Thread where Jane's Addiction obsessives help me id some stuff

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Some years ago at a record fair in my home-town I picked up a double LP, supposedly by Jane’s Addiction. I was rather excited you see because three sides of the record were crammed with songs that I had never heard of and I thought I had stumbled across a rare treasure. Well, I got home and gave it a spin and though side four was six or seven demo recordings of songs that cropped up on the first four albums, ‘Mountain Song’, ‘Ocean Size’, ‘Jane Says’ et al, and were unmistakably genuine, the other three sides of the album were highly perplexing. For a start, the singer sounded more like Ian Curtis and the sound was far more eclectic and messy than Jane’s ever sounded (the closest Jane’s songs I can compare this stuff to is ‘My Cat’s Name Is Maceo’ and ‘Slow Divers’ though there are guitars washing all over most of it). The sound quality was poor and though the song titles like ‘Pissed Off Krishnas From Hell’ and some 10 minute psycho-babble titled ‘All White People Look Alike’ could conceivably have come from Farrell’s brain, they sure as hell didn’t sound like the Jane’s Addiction I knew and loved. So I took the record back the following week after taping it.

I’ve never heard the Psi Com stuff to compare the sound but I know the song titles don’t match up. Anyway, long story short, just wondering if anyone has any idea who this could be. I dug it pout the other day and it still doesn’t sound like any band I ever heard. I recall the sleeve had an illustration drawing of a Dracula-like chap on the front, if that helps. Please don’t tell me it was some ultra-rare recording of the first JA incarnation or something…

Alex K (Alex K), Friday, 27 June 2003 13:24 (twenty-two years ago)

...the singer sounded more like Ian Curtis and the sound was far more eclectic and messy than Jane’s ever sounded.

Boy, you've nailed Psi Com right there. I haven't heard that Psi Com tape since 1993, though, so my memory might be a little fuzzy. I know there was a time gap between Psi Com and Jane's, and I imagine anything Perry recorded during that period would have been a rough hybrid of the two.

Trouser Press says that members of Psi Com went on to form a band called Hare Krishnas.

What you had might just have a been a sloppy bootleg gather anything Jane's-related.

Andrew Frye (paul cox), Saturday, 28 June 2003 01:22 (twenty-two years ago)

ten years pass...

You put a poor defenseless lobster in hot butter?

how's life, Monday, 30 September 2013 17:45 (twelve years ago)


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