Music at Double Diamond games Aspen

ASPEN — When Perry Farrell formed Jane's Addiction in the mid-'80s, his goal was relatively modest. Farrell wanted only to turn the music world, from radio to concert tours, on its ass, to dispatch the contrived - emblemized in that moment's hair-metal movement - using screaming guitars, ambitious stage shows, and his own flamboyant personality and screeching vocals.

Perry Farrell launches activist Satellite Party

By Stewart Oksenhorn Aspen, CO Colorado January 26, 2007 found at aspentimes.com

"In our day, we were fighting against the corporate rock sound of the day," said Farrell by phone. "We were fighting the corporations and fighting a stale sound. We were an underground act trying to make a new sound, a new spin. I guess you'd call it an underground youth movement, and the street was ripe for the taking. We went in with a new look and a new sound and changed the radio format - and MTV - and did our bit."

Perry Farrell appeared in Aspen as DJ Peretz in 2002, spinning records for a crowd at the old Double Diamond. Farrell and his new band, Satelllite Party, perform at 10:30 p.m. tonight in Wagner Park in downtown Aspen. (Stewart Oksenhorn/The Aspen Times)

Farrell is older now. The singer, born Perry Bernstein in New York City, is 47, and his ambitions have grown with his age. Farrell is about to launch his latest project, Satellite Party, and this time the aim is to transform a bigger slice of the world. Satellite Party is, for the moment, a five-piece band, featuring Farrell; his wife, Etty Lau Farrell, on backing vocals; and guitarist Nuno Bettencourt, from '80s hard-rock band Extreme.

But a key component in the wider concept of the group is something called "the Solutionists" - "a brain trust of musicians, environmentalists and artists whose goal is to come up with a true solution for the globe, to solve issues like global warming," said Farrell. "The world is heading toward disintegration, and we need people who are designers, architects, and have a hand in redesigning, reconfiguring it."

Farrell has been working with Global Cool, an organization using various forms of entertainment to help bring out scientific solutions to environmental problems. Farrell said he will make "major announcements" at press conferences in Los Angeles and London, where Global Cool has its two bases, in the weeks ahead.

For the moment, however, Farrell's efforts to save the planet will start with music. Satellite Party makes its live debut with a performance tonight in Aspen as part of the Après X concert series. The show, free and open to the public, is set for 10:30 p.m. in Wagner Park in downtown Aspen.