Jane’s Addiction Performing Full ‘Nothing’s Shocking’ Shows
Last year marked the 25th anniversary of one of alt-rock’s landmark albums, Jane’s Addiction’s Nothing’s Shocking. The date was commemorated last October, when the band received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, but something bigger is in the works: Rolling Stone has learned that to cap off the anniversary year, the band will play the album in its entirety at the opening of the new Brooklyn Bowl in Las Vegas, May 8-10th.
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The idea for the gigs, says leader Perry Farrell, came from a private-party show the band played as part of the recent CES show in Vegas. “We had a blast performing at our event during the CES show this month,” Farrell says, “so we decided that Vegas would be a great spot for a final celebration of our 25th anniversary.”
Released in 1988, Nothing’s Shocking was Jane’s Addiction’s first studio album (after a self-released live album) and its first for Warner Bros. Records. The album, which included future Jane’s standards like “Jane Says,” “Ocean Size,” and “Mountain Song,” broke new ground with its melding of punk and metal. “Forget about clones like Kingdom Come and Whitesnake: as much as any band in existence, Jane’s Addiction is the true heir to Led Zeppelin, creating music that’s simultaneously forbidding and weighty, delicate and ethereal,” wrote Rolling Stone in its original review of the album. Nothing’s Shocking later ranked Number 312 on a list of the magazine’s “500 Greatest Albums of All Time.”
This past January, Rolling Stone reported that Farrell was considering taking a break from any new recording plans with Jane’s Addiction; he’s in the midst of assembling Kind Heaven, an EDM musical to play in Las Vegas. But the lure of more Jane’s live shows was too tempting to resist. “Jane’s is first and foremost always a great live experience,” Farrell says. “Just because we are on break doesn’t mean we won’t go play a great gig if one comes up.”
The band is in the early stages of planning other live shows this year. For the moment, the Vegas gigs will be the only ones in which they’ll play Nothing’s Shocking straight through.