Jane's Addiction

The last time I was in the ICA, the last memorable time, was for  Jane's Addiction and it didn't happen. There was a hell of a lot of noise and then everything went dead because they blew the power supply or something. Well that was the tour for Ritual delo Habitual in 1999. However I still remember the event fondly. Everybody enjoyed hanging out in the ICA bar in those days, it was where you wrote in your notebooks and savoured your revolution, and the ICA was perfect, it had good bookshop attached.
Today I was back there, it hasn't changed a great deal, it still, in fabric, represents 70's modernism rather like the toilets at the AA, and you recognize those toilets. But I was suddenly cloaked in memories, and I'd been marching of course, Julie and I out to get the Tories out bla bla, but we don't want to march that far, and peeled off when things got uncomfortable on Whitehall and like old people, ate our sandwiches in a very sodden looking Green Park. I really didn't want to hear Ed Milliband spoil it so entirely. He should have better advisers for sure, you don't fuck off your support that easily.
All of this was very melancholy indeed, the marching banners firstly, those from Doncaster and Gimsby, those refurbished banners from the land of past proud industry, and those championing William Morris even (!) When we sat in the ICA bar I realized my Jane's Addiction was three technologies away. I'd enjoyed a cassette tape with that album on it, that's long gone, also so  much else.