Jane!

I like Jane.  

Ever since Jefferson Starship elevated a name to an idea – I’ve been hooked.

There’s a lot of “stuff” attached to Jane – my sister’s middle name is Jane – she’s not plain – she’s awesome!

I suspect as the generations change Jane won’t hold the same weight – but right now – in 2023 – to me – Jane fucking kills.

Hold On To Jane – The Thornbirds

It’s a duality thing.

There’s a lot of philosophy about this but I’m working with the construct of – you have to be separate in order to see yourself.  I’m jumping a load of steps but – here’s an expression of that

I’ve always known that “Jane” was cool.

I love this track – it’s ridiculous – I love everything about it: the vocals – the acoustic guitars and harmonies, the guitars, the chorus, the pure non-commercial authenticity of it – I have no idea what it means, except…

it reminds me of a track…

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Jane – Jefferson Starship

Oh shit, 

This was my first Jane.

;-p

I have tracks that I can place to a certain space or time – (I’m aware I’m an unreliable narrator,) – 

I have no context around this track – nothing to “first follow” – to me it’s one of those foundational things – I could spend a lifetime listening to it – but – well – there’s a lot of music out here ;-p

That this exists – well, I’m always going to keep an ear out for Jane 

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Jane Says – Jane’s Addiction

I don’t know the band.

and I really should – but, then again – there’s so much music out there…

Musicians I have played with love this band – I love this song.

Remember – prior to them existing, I was already a little seduced by Jane – and here was a thing that was doubling down on the whole “Name” thing.

I don’t know why I chose not to listen – and yet – I’m pulling this track onto the playlist ‘cos it’s undeniable – brilliant – resonant as fuck,

The version on the list comes from Tracy not me,

and I’m stoked.

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Brianstorm – Arctic Monkeys

I wanted to take a moment to comment on your choice of “Jane Says” by Jane’s Addiction, because the song, and a specific album cover — CD cover actually — were the inspiration for my Jane Asylum persona. While you’ve added the track from the 1988 album, Nothing’s Shocking, my first experience of the song is from 1987’s Jane’s Addiction (Live). And if you take a look at the cover art for that album, you’ll see how my mind ticked listening to it while I adopted my musicto moniker. 

There are other reasons for the name Jane Asylum, but now that we’re on the topic of pseudonyms, I’ve chosen the track “Brianstorm” by the Arctic Monkeys. At first glance, this choice seems off-topic. However, I’ve known you to go by the name “Brian” when working out design issues or just testing different things on musicto.com. So, Brian may not be a song about Jane, and he isn’t exactly a musicto persona, but since you do a bit of brainstorming using it, and we are after all collaborating at the moment, it feels appropriate to make a mention of Brian as he orbits the world of “Jane”. 😛

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Jane – Girlpool

I love Girlpool

I don’t really know them – I don’t really know many bands – or – people, tbh ;-p

123 is one my favorite tracks on the planet – I can’t tell you why – it just is – 

I don’t know any other Girlpool fans – and there’s a lot of them – but I’m old and don’t go to shows and don’t participate on forums or meet my idols,

I think Avery and Harmony are cool – I think their friendship is cool – I think their music is cool

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Sweet Jane – Cowboy Junkies

I have too many inputs to this track to write them all – for sure I should – but in this context…

There’s two aspects – 1st of which is – how fucking cool is this song?!?!?!? 

2nd – I didn’t know it was a cover.  

People who make you feel bad because they know a song’s lineage and you don’t, are dicks.

That was not my experience with this track – but I’ve seen it happen and I’m like – …  really?!

(and just a side note – we’re only 6 tracks in and I’m thinking – Josephine sure as hell doesn’t have this opening!)

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Janie’s Got A Gun – Aerosmith

I have a weird relationship with synthesizers – with the 80s – the hair – the “product”

I always knew that Aerosmith was cool ‘cos my cool cousins listened to them, but I had them in the “product” category until Big Ones came out. 

It was the lyric that got me listening – the album’s still cool.

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Hey Jane – Spiritualized

You need to watch the video:  

What a fucking life

What a complete lack of siloing.

I’m rooting for her – are you?

