Enit Festival, 1997, where -- against all odds -- Farrell hosts one of the greatest rock 'n' roll circuses in memory.
Jane's Addiction preach and practice the sort of hard-core bacchanalian spirituality you associate with the Stooges, the early Stones, pre-retirement Patti Smith and even the Grateful Dead back when they were dangerous, say '69-71.
Farrell would align himself with both rave and the old Acid Test pioneers, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, for his Enit Festival (named, in case you care, for an interplanetary celebration of "cosmic peace and sexuality" from an obscure sci-fi novel).
The early evening is mostly DJs from the Funky Techno Tribe collectively pounding the main auditorium, while two alternate performance spaces showcase experimental films, electro-acoustic trance bands, hip-hop DJs, light shows and more moonlighting sex club dancers than a Two-Live Crew video. That's just the ground floor.
Up on 4, you have the Merry Pranksters freaking-out acidheads and confusing onlookers with portentous, mostly incomprehensible group babbling and a charmingly low-rent light show. Other rooms feature masseuses and body painters, and there is plenty of food and alcohol and contraband to be had.
It's what the Dutch have done for years in club spaces like Milkeweg, and what rave promoters have done for years in warehouse spaces.
DJs fade out into Goldie's set, and his romantic, dystopian drum 'n' bass sounds glorious through an arena-scale sound system.
Kesey and the Pranksters -- dressed in plastic trash bags like homeless Haight Street hippies -- wander onstage after Goldie, dementedly chanting, "Let the Sun Shine In" while processed video footage of the Kennedy assassination flashes overhead. Finally, in an inspired goof, the DJ heralds Jane's Addiction with an impromptu techno remix of Lynyrd Skynard's "Freebird."
Playing nothing but their own oldies, they magnify the psychedelia of wanky epics like "Three Days" and "Chip Away," which becomes an extended drum jam on a little junkanoo stage at the back of the hall.
The addition of Red Hot Chili Pepper bassist Flea (replacing original bassist Eric Avery, who apparently wanted no part of the reunion) only makes the band's grooves larger.
Flea looks pretty sexy in his flowy red raiments. Not as sexy, though, as Dave Navarro, in a silver feather-trimmed robe, black mini-skirt and hose.
Farrell dominates the runway in a multi-piece ensemble, gradually stripping down to a skin-tight blue micro-mini and matching gloves. Somewhere, Gianni Versace is grinning.
There is also something about the sight of Farrell slithering across the floor between two of the show's numerous thong-clad pole-dancers, looking like a debased trio of Rockettes.
The crowd on the floor is a writhing mosh pit throughout. But what's most remarkable is what happens after the final encore (a perfunctory acoustic "So I Would").
Unlike every arena rock show I've ever attended, the lights do not go up and the staff do not herd people out like cattle. Instead, the Funky Techno Tribe cranks the sound system up even louder and starts dropping those heavy beats. And the crowd, their pelvises loosened, finally begins dancing, and they're still going strong when we leave around 3:30 a.m. (the event was licensed to run to 6 a.m.).
Up on the fourth floor, and only recently out of the hospital, a white-haired Kesey led a ramshackle psychedelic jug band through what began as the most hilariously bad version of the Grateful Dead's "I Know You Rider" that I'd ever heard. The cheesy light show was still sputtering on the walls, and the junior hippies packing the room, most a few generations younger than the ones onstage, started singing along. And for just a minute, that creaky old tune blossomed into something really transporting.