I Was There Janes Addiction spring 1988
JANE’S ADDICTION-- MOORE THEATRE, APRIL 17, 1989
“Fuck dude, you shoulda seen it,” blurted Screwdriver into the phone. I held the receiver away from my ear. I’d been at work at the printing plant in Georgetown for several hours on this particular Monday morning by the time he called, but I knew he’d just become conscious in Ravenna, sprawled out on a futon beneath a shadeless window, fully-clothed, the smoke still lazily curling from the bigmouth of his wake’n’bake. “Perry had the fire engine-red dreds, dude, it was INSANE…”
Screwdriver had been talking up Jane’s Addiction to me for more than a year now, since their first trip to Seattle opening for Love & Rockets, Perkins sitting on the floor and all the crazy vocal effects. He’d talked that first record to death, and I’d listened to it as a courtesy, but never quite caught his enthusiasm for the band. But that was normal—Screw was the kind of guy who talked incessantly, and you could never really buy into everything he went on about, because a portion of what he talked was all shit.
But not Jane’s Addiction. By the time this particular Monday morning rolled around, I was fully on the bus and eagerly awaiting the second show of their two-night engagement at the Moore Theater. They were touring in support of their stunning sophomore offering Nothing’s Shocking, and they had come a long way from the group who’d warmed up for Love & Rockets a year earlier. They’d even been through Seattle just a few months prior, headlining a show at the more uptown Paramount as part of FM100’s self-conscious Rising Star series. But now they were back with a two-show set in a smaller, nastier room where they could shake their shit without any coked-up radio promoters prompting them as to the call-letters and the sponsors. Now was the time to write history.
I finally clocked out at the print shop and drove directly to the liquor store to purchase a fifth of Pancho Villa, silver. Relishing the first portion of it in the fine Seattle spring afternoon, I drove to my apartment on Capitol Hill where I changed into my punk rock threads and took a few bonghits of my own, awaiting Screwdriver’s call. When it came from Belltown, Poncho & I saddled back up and headed downtown.
Now, you gotta dig Screwdriver. He has more aliases than he has fingers, but the one I’ve chosen to identify him in this column comes from a spin on his last name, which is the same as a prominent manufacturer of hand tools, and I’ll tell you it aint Craftsman. His other knicknames are considerably more vulgar, and I will spare you them this time around, though I will not promise that one of Screw’s other personas will not make their garlicpussy-breathed way to the pages of ’sup! Magazine in the future, ‘cause we had some wicked cool times together, and we’re brothers. But even in April 1989 the guy was a fucking trainwreck, and I’ve just rolled up to him on 2nd Avenue with a zip of the kill and a bottle of horrible tequila.
So what’ya think we did? We drove around for an hour, drinkin’ and smokin’ and lookin’ for a parking place, Screwdriver all the time telling me about how bitchin’ the show the night before was. We’re listening to the record, the sun’s goin’ down, we’re gettin’ drunk and stoned-- it’s great. Eventually it’s time to think about goin’ into the theatre, so we pull in sideways to a parking spot on 3rd and head toward the Moore.
The show, of course, was fucking amazing. After pausing briefly at the merch counter to admire the tokens we couldn’t afford, we headed directly into the pit just in time for the houselights to flash, twice. The energy in the room was incredible— high like the band, but also strangely reserved, kind of like slow-motion, even after the lights went down…
Things went completely nuts immediately after, naturally, but I’ll never forget the opener, Perry Farrell holding high in a elbow-length velvet glove a bottle of Dom Perignon, the opening refrains of “The Mountain Song” cascading down upon him, pupils like Frisbees and Joker Green dreds after coming out bright red 24 hours earlier. Then the ultra-violence, punishing volume, idiots rule…
(author’s note: several weeks later, Martin & I ventured over to Jerry’s house @ 3 am after watching the Soul Kiss video to try and score some weeds. I had, 12 hours earlier, been forced to make the rather difficult decision to either shatter my wrist on the refrigerator or knock my fucking asshole girlfriend’s teeth down her face, and had opted for the former. So after having my ‘boxer’s wrist’ set at the walk-in clinic, Martin & I proceeded to take all of my pain medicine with a half-case of Schmidt. If we’d known there was tall swallow left in the bottle of Poncho Villa underneath the passenger seat of my car, we probably would have drank that, too-- before setting off in the direction of Jerry’s. As it turned out, the 500 police officers that greeted us in Jerry’s culdesac with their blue lights flashing and their guns waving were “looking for someone else” and not only could not arrest us for an open container (which we weren’t even aware of) or for being grossly impaired (which we were totally aware of), but they actually had to apologize to Jerry’s parents for the disturbance.
Jerry’s folks weren’t holding, but we considered this a pretty decent outing, nonetheless. We even got a nightcap out of the deal.)
-- Callous French