victhortheviking | 
02 21st, 2010| 
I have been listening to side two of Jane’s Addition’s Ritual de lo Habitual. It made me think of when what I was doing when this album first came out and the music I was listening to at the time. I was not all that into Jane’s Addiction at the time. I was more into thrash metal and hardcore. But when I heard the first single “Stop” I thought hmmm, there is something special about this album. I bought it on cassette and I had one of those old (at the time it was top of the line) Sony Walkman Sports. It was heavy duty plastic and water proof. Everything in the end of the 80’s, at the end of the hair metal days, was made in bright colors. The Walkman was yellow with yellow writing on it. REALLY obnoxious.
So I put this album on and, at that time all I did was ride a 24 inch BMX cruiser, and started riding around Austin. So this is when we had two sides to an album. Before CD’s really caught on and way before MP3’s and iPods. Having two sides to an album really brings a different perspective on the music. With Some albums it is like have two different albums.
So back to Ritual, when I first listened to it I was fascinated by how different it sounded. It was new and fresh to me. It seems to me I never really heard anything like that before. Ritual was a Ritual for me. I would put it on and begin my ride in the hot Austin summer. Putting it on would drown out everything else around me. I was in the moment. Side A would get me to downtown and I lived about 12 miles from downtown Austin. Listening to Side A, I would feel the music moving through me. Getting me motivated like nothing could stop me from getting downtown. I would slip through the narrow spaces in between cars, jump curbs like I was fucking Evel Knievel. I would sing out loud, people probably thought I was a crazy man. “I’m white dread and I’m white dread so, Ima got a ring and I hang it through my nose…”
By the time I got downtown I was pumped. By that time the cassette tape would automatically flip over to the other side if I had the Walkman set to do that. When I first heard Three Days I felt like I was moved into a higher plane of consciousness. When you look up Epic in the dictionary Three Days is one of the things that it is used to describe Epic. That song would put me on a spiritual high. But it is also a very melancholy song – telling the story of Perry Ferrel’s friend and her death. I was just beginning to get into the Hare Krishna movement about that time and so I would ride and contemplate the cycle of death and rebirth. When the song would start it would slow me down and I would actual start looking at the world around me. Music makes everything have a different perspective. If I was riding around right before twilight I would look at the long shadows the sun would throw on the buildings downtown. The trees seemed to be getting ready for the evening slumber and it would bring a peace to the turmoil in my mind. I would take a break from riding and just watch the trees fall asleep and get a better perspective on my life.
When the lyrics “Burnt out, grass scorched by the sun. The buildings remain. We will beat them all to dust.” on Then She Did… would bring me back to a time when I had no cares in life. Back when I lived in southern California down in Imperial Valley. I was really young but I remember this time, and I don’t remember how I got there or how I got home, but me this native American kid were walking around this abandoned building that was just a skeleton of what it once was. The thing I remember the most is this metal triangle – like the kind you use to call people for chow – was hanging on the side of the building. I just remember staring at it the triangle and thinking about what it had seen while hanging there.
Ritual de lo Habitual will always be one of my favorite albums of all time.