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Understanding Jane – The Icicle Works

You see now I’m thinking about the list – we’re 8 tracks in and I’m thinking Jane – I’m sending out feelers to times I might have had.

I feel like I knew The Icicle Works,

I’m certainly loving Understanding Jane

That’s the thing about Jane – even when you’re not sure she’s there, she is.

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Mary Jane – Rick James

Hah!

I’m in San Jose – the Japanese neighborhood – their annual festival – it’s late and we’re in a bar singing karaoke.

This guy steps up and he has a certain swagger about him – like – you know that he knows and that – it’s gonna be fucking awesome

I don’t remember exactly how it went down, but I do know by the end of the performance I understood that Mary Jane = Marijuana

Now – don’t be a dick.

I’m being brutally honest.

(I had a similar experience with Grandmaster Melle Mel)

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Mary Jane’s Last Dance – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

Nashville,

I’ll try and find the video (I will )

Jeremy,

Football,

Bar Bands,

Fucking Bar Bands!

(I had only recently grokked the whole Mary Jane thing)

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Jane – Trampoline

I realize the opportunity and start looking for cool Janes.

Fortunately I knew of one (see below) – but I actively found this track.

I adore this track – I’ve only known it for a short time – but yeah,

Jane.

Jane

😛

Jane

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Me and Jane Doe – Charlotte Gainsbourg

I don’t have a personal relationship with this track, and it’s not even my favorite song by this artist (although I still adore it), but I love, love, love (did I say love?) Charlotte Gainsbourg and whenever there’s an opportunity to add one of her songs to a playlist, I’m all over it! If I dug deeper, I’d have something more profound to say about the track, but this is pretty much the only reason I’ve chosen “Me and Jane Doe”, or at least this and the fact that all 11 songs that you already chose have the name ‘Jane’ in the title and I feel like I need to follow suit, because I really have no idea what the theme of this playlist is about! Haha

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Jane – Last Train

So, as I look down the list of tracks you’ve added to our collaboration, I can see that you’ve pretty much picked out most “Jane” songs — aside from the Charlotte Gainsbourgh track —  that I would have added myself. We’ll get to that later. 

First though, there are plenty of songs with ‘Jane’ in the title. Spotify alone lists a thousand, albeit many of those are different versions or different albums with the same songs. Some of them are songs by artists named Jane, or a variation of Jane like Janelle Monae, who appears frequently enough, and still others are Portuguese songs because Janela (meaning window) and Janeiro (January) are apparently popular words used in song titles and lyrics by musicians from Portugal and Brazil, for example. 

I imagine that a good number of these 1000 Jane songs Spotify has returned to me in their search engine have the name somewhere in the song lyrics — although I can’t for the life of me figure out the reasoning behind the appearance of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Violin Concerto in E Minor — maybe there’s a Jane in the orchestra. Who knows. Sometimes there’s just no rhyme or reason behind a computer generated playlist. 

Anyhow, this Spotify search obviously suggests that the options for songs about Jane aren’t exhausted. Do I really want to go down the list trying to pick out tracks that are at least halfway decent just to add to our collaboration? Emphatically: NO. 

And this means I’m gonna have to get a bit creative with my remaining choices.

But before that happens, I will add “Jane” by Last Train, which you either overlooked, never heard of, or left for me to pick up and add. I really like the track  — it reminds me of a lot of music I listened to in the 90s, even though their first album Weathering was released in 2017.

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Lost+ (with Jay-Z) – Coldplay

When collaborating on a different playlist, musicto curator Joshua Thomas added a Coldplay track, mentioning at the time that, “Coldplay has a song for everything.” With this in mind, I poured over their discography one album and one song at a time. I don’t know if Joshua will be disappointed to know this or not, but starkly missing from the band’s collection is a song called “Jane” or even anything close to it. They do, however, have a track called Lost+ (with Jay-Z), and if we were to spell the name Jane with a Y, as some Jayne’s invariably do, then it’s within the realm of possibility that one of those Jayne’s could be known as “Jay”. Am I reaching here? Probably, but what the hell — I’m enjoying the song, so I’m going with it. 

