Ted, Just Admit It - Click Above
Deep in my discography is Jane's Addiction's Major Label Debut Nothing's Shocking. Top to bottom, one of the greatest albums of all time. Being in the vast minority with this opinion, I think that Jane Says was the weakest link on the Shocking effort.
I keep going back and forth with how much I want say today, because I have a love/hate relationship with the lead singer Perry Ferrell, which may or may not be explored in a future article, so I'm going to attempt to keep my focus on one question specifically.
Why don't they play Jane's Addiction on Classic Rock Stations?
Warner Brothers released Nothing's Shocking August 23, 1988, 29 years ago. The single Jane Says quickly shot into the Top 10 on the Alternative Charts and Nothing's Shocking was a college radio staple. Personally, my next door neighbor would obsessively practice his bass lines for The Mountain Song in his garage, I can still hear the unique reverberations of the song in my head specifically from his garage as opposed to the cleaner feedback from the released single.
As I continue to wax poetically about Shocking, I caught myself craving Ted, Just Admit It this week, and, being lazy, just punched it up on YouTube and listened to it a few times. By the third listen, I was in disbelief that the song hasn't found more of a following with time. I know that Genius Trent Reznor used portions of the song in 1994's cult classic Natural Born Killers, but I haven't heard it anywhere else. Don't hear it on Classic Rock Stations. Don't hear it on my Pandora. I had to specifically look for it.
Why? It has a pure guitar driven structure with a slow build that ends in a rapturous finish. One of the primary strategies for a great Rock Song. I once read that if Nirvana didn't exist, it would have been Jane's Addiction which would have been the band that was the defining cultural-barrier breaker for Alternative Music. But time has softened the lines of what was Rock and what was Alternative.
You listen to Classic Rock today, and they play nearly every Led Zepplin song that was ever recorded. Even local Rock stations today play a deep and assorted cross section of Metallica songs. But other than Been Caught Stealing and Jane Says every great once in a while, it's almost as if pioneers Jane's Addiction have largely been forgotten by the masses.
It's 2017 and re-listening to Ted, Just Admit It reminds me of what a great rock song sounds like. I know, I know, the Ted Bundy audio cut and the lyrics.
C'mon, sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll?
Right?
RIGHT?