Nothing's Shocking (CD - 1988)

Additional personnel: Angelo Moore, Flea, Christopher Dowd (horns).

Engineers: Dave Jerden, Ronnie S. Champagne, Andy Harper.

Recorded at Eldorado Studios in Los Angeles, California.

Jane's Addiction may not have been a strict metal band, but their music was certainly full of traits inherent to metal substances: hard, gleaming, powerful. On NOTHING'S SHOCKING, which captured the much too short-lived quartet at its very peak, they were a blazing metallic supernova--grooving up a streak across the sky one moment, setting off heavy rhythmic discharges the next. Feeding off radically diverse musical elements--from art and classic rock, to hard-core punk and funk--Jane's Addiction was the last great precursor to the alternative revolution of 1991-92. Simultaneously, they were the sole inheritors of Led Zeppelin's mantra to make a different kind of sprawling heavy rock, and that they did in spades.

Thematically, NOTHING'S SHOCKING set out to prove that no subject was beyond the gleam in lyricist/vocalist Perry Farrell's (pronounced "peripheral") eye. Serial killer Ted Bundy ("Ted, Just Admit It"), punk ideology as Eastern philosophy ("Pigs In Zen"), mystic romances ("Summertime Rolls") and high-falutin', early-morning thoughts ("Standing In The Shower...Thinking") were all dissected through a psychologically-stimulating viewpoint, with a stream-of-consciousness delivery. Farrell's tales also served the band as a guide to attack the canvas, and the musicians burned heroically behind him, providing the songs with an expansive set of musical colors. Guitarist Dave Navarro continuously exploded on the drop of a dime, while bassist Eric Avery and drummer Stephen Perkins proved to be among the most formidable rhythm sections in all of rock.

Above all, NOTHING'S SHOCKING helped revive the idea that heavy rock need not be formulaic, or lack any semblance of meaningful content. Rather than focus on the old-hat aspects of the rock rebellion myth (sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll), Jane's Addiction looked in the hard-to-find places for their muse, demonstrating that metal rebels didn't have to be idiots. minimize