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Crow Jane – Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

So, I didn’t have to look far and wide for this song. In fact, all I had to do was mention to Nuno that I was working on a playlist tentatively called “Jane!” with you. Being a big Nick Cave (in all musical incarnations) fan, Nuno offered “Crow Jane” from his time with The Bad Seeds. Fortunately, while not as big a fan as my husband, I’m a fan nonetheless — you can’t go wrong with Nick Cave. Besides, the song has this kind of slinky cool cat groove that I enjoy, which will fit perfectly snug between a couple of tracks on our playlist.

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Miss Hell – Calamity Jane

Listening to Crow Jane by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, I’m reminded of murder ballads, which leads my mind to old Western movies, which leads to remembering the TV series “Deadwood” and then American frontierswoman, sharpshooter, and storyteller, Martha Jane Canary. I don’t have much luck finding a great song under this name, but Ms. Canary’s nickname, Calamity Jane, does produce a few songs worth listening to — albeit none that really fit with my idea of the music on this playlist. 

Nevertheless, my search does turn up a band called Calamity Jane and “Miss Hell” is the first song I hear. It sounds familiar,  even though I can’t pinpoint why (maybe a documentary about the grunge era). I’m in love with it. And a little research leads me to discover that they’re a grunge band from Olympia, Washington who peaked in the early 90s. 

As luck would have it, at least for me, Martha Jane Cannary is the title of their only LP. As luck wouldn’t have it for them, and according to their Spotify bio, “they disbanded in 1992 following a brutal stadium show supporting Nirvana in Buenos Aires, Argentina”. That has to be a pretty brutal experience if the band bio is citing it as ‘brutal’, followed by “they disbanded.” And while I’m admittedly curious to know the salacious details surrounding that particular event, it’s neither here nor there. The fact is that I discovered a new band to enjoy during my collaboration with you, and tell me if I’m wrong, but music discovery is part of what collaborative playlists are all about.

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Mary Jane – Alanis Morissette

Now that I’ve inadvertently bought a ticket onto the 1990s train, “Mary Jane” by Alanis Morrissette comes to mind. It wasn’t the most played track on my own personal Jagged Little Pill CD — that’d be “Ironic” and “Hand in my Pocket” and “You Oughta Know” and “All I Really Want” ad nauseum — but I’ve listened to the album enough in my life to be reminded of the track. 

I can’t tell you why I didn’t play this particular song as much as the others, because I’m really enjoying it some 24 odd years later. However, I do become curious about reviews of the album at the time, enough so that I Google “jagged little pill 1990s reviews”. I don’t get far. I’m easily distracted by the first search result with The Guardian announcing “Alanis Morissette Musical” — say what now? It’s in Australia, or at least was in 2021. Too bad. 

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Priority – Jane Fonda

I’m thinking about my Barbarella playlist. And funny enough I just rewatched “On Golden Pond” the other week, which stars Jane Fonda. I hadn’t seen that film since it came out in cinemas back in 1981, although on second thought I might not have actually watched the film until my mom brought it home for a family video night. In retrospect, with the movie fresh in my mind, I thought she appeared more significantly in the film than reality, but I digress. Surely someone has written a song about Jane Fonda!

I’m not wrong. There are ample “Jane Fonda” titles to be had. But it’s “Priority” by the Jane Fonda herself that catches my attention. It’s from a 1991 album called “Jane Fonda’s Weighloss Walkout” and had it begun with just dialogue, like the seemingly abundant workout album tracks listed on Spotify, I would have dismissed it. It’s a slightly strange choice to add to our playlist, and yet that’s part of what makes it a perfect track. My Jane Asylum persona would add it to a playlist because it’s an infectious little knee-slapper, it’s got cowbell, and the lines, “Are you frowning? Relax your forehead, relax your mouth” could easily be mistaken as blowjob instructional, which is perfectly fun. 

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Goodbye Stranger – Supertramp

I mentioned earlier Nuno and I rewatching the movie “On Golden Pond” recently, and as we were watching it, I couldn’t help wonder if it was filmed in the Muskokas — the landscapes were strikingly similar. Of course, with the internet conveniently at our fingertips, we quickly discovered that it was filmed in New Hampshire, but it did stir up a bit of nostalgia for me.

