second half, is because this is where Perry and others admit musically that they really liked The Cure.

So, who's gonna start the Poll? Are we still thinking up names like "Ritual De Lo HabituPOLL". HAW HAW HAW.

Been Caught Polling

(woof woof)