Porno For Pyros-Porno For Pyros (1993)

 

Artist: Porno For Pyros

Title: Porno For Pyros

Label: Warner Bros.

Format: CD

Cat #: 9-45228-2

Year of Release: 1993

Country and Year of Edition Issue: US 1993

Listed Condition: VG+/VG+

Sell Date: 5/4/21

Sell Price: $3.49

Discogs Last Sold: 4/5/21 VG+/VG+ $2.00

Low: $1.00

Median: $3.00

Average: $2.90

High: $5.43

Current low price: $0.90

Current Number on Sale at Discogs: 260
 
Have/Want: 1226/73

Where Sold: Sunnyside, NY

Time it took to sell: 10 years

Where and When Bought: half.com late aughts $0.75

Gwiz-gau Letter Grade: A-

Sad To See It Go: No

It took me nearly 3 decades to come to terms with the fact that I like this album.  With Jane's Addiction, I liked Nothing's Shocking and saw the band on it's way up a couple times before the Lollapalooza era, but couldn't tolerate Ritual de lo Habitual save for the track "Three Days" which someone turned me on to in it's time.   

When Porno For Pyros came out, I ignored it completely.  And I mean completely.  To this date, I never set foot at any Lollapalooza event.  I blame it and Perry, even more than Nirvana, for putting independent music in the grave of diminished relevancy. So why did I break down and change my mind about this album?  It was a process.

When I was booking a 150 cap venue in the late aughts at Midway on Ave B in NYC, I had a conversation with our bartender Michelle.  She had good taste overall, and although I can't remember the details, she held this album in such high regard I went home at 5am and ordered the CD for seventy-five cents plus shipping on half.com.  Coming in the mail a week or two later in a pile of alcohol inspired mail order purchases, it sort've got buried past it's one curio listen.  Perry's reverbed wail still annoyed me for all he had done to ruin music.

Fast forward another 10-15 years and that wail doesn't bother me anymore.  In fact, I found this album quite good instrumentation wise.  The wail is quite a sight better than a shitty bed of electronics that a major release of it's ilk would subject itself to from the late 90's and beyond.  The vocals are the only processed sounding thing over a straight rock band with really good percussion and the occasional horn picking up the major label commercial production slack.

Some of the lyrics are head-turning hysterical.  One can only laugh at couplets like "I took off my clothes/and came four times" or "ever since the riots/all I really wanted was a black girlfriend."  Pushin' that pop-culture envelope in a way all their children became hyper-vigilant moralists.  I can only laugh at the panorama, although at the time it seemed the envelope that could be pushed was infinite.

Even the generational signpost hit that I managed to go a couple decades knowing as a reference out of peoples mouths, without actually hearing, sounded fresh.  "Great Pets" I always though to be for young girls in leather choke collars getting primed for a Marilyn Manson concert, not for a "serious" listener of art such as myself.  Ha.  Now that I'm an old fuck, my snobbery has changed.  I'm still a dick, but with different aesthetic priorities.  That I have evolved to enjoy Porno For Pyros in 2021 on it's merits is something I never would've predicted in 1993.

Sometimes all it takes is time.  

And aged whiskey.