Specifically, it stirred summers in the latter half of the 1970s. In those days, I would travel with my BFF’s family to their cottage on Lake Rousseau for two weeks at the end of July. And it wasn’t a short trip. The drive was two and a half to three hours long, and with no Nintendo Switch or iPod, that’s two and a half to three hours at the mercy of a nauseating pine tree air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror, and the adult in the car’s taste in music: James Last, Nana Mouskouri, Ann Murray, and Zamphir. Not cool. Well, maybe cool to my friend’s father, but we were between the ages of 9 and 13 at that time, so not cool.

The most vivid memories I have of the Muskokas, aside from the long drives, was finally getting out of the car, changing into our bathing suits, and spending every waking hour on the dock, or in the water, and listening to and learning the lyrics to our favorite albums on the “ghetto blaster”. One of those summers, the last one I spent there, was 1979, and the album we had on repeat was Supertramp’s Breakfast in America.

I don’t remember if we had the actual tape with the lyrics booklet, or if we had to painstakingly listen, handwrite, rewind, play, listen, argue over what we heard, listen again, agree, and write down the lyrics, but by the end of those two weeks we knew every word, at least to the the most popular tracks on the album. “Goodbye Stranger” was one of those tracks, and I really hope we did have the lyric booklet, because that song has a shitload of words. It also contains the name Jane at least eight times, but whose counting. 

“Goodbye Mary, goodbye Jane

Will we ever meet again

Feel no sorrow, feel no shame

Come tomorrow, feel no pain…”

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Jane, Jane Bond – Hello Ocho

It just occurred to me that I had saved a Jane song for a different playlist that I was going to title, Jane Does Lisboa, 1944. I had written a story for it, and in that story my character, Jane, travels back in time to the Estoril Casino where she meets Ian Fleming and convinces him to call his character Jane Bond instead of James. 

The playlist is finished and sitting around. It has been sitting around for a year or two. The story? Well, that was finished too. I set it aside to take a break, before coming at it with fresh eyes one final time. Somewhere along the way I got distracted (as I am prone to do), and then I totally forgot about it. I remembered the story again a couple months ago, but couldn’t find it anywhere. 

It’s likely that I had it in Google Docs attached to my musicto email, and that it vanished when you were housecleaning all our extra musicto emails. However, it’s also likely, possibly more so, that it’s sitting in one of those easy-to-remember-because-it-makes-total-sense-at-the-time file names, which no longer makes any sense at all. I’ll find it one day. In the meantime, I still have the playlist, along with Hello Ocho’s “Jane, Jane Bond” track.

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Jane B. – Jane Birkin

With a collaborative playlist you don’t get to come full circle too often, but beginning with Charlotte Gainsbourg I have the opportunity to do so with a song from mother, Jane Birkin. Jane sadly passed away this summer (July 2023), and as I’m sure you know, she was an actress and singer, mother obviously, and former partner of Serge Gainsbourg. And if you have listened to a few Jane Asylum playlists, then you’re bound to uncover some French pop, music from Charlotte, Serge or Jane, or at the very least discover my love affair with sounds of swinging sixties.

And that’s it for my song picks. Before I close my computer, I will say that I thought it was going to be difficult to find 11 “Jane” songs beyond what you picked, but I’ve somehow managed in a logical-to-me and easier than imagined way, and it was both surprising and fun. Thank you, Andrew!

Thank you.  Tracy!

Let’s do it again

😛

• Hold On To Jane – The Thornbirds
• Jane – Jefferson Starship
• Jane Says – Jane’s Addiction
• Brianstorm – Arctic Monkeys
• Jane – Girlpool
• Sweet Jane – Cowboy Junkies
• Janie’s Got A Gun – Aerosmith
• Hey Jane – Spiritualized
• Understanding Jane – The Icicle Works
• Mary Jane – Rick James
• Mary Jane’s Last Dance – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
• Jane – Trampoline
• Me and Jane Doe – Charlotte Gainsbourg
• Jane – Last Train
• Lost+ (with Jay-Z) – Coldplay
• Crow Jane – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
• Miss Hell – Calamity Jane
• Mary Jane – Alanis Morissette
• Priority – Jane Fonda
• Goodbye Stranger – 2010 Remastered – Supertramp
• Jane, Jane Bond – Hello Ocho
• Jane B. – Jane Birkin

Playlist image by Wilhelm Gunkel on Unsplash