Jane's Addiction: Addiction By Subtraction

PERRY FARRELL is onstage at LA's Henry Fonda Theater on Halloween night, haranguing the hippie generation for selling out its ideals, and urging his followers to get out there "and take things over." Then again, Farrell also told this crowd earlier not to let the threat of AIDS get in the way of their sexual freedom. And speaking of such freedom, this wiry, dreadlocked lead singer indeed oozes raw eroticism, as his band delivers a pounding post-psychedelic maelstrom. He's a charismatic presence alright, but he's also a little like that apocryphal guy your parents were afraid you'd follow if he told you to jump off a bridge. His cultural pronouncements are not only dubious, they're downright paradoxical. How else do you explain Farrell and Jane's Addiction encoring with a letter-perfect version of that hippie anthem, 'Ripple' by the Grateful Dead?