Strays early version?

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creep
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Re: Strays early version?

#41 Post by creep » Wed Nov 25, 2015 6:36 am

thanks drifter
creep wrote:i have such a bad memory....but wasn't there another strays era song that leaked that had a dog barking in the beginning just like bcs??
ok...it was bring the mood. trying to recapture that dog barking magic. :conf:


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Re: Strays early version?

#42 Post by coffeepotman » Wed Nov 25, 2015 6:47 am

Whoa...this is cool! Thank you!

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Re: Strays early version?

#43 Post by Larry B. » Wed Nov 25, 2015 11:12 am

creep wrote:thanks drifter
creep wrote:i have such a bad memory....but wasn't there another strays era song that leaked that had a dog barking in the beginning just like bcs??
ok...it was bring the mood. trying to recapture that dog barking magic. :conf:

Fuck me, I had forgotten how shitty this song was.

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Re: Strays early version?

#44 Post by Noonesshocking » Wed Nov 25, 2015 11:43 am

creep wrote:thanks drifter
creep wrote:i have such a bad memory....but wasn't there another strays era song that leaked that had a dog barking in the beginning just like bcs??
ok...it was bring the mood. trying to recapture that dog barking magic. :conf:

I actually like this more than anything that made the album. It's playful and kinda weird and has a lot of space.

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Re: Strays early version?

#45 Post by autumnan » Wed Nov 25, 2015 6:04 pm

This was a pretty interesting thread, although for me it just confirmed the worst. Again.

I seem to remember getting the Hyperleaked version and hadn't heard the Martyn demo versions until now.

With the exception of Martyn's tone and attack, it's all just 'Janes by numbers'. Bring the mood especially appears to be a blatant attemp to recreate Been Caught Stealing (the bass line is the best thing about it) and every other track just sounds like a musically lazy attempt to approximate their own sound. Dave's parts, not being built around the hypnotic clatter of an Avery riff, are left to tread a well worn rock road, his own musical cliches with Jane's cliches tacked on to try and recapture the brand.

What they really cannot capture though is the sense of a band. It all feels artificial and staged.

In a sense I think Ezrin was right to remould them as a straight rock band because they just didn't have any of that artfulness and anti-establishment friction. It may even be worse, as a Janes pastiche, than the more 'truthful' album that came out. When you remember that DN was a metal kid, reproducing someone else's parts with a license to solo (that's a bit unfair I know, but 2/3 of the truth), it makes sense that Strays was a better rock album than a Janes album. The passion in these demos is in Dave's hard riffin' and, when he's allowed, Martyn's response to the aggression in those riffs. Perry's input has none of the wide-eyed, acid fried wonder of his street poetic past and even Perk is phoning it in.

It just goes to show that a great band is all about its chemistry. Take one ingredient away and no matter how much you try to replicate what you had, you can never recapture the outcomes of the original formula. 1.0 is the 'true nature'.

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Re: Strays early version?

#46 Post by kv » Wed Nov 25, 2015 6:14 pm

yep

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Re: Strays early version?

#47 Post by JOEinPHX » Wed Nov 25, 2015 8:33 pm

Here's the thing:

I think that if left to do whatever Dave wants to do, Dave is going to create whatever he is into at the moment. At that moment, he wanted to rock.

On TGEA he was in charge again and actually went in a more atmospheric place, especially if you consider the instrumentals that weren't used.

So it really is an indication that Eric needs to be the groundwork of this band. The bass needs to lead and the guitar needs to fill in the space. Because otherwise Dave is going to make the songs he wants to make. Which is fine, his instrumentals don't suck, but Jane's was always about the 4 members. So with Eric checked out, and Perry clearly not giving a shit, and Perk settling into boringness, and Chaney being a session guy who does whatever he's told... that means 100% of the sound fell on Dave whereas in the past he was only responsible for 25%

For Jane's to be successful, it needs to be 100% participation. And that will never happen ever again.

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Re: Strays early version?

#48 Post by creep » Wed Nov 25, 2015 8:36 pm

strays was way better than tgea. :tiphat:

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Re: Strays early version?

#49 Post by JOEinPHX » Wed Nov 25, 2015 8:39 pm

I think they have equal footing depending on your mood.

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Re: Strays early version?

#50 Post by kv » Wed Nov 25, 2015 9:43 pm

hey both suck and i couldnt care less if i ever heard a single song off either ever again

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Re: Strays early version?

#51 Post by janesbiggestfan » Thu Nov 26, 2015 3:33 am

Afer thinking about this for years I believe it boils down to Perry choosing to eject from the band. Not literally but his heart and his soul isnt in it. For all the talk of Dave mailing it in, he would be on fire and would give it all if Perry hasnt all but deserted being in a band with these guys. This doesnt only relate to separate planes with his "wife". The separate studion recording, separate writing, everything done as if they are business partners on rough terms and talking through lawyers.

I believe Jane's could enjoy a triuphant return even without Eric Avery (not denying his crucial influence and how the songs were based around his repetitive riffs) but they would have to be a real band again. This is the crucial thing... It could work with Flea, Martyn, Duff, hell it would even work with Sitek on bass or Cheney (if he was admitted as a real songwriting member) or even with Dave's tech Dan on bass..... I think even with the voice he has now, if his heart was in it they could have made it.... But you would have to extract his new mentality, his wife and his general state of mind from the picture.

The problem is Perry. He is not in a band anymore. The last time he was was during P4P. After that its just milking the cash cow. No spirit, no comraderie, no band dynamics. Just four guys trying to avoid each other as much as possible while doing festival gigs for easy cash. This was easily seen during NINJA Trent sessions, during Strays sessions, during the writing of TGEA. Perry isnt in a music band anymore. That is the one sentence answer for why Jane's is done. Perry is the reason why they arent fucking spending hundreds of hours working on new music. Fuck him.

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Re: Strays early version?

#52 Post by janesbiggestfan » Thu Nov 26, 2015 3:42 am

To add to the above, at this point I'm only hoping that Dave and Eric will record together in the future, albeit without PF.
If I have to be honest with myself for all of Perry's magic it was the music first and foremost that I loved about Jane's rather than Perrys voice (70 to 30 or 80 to 20 in terms of importance, is my rough estimate). Which basically means Eric's bass and Dave's guitar layered on top.
I love all music that has Daves guitar over Eric's bass, but I don't love all music that has Perry's vocals. This says enough for me.

Jesus, why am I returning to this board to miserate over this band. By now I think they brought more frustration to my life than joy :( Im stupid to keep doing this. Jane's is my life's lover who changed who she was and left me jilted and forever bitter.

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Re: Strays early version?

#53 Post by coffeepotman » Thu Nov 26, 2015 4:59 am

My life's lover changed who she was and left me jilted and forever bitter and I'm not sure what to do about it, but that's another story

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Re: Strays early version?

#54 Post by Larry B. » Thu Nov 26, 2015 6:08 am

creep wrote:strays was way better than tgea. :tiphat:
Absolutely. Strays I actually listened to and had a few favourite tracks for a while. The other day, Wrong Girl came up on shuffle and I didn't skip it. Strays do has its moments.

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Re: Strays early version?

#55 Post by bman » Thu Nov 26, 2015 6:37 am

janesbiggestfan wrote:Afer thinking about this for years I believe it boils down to Perry choosing to eject from the band. Not literally but his heart and his soul isnt in it. For all the talk of Dave mailing it in, he would be on fire and would give it all if Perry hasnt all but deserted being in a band with these guys. This doesnt only relate to separate planes with his "wife". The separate studion recording, separate writing, everything done as if they are business partners on rough terms and talking through lawyers.

I believe Jane's could enjoy a triuphant return even without Eric Avery (not denying his crucial influence and how the songs were based around his repetitive riffs) but they would have to be a real band again. This is the crucial thing... It could work with Flea, Martyn, Duff, hell it would even work with Sitek on bass or Cheney (if he was admitted as a real songwriting member) or even with Dave's tech Dan on bass..... I think even with the voice he has now, if his heart was in it they could have made it.... But you would have to extract his new mentality, his wife and his general state of mind from the picture.

The problem is Perry. He is not in a band anymore. The last time he was was during P4P. After that its just milking the cash cow. No spirit, no comraderie, no band dynamics. Just four guys trying to avoid each other as much as possible while doing festival gigs for easy cash. This was easily seen during NINJA Trent sessions, during Strays sessions, during the writing of TGEA. Perry isnt in a music band anymore. That is the one sentence answer for why Jane's is done. Perry is the reason why they arent fucking spending hundreds of hours working on new music. Fuck him.
I agree with this, except for the Strays part. They actually did all go in to the studio together as a band and actually wrote all those songs as a band. They came up with everything in the Studio rather than on the road but it still was a band effort. TGEA on the other hand was not a whole band effort unfortunately. I also agree with Eric when he said Perry's not serious about JA anymore. It's unfortunate because if Perry was 100% down with Janes they could make a great record again. He's just far too preoccupied with other projects/vacations, etc. If Perry, Dave, Stephen, and Chaney rented a house at the beach for a month and lived and worked together they could do it. That'll ABSOLUTELY never happen, but that's the way back for Janes.

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Re: Strays early version?

#56 Post by janesbiggestfan » Thu Nov 26, 2015 8:43 am

The saddest thing is that the supposed "other projects" that he is doing instead of JA are 100% horseshit. He did nothing worthy for decades now.

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Re: Strays early version?

#57 Post by Noonesshocking » Thu Nov 26, 2015 9:11 am

The interesting thing is that Dave is FULLY aware of the shortcomings of strays and Tgea. I mean obviously he is somewhat fond of them, but more or less agrees that a lot of things were not a good as they could have been. This is a GREAT recent interview where he talks about both albums: https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/intervi ... o_takeover
Q: Eric Avery was going to do the album but he declined and so you brought in Dave Sitek?

A: Yeah, that was also kind of a weird dynamic. Again, we did have our songs written in rehearsal before going in to record 'em. I think there's some things about that record that are f--kin' awesome that I'm so proud of and I think are milestones for this band. And then I think there are other things that are kinda like half-baked ideas.
Q: The music business is terrible.

A: Sometimes I take responsibility for that on my end of things. It was also a very new, weird way of recording for me.

Q: In what way?

A: Perry did most of his vocals at home in his own studio and a lot of the drums were tracked separately. Like we didn't play as a band. Put it that way and I can tell. I can tell when I listen to it. We're just not that band. I think if we had the opportunity to re-track it, it would be killer and probably be better but whatever. Still there's some cool s - t on there and for us anyway still stretched out in terms of our creativity. You know what I mean?
Definitely read the whole thing - it's one of the best interviews he's done in recent memory. Seems he was pretty soured on strays for a long time.

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Re: Strays early version?

#58 Post by farrellgirl99 » Thu Nov 26, 2015 9:45 am

Thanks for sharing, Drifter.

I've actually never listened to these so I'm interested to hear them. I got into Janes through Strays so I have a fondness for that record most don't. It is way better than TGEA, which I think I only listened to about 3 times.

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Re: Strays early version?

#59 Post by Mescal » Thu Nov 26, 2015 12:45 pm

Larry B. wrote:
creep wrote:strays was way better than tgea. :tiphat:
Absolutely. Strays I actually listened to and had a few favourite tracks for a while. The other day, Wrong Girl came up on shuffle and I didn't skip it. Strays do has its moments.
Yeah, but wrong girl is not one of them

I really like Just Because (great single anybody could like) and Price I pay.

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Re: Strays early version?

#60 Post by CaseyContrarian » Thu Nov 26, 2015 12:46 pm

autumnan wrote:This was a pretty interesting thread, although for me it just confirmed the worst. Again.

I seem to remember getting the Hyperleaked version and hadn't heard the Martyn demo versions until now.

With the exception of Martyn's tone and attack, it's all just 'Janes by numbers'. Bring the mood especially appears to be a blatant attemp to recreate Been Caught Stealing (the bass line is the best thing about it) and every other track just sounds like a musically lazy attempt to approximate their own sound. Dave's parts, not being built around the hypnotic clatter of an Avery riff, are left to tread a well worn rock road, his own musical cliches with Jane's cliches tacked on to try and recapture the brand.

What they really cannot capture though is the sense of a band. It all feels artificial and staged.

In a sense I think Ezrin was right to remould them as a straight rock band because they just didn't have any of that artfulness and anti-establishment friction. It may even be worse, as a Janes pastiche, than the more 'truthful' album that came out. When you remember that DN was a metal kid, reproducing someone else's parts with a license to solo (that's a bit unfair I know, but 2/3 of the truth), it makes sense that Strays was a better rock album than a Janes album. The passion in these demos is in Dave's hard riffin' and, when he's allowed, Martyn's response to the aggression in those riffs. Perry's input has none of the wide-eyed, acid fried wonder of his street poetic past and even Perk is phoning it in.

It just goes to show that a great band is all about its chemistry. Take one ingredient away and no matter how much you try to replicate what you had, you can never recapture the outcomes of the original formula. 1.0 is the 'true nature'.

Hey, wow, quality writing and music analysis on a message board! :thumb:

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Re: Strays early version?

#61 Post by Mescal » Thu Nov 26, 2015 12:53 pm

janesbiggestfan wrote:To add to the above, at this point I'm only hoping that Dave and Eric will record together in the future, albeit without PF.
If I have to be honest with myself for all of Perry's magic it was the music first and foremost that I loved about Jane's rather than Perrys voice (70 to 30 or 80 to 20 in terms of importance, is my rough estimate). Which basically means Eric's bass and Dave's guitar layered on top.
I love all music that has Daves guitar over Eric's bass, but I don't love all music that has Perry's vocals. This says enough for me.

Jesus, why am I returning to this board to miserate over this band. By now I think they brought more frustration to my life than joy :( Im stupid to keep doing this. Jane's is my life's lover who changed who she was and left me jilted and forever bitter.
Well, I don't really know.

I listened to Iris (the Deconstruction song) a few days ago. And it's a great song, well, it could be a great song, it has a cool riff, a cool atmosphere, but it just misses that thing to make it really great. Perry singing on it could have made it really great.

So it's like somebody said before, they were the sum of the 4 parts (but having Perry as a frontman really made them special) That worked. Anything else obviously doesn't.

And they're like 60 now, so they're way past the 'we don't give a shit and will rock this fucker out' days. They will never make another Three Days, Up the beach, classic girl, ...

Why are we discussing this anyway? Everyone here likes Jane's 1.0 and hates everything they did/become after that.

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Re: Strays early version?

#62 Post by janesbiggestfan » Thu Nov 26, 2015 1:22 pm

Personally I only realized that they were done this very year, watching Perry's increasingly bizzare face changes and awful media outings in shitty no-ones-watching cooking shows and other niche shit on some shady website series. Even in 2014 I still believed that they would return. I personally prodded and pronged Perry multiple times to record new music and to get into studio etc, entered twitter and facebook exchanges with him etc. I guess I'm just lashing out at the sudden realization that my longtime friend is really dead. Something most people here accepted long ago it seems.

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Re: Strays early version?

#63 Post by Larry B. » Thu Nov 26, 2015 2:11 pm

Mescal wrote: I listened to Iris (the Deconstruction song) a few days ago. And it's a great song, well, it could be a great song, it has a cool riff, a cool atmosphere, but it just misses that thing to make it really great. Perry singing on it could have made it really great.
Did I ever send you this? https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/236 ... Whores.mp3

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Re: Strays early version?

#64 Post by cricket_bows » Thu Nov 26, 2015 8:48 pm

farrellgirl99 wrote:I got into Janes through Strays
This is really interesting and cool; it reminds me of a NPR piece I heard many years ago about a man who experienced each Beatles album as they were released, then watching his young daughter (seven years old? eight?) get into them, but completely out of chronological order, and applying her own meaning and feelings to them, obviously many decades removed from the times that fostered each record.

I'm curious FG, what did you think of NS and RdlH, since you started with the schlockiest of the three (four, if you count XXX)? Did you immediately think the earlier stuff was dramatically better, or did you need time for it to grow on you? Did it then change your perception/listening of Strays?

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Re: Strays early version?

#65 Post by Noonesshocking » Thu Nov 26, 2015 10:01 pm

cricket_bows wrote:
farrellgirl99 wrote:I got into Janes through Strays
This is really interesting and cool; it reminds me of a NPR piece I heard many years ago about a man who experienced each Beatles album as they were released, then watching his young daughter (seven years old? eight?) get into them, but completely out of chronological order, and applying her own meaning and feelings to them, obviously many decades removed from the times that fostered each record.

I'm curious FG, what did you think of NS and RdlH, since you started with the schlockiest of the three (four, if you count XXX)? Did you immediately think the earlier stuff was dramatically better, or did you need time for it to grow on you? Did it then change your perception/listening of Strays?
Not to steal Farrellgirl99's thunder, but I had a similar experience. I was vaguely familiar with stop and jane says, but strays was the first jane's album I owned (came out when I was 13). I liked just because and true nature, but I could not shake the feeling that I was not listening the "real deal" based on the small material I already knew. Because of that, I decided to buy NS and Ritual.

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