I do have a favorite mini-story from the old touring days of my one brief backstage-at-a-festival encounter with Her Majesty Perry Farrell, but I think I’m going to save that one for my Jane’s Addiction entry. Porno For Pyros, the project formed following the 1991 dissolution of Jane’s Addiction, just makes for a little bit easier opening, don’t you think? And “Pets” was the defining track of the Porno For Pyros moment.
For all of today’s current millennial/boomer antics, I feel like “Teenagers are fucked up in the head. Adults are even more fucked up” is a lyric we can all get behind, right? “Pets” is almost a lullaby: a soothing, janky, dystopian (or alt-utopian?) lullaby to the bliss of acquiescence, a discordant fantasy about the peaceful relief of surrender. It’s rebellious, but the kind of rebellion that manifests more with a shrug and a yawn than a raised fist, the soundtrack to a thousand “nope” gifs about going back to bed or staying in with snacks. A lover, not a fighter, the kind of rebel that feels they’ve gleaned what’s “really going on” and wants no part of it. Teen angst with a tinge of moral superiority, but feeling a Sunday morning type of way.
I once had a friend who was a professional dominatrix, and I remember initially being very surprised to find that most of her clients were men in powerful jobs like cops, lawyers, judges, business executives, etc. who – amidst and probably even owing to the pressures of their professional and personal lives, making important decisions all day, often fathers/heads of families – had to pay someone to create and manage a secret, safe space for clandestine surrenders, for the cathartic, therapeutic bliss of letting go, to liberate themselves for one hour at a time from the emotional and psychological pressures of having to constantly be in control. I feel like this song is that vibe, but scaled up to the entire human race. It’s Sunday morning for humanity: refusing to get out of bed, we’re looking back at the previous week and cringing. Looking to the week ahead with dread, and wondering whether we’re really the right species for the job. Someone else, some benevolent alien alpha species, kinder, wiser, more powerful, and better equipped than us, please take over. Just please be gentle and we’ll be most grateful to surrender – we’ll make great pets.
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