When Perry Farrell announces that Jane's Addiction will be playing a Lollapalooza aftershow, scoring tickets will be, well, next to impossible. But fans lucky enough to overcome that large hurdle and do just that, were treated to impressive sets by openers Ume and Franz Ferdinand, who were hand-picked by Farrell to warm-up the stage before the Lollapalooza founder and his bandmates took over shortly after 12:10 a.m. on Sunday morning. The Jane's Addiction frontman lead the heat-soaked and sweat-drenched crowd on a 75-minute-long journey, filled with a mix of older Jane's classics and newer songs that rivaled any act across the stages at Chicago's Grant Park.
The sold-out show forced sweaty bodies to be tightly butted up again each other with little space in-between a mish-mosh of soaked concert T-shirts and damp ponytails. But, as soon as Farrell took the stage, nobody remembered the heat, stifling humidity, their incessant iPhone picture-taking neighbor or the thunderstorms that shutdown Lolla for a few hours earlier in the day. With Pink Floyd's "Welcome to the Machine" playing, Farrell -- decked out in a black fedora, loosely-fitted gray dress pants, fingerless black gloves and a dark tank that inevitable came off just a short while later -- along with the rest of the band -- the tattooed-clad guitarist Dave Navarro, drummer Stephen Perkins and bassist Chris Chaney -- took the stage and were clearly ready to prove to fans why this was the Lolla aftershow. Farrell opened with "Underground" and then proceeded to rip into his well-curated setlist that included classics like "Been Caught Stealing," "Jane Says" and a fierce version of "Stop," that had the lucky four thousand or so fans in the Aragon Ballroom induced into a sopping, unstoppable frenzy.
Toward the rear of the setlist, Farrell brought the Jane's offshoot Porno for Pyro's guitarist, Peter DiStefano, on stage and mentioned their close friendship. Farrell then proceeded to tell a rather personal story that involved a cheating girlfriend he once had and how DiStefano, who's like "family" to him, took matters into his own hands when he found out about the unfaithful act and, well, stabbed the man in the ass. The pair then burst into a rare rendition of "Cursed Female."
Before the set ended and Skream & Benga took over for the venue for a DJ set, it was clear that Jane's Addiction fans got an impressive show that they won't soon forget. With Twitter feeds mimicking similar prose like, "Best $15 spent ever," it was easy to see why this coveted ticket -- if an intimate show were to happen again -- won't be an easy one to score. At one point Farrell asked, "Chicago, do you love me?" And judging from the incessant high decibel roars coming from a dripping crowd, the answer is most definitely yes. Which, of course, is nothing shocking.
