As Jane's Addiction wrote Hypersonic, their first studio album in thirteen years, singer Perry Farrell struggled to get used to being in a band again. "It was a little awkward because I was involved for the last four years with electronic music," he said, "and electronic music is you by yourself. To have to sit there and not do everything and not have your say on everything, it took me a minute. But then I started to realize these guys are better than machines."

Making a case for brown as the new brown -- in pants, shirt and scarf of the very same -- Farrell was speaking from Amoeba Records in Los Angeles, where Jane's Addiction kicked off a press conference to announce the resurrection of Farrell's Lollapalooza festival by playing two new songs, "Suffer Some" and "Wrong Girl," before Incubus joined in for a jam on "Jane Says."

Jane's will debut their new music -- due in stores this summer -- as part of a Lollapalooza lineup that also features Audioslave, Incubus, Queens of the Stone Age and Jurassic 5. "Honestly," Farrell said, "you might think you want to play the guaranteed hits to people, but I want to give them the new goods. I just can't wait."

Farrell explained his decision to dust off Lollapalooza after a five-year break with a surfing analogy: "It's never a bad idea to take a rest and think about things and re-strategize and wait for the perfect wave. You sit out in the lineup and you wait for the waves to come. At this time, with the music industry, the bands that were out there and our availability, it just seemed like this was the perfect wave."

COLIN DEVENISH
(February 11, 2003)