MTV2 FIFTH BIRTHDAY PARTY:JANE’S ADDICTION, THE MUSIC, THE DARKNESS, THE THRILLS, THE RAPTURE

 When did this happen? When did Metal become cool again? I must have missed something. Really. I can’t remember a time when big hair came back. When white stratocasters and spangled, glittery jumpsuits with tassles were suddenly back in fashion.

I know that Van Halen used to be cool. I also know that sometime in late 1991, in that twilight season between Nevermind and Use Your Illusion, that rock died forever.

Or so I thought.

And The Darkness fucking rock. Rawk with great big hairy man balls. Rawk with big plumes of dry ice, spangly trousers, and amazing widdly-woo solos that ape Yngwie Malmsteens Flight Of The Bumblebee with added, extra oomph. They rock in the way that no-one’s rocked since nineteen ninety one. Possibly earlier : since 1984 even. Since the day that Diamond Dave jumped ship and the mighty Halen crumbled into a world made of rubble and splinters, right before our eyes.

So maybe I’m not quite as cynical as I used to be. Maybe, when I mocked and ripped the living piss out of everyone wearing their original 1983 AC/DC £29-bought-out-of-the-antique-row-at-Next-Oxford-Circus, maybe I was right. Maybe those people don’t know what “Killed By Death” is, let alone who Dennis Stratton is. I’m not trying to outgeek you here. I am a Zen Master, and we know what the fuck we are talking about.

Because Geri Halliwell doesn’t even know what AC/DC sound like. Let alone that “Flick Of The Switch” is their worst album and “Back In Black” easily their best. Because those people were seven when “Flick Of The Switch” and “Piece Of Mind” came out. Because rock was the outsiders anthem, the religion which offered a different way. A way where bland, dull music wasn’t the option. A different world.

It wasn’t some trend, some fad to be picked up and then dropped cruelly when the next cool retro-thing came along. Rock was a way of life. And “Born To Be My Baby”, “Living On a Prayer”, “Bad Medicine” : these are the hymns.

The trouble is, I was listening to that stuff at the time. I didn’t find it a few months ago when I realised that too much music these days is just dull, pale. Boring even. I liked it then. I like it now. Shocking. “Hysteria“ is still, and always will be, a classic.

So forgive my inner metal snobbery, but I think I’m justified. If you weren’t there then, you’ll never know. If you weren’t there then, you’ll always see this as some kind of odd, bizarre joke, some kind of quirky, amusing glimpse into a secret, forgotten world. Just so long as you know. This is a recreation of an age that never existed. And Zodiac Mindwarp were so much better.

Do you wanna get rocked?

But that’s exactly what this is : some vague sense of nostalgia for an age of spandex, easy women and cheap bottles of Jack Daniels, that never actually existed. We’re chasing some fantasy world where you can rock n roll all night, party every day, and never grow old : dancing with Mr. Brownstone, drinking the suicide solution, and where dirty deeds are done dirt cheap.

So let us forget that this is MTV2’s fifth birthday party. Let us forget that The Thrills didn’t. They didn’t thrill, but amiably tapped their feet and gave us a set of pleasant, bland, dull West Coast US rock. The type of music that could only ever be made by pretty rich boys from the affluent states of the US who’ve never really had to worry about anything. Never gone hungry. Never wanted for anything. Never that burning, crushing need to get away, get out, get gone.

So be safe. Be happy. Be complacent. Don’t question. Just relax, and enjoy the bland. I want my artists, my rock stars, starving, desperate, hungry. Driven furiously by a desire to get out, to escape, to do something, anything to make it better. This lot look as if there should be a time clock to punch out of on stage.

Maybe they should be called The Bland or The Bores. But not The Thrills. Because they didn’t.

But next, comes The Darkness. Who give us anything but. Give us a 40 minute set that makes you want to take your girlfriend home (if you’ve got one) and fuck her brains out. That have such wonderful songs as the Rush-meets-Bon-Jovi thrill of “I Believe In A Thing Called Love”, the adolescent wish-I-had-a-girlfriend anthem of “Get Your Hands Offa My Woman (Muthafucka!)”, and the wonderful hymn of a man who has lost his woman because rock is his true, and only, eternal love, called “Love On The Rocks With No Ice”. During which the singer gives us a 100% 80’s pomp metal solo whilst sitting on a roadies shoulders and being escorted through the crowd. Which is so very AC/DC.

And every song ends with a endless ring of crashing power chords and the band, as one, doing the splits. It’s pure very metal in excelsis. I haven’t seen a rock band this much pure, braindead fun since …. Ever. Hail the new rock gods.

After this, The Music can only disappoint. Their deep mined groove of sub-Zeppelinisms are competently dispatched and pulse with a dark, throbbing sexuality. But the vocalist is pure Blaze Bayley, and the songs forgettable at best. Just another rock band. And there are so many other bands equally bland, equally anonymous, equally dull and boring. They offer nothing so there’s nothing to miss.

So that’s forty minutes of my life I’m not getting back : still, twenty minutes at the bar halves the pain. I suppose.

And finally. For me, the highlight of the evening. Though anything that sees The Darkness topped by Jane’s Addiction is a tall order. And there are frankly far too many floating voters, far too many curious onlookers, far too many people here to see other people, for this to match the normally stellar, transcendary heights of a Jane’s Addiction show. The sense of occasion, the sense of ritual, the sense of the special is well. Not absent, but not so potent : it’s almost just another gig.

Though Jane’s Addiction never provide anything as normal as just a gig.

From the opening urgent riffage of “Stop!“ to the last, final moments of the redemptive, desperate “Jane Says“, Jane’s Addiction are nothing more – and nothing less – than a vindication, an affirmation of the power of music to heal, to help, and to expand the soul. Where most bands reach for a beer – Jane’s Addiction reach for the stars, driven, compelled to see what lies beyond. What is in the next room, what lies beyond the next mountain, beyond the next life.

Jane’s Addiction are the first band to evolve rock music in years. By being clever, by being brave, by always moving, and always being moving.

Even for people who don’t like them they are compelling in the scope of their vision. Compelled to see what happens next. Driven by curiousity.

So sure, Jane’s Addiction only play 45 minutes to a mostly curious, undevoted crowd. Sure, they play all the hits and a sprinkling of the new songs. And you can barely hear Perry’s voice. And there’s no sign of the definitive, jazz-metal-thrash fusion that is “Three Days“. But you know : “True Nature“, “Been Caught Stealing“, a busked, acoustic version of “Just Because“, and the awesome, life-in-a-microcosm that is “Mountain Song“ are sometimes more than enough. Almost every band in the world pales into insignificance compared to the dizzy heights that Jane’s Addiction are trying to scale.

But it’s only forty five minutes. But forty five minutes of Jane’s Addiction is a worth a lifetime of most other bands. Seriously.

They’re old. They’re almost all in their forties. Most of them are shadows, junkies, ghosts of their former selves. So we’re told. And still, they define rock. They changed rock. They adapted. Evolved. And what does not evolve, what does not grow, what does not constantly break new ground and seek to make life worth living is that which does not deserve to live.

Jane’s Addiction know its better to try and change the world and fail than not to try at all. Ambition can be beautiful.

In their blood : to constantly seek and search, to look for new challenges, to tap into the thing, the spark of genius that separates man from the animals.

That’s their True Nature calling.

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