Jane's Addiction and Nine Inch Nails @ PNC Bank Arts center June 6th!

So here we are are for the thirteenth installment of the Jay Porks Never Ending Concert Series. We had a little hiccup on my way to the 'Cake' show that lets just say left me missing the show and plus a desk appearance ticket. Anyway, this one is special. Special because we kicked out the jams on the 2nd annual Jay Porks SUMMER Concert Series, and what a place to begin. PNC Bank Arts Center in Homdel, NJ-what a venue. I love this place. The whole atmosphere, it's a great place to see a concert. It plays intimate for it's 17,500 people capacity. The bands performing tonight: Nine Inch Nails and Jane's Addiction. Street Sweeper Social club(Tom Morello's like 73rd side project) opened, but the group I was with-we were all in the parking lot enjoying cold beers and friendly conversation with what looked to be the rest of the crowd. When you buy tickets to show at PNC first thing you think of is “Will we be allowed to tailgate in the parking lot?” and when we showed up and were directed to park on a lawn in Lot 9- I noticed tons of red cups. Beer is good to go.

While hanging out (drinking a Shaffer-now that is some horrible beer right there) we encounter a group of some friends and there we are in full posse mode. Got to love posse mode; I mean, I'm used to being by myself and latching on to people for small fragments of time during a night, but now I'm surrounded with people who actually AREN'T trying to get the hell away from the weird kid taking notes.

We eventually make our way from Lot 9 up to the actual parking lot. See, we're actually parked on grass on the side of the highway seemingly. So we get to the other half of our posse and the good news is they're waiting on a cooler full of beer being rolled up the lot from another car. Hello Heineken Light, thanks for showing up. While we're standing around drinking beers, smoking pot(Well, at least I was smoking pot) something happens. Hard to describe, but have you ever seen word of mouth traveling through a crowd of people? Like, thousands of us in the parking lot, and word from the row ahead of us was that Nine Inch Nails was going on at 8:15pm as oppose to the slightly before 10pm slot where the headliner would be. So all of a sudden, a pregame adjustment moves this to a Jane's Addiction show. Which would lead you to believe that people would start heading in. But when that Nine Inch Nails going on at 8:15 news broke-first instinct was “alright, plenty of time to have another beer” as oppose to “lets hurry in to see NIN” and as I looked around the same sentiment seemed to be the common denominator in everybody. A lot of people psyched for Jane's Addiction- I was excited. It was going to be complete ruckus in there. Was suppose to be anyway.

I was walking up the steps as I heard the sounds of Trent Reznor and his machinery already playing. So I guessed we missed Street Sweeper Social Club. No but seriously I was surprised that Reznor had a band with him, but he did. And he had a guitar hanging off him, but I didn't see him play it much. There were two stands set up in front of him that appeared to be keyboards but were actually just soundboards. I swear the dude was rocking out sounding like an 1800's assembly line in a hollow factory. So I'm waiting for them to play like the three or four songs I actually like by Nine Inch Nails and I look around and everyone else is sort of doing the same. People are more hanging out, running errands at this time. During NIN's set is when I bought my Jane's Addiction tee shirt for $35 (yea we're back to big business rock and roll for this show) and a $9 Coor Light. I paid nine dollars for beer that tastes like they poured water in it. You noticing that Nine Inch Nails really isn't gaining much of my attention. Play the songs I know already. The crowd was pitiful, can we get some life in here? Or out here I should say. It took until 9:30 for them to play “The hand that feeds” and then the last song they got into was “Hurt”, which was a really like, low-boring version of it. Come on man you have like 15 thousand deep can you do me a favor and put on a better set then that next time? And it was 9:44 so that was their last song of the evening. So lets get this straight: Nine Inch Nails did not play “Closer”, they're best song to date. How do you not play that? That's like if the Meat Puppets didn't play “Lake of Fire” at a show. Are you kidding me? The crowd (the posse I'm in included) got into those last two songs but overall I don't know if I was more disappointed with the lackadaisical crowd or lackadaisical set by Trent Reznor and his machines. I had previously heard various reports that he has crazy light schemes and just puts on a great show. I just didn't see any of that tonight.


At 10:02 we're talking bout heading to the bathroom when all of a sudden Jane's Addiction hits the stage-and that's when we (Pam, Renee and I) dart towards the front of the lawn and rock out for about half the set over there. I need to state one thing right now. Dave Navarro can play that guitar a little bit. Wow man, every single song my rocking out was interrupted by raw, loud, free flowing , absolute genius solos. Seriously it was like excuse me while I kiss the sky-I underestimated his skills. It was amazing how I didn't know he was that good, I've heard the records. I guess just seeing the quick, clean chord changes on the jumbo tron

(I don't think they actually call it jumbo tron I think its just a big screen) made me realize his ability. The lit cigarette placed between the nobs on the headstock-like a freaking rock star. He is a freaking rock star. Too bad he didn't bring any porn stars with him. He's probably as good as Slash-well, maybe not but he's damn well close

Perry Farrell's stage presence is amazing. He is exactly what Scott Wieland tries to be. Only difference is: Perry keeps it together. Was he on a lot of heroin tonight? Most likely. Did he even falter at any point during the night? Absolutely Not. He did his whole schtick, air guitar next to Navarro, jumping on speakers the whole thing. Wearing a tie without a shirt on-just classic stuff. Sure Farrell is older, but hasn't lost a step.He's been criticized for being one of those guys who thinks he invented music. I got to tell you they invented something tonight. That shit was rocking. You would think Nine Inch Nails would have been a lot louder and harder then Jane's Addiction but it was the total opposite. As we're rocking out having a ball, it's noticed that the audience, other then a few head nods in unison wasn't really into it as much as we would have expected. I though everyone would be going nuts like me-jumping around screaming lyrics having fun. All I see is a sea of macho Jersey boys raising lighters waiting for Phish to come to town, give me a break. I'm in utter disbelief of the stagnancy of these people. We're at a rock concert for crying out loud.

ducked off stage at about 11 before coming out to encore and all that's going through my head is “I will riot if you don't play “Jane Says”. Well, finally the people that were still there got into it when they played “Stop” followed by, what else; “Jane Says”. It was freaking awesome. I can;t tell you how much fun I had. Great show. I can't believe Jane's Addiction ended up closing down the house. What a charming turn of events. The venue (besides the people and the prices) was great- let me have my camera in there and all that didn't bother anyone bout smoking pot-good friends. Good times. Good way to kick off the summer. I need to get out to PNC again this summer. I should add another picture or two in comming days-I'm having trouble with the screen capture as of this moment

Next up for us is the Meat Puppets June 11th AND 12th @ the Mercury Lounge somewhere in the city. And the answer is yes, I will be writing reviews for BOTH of the shows, the thursday and the friday. It' going to be insane. If anyone hears of anything you think I need to be up on then you need to E-mail me at jaeporks@hotmail.com- Thanks for taking a few minutes with the Porkster, hope you didn't feel it was a waste of those minutes. See you June 11th!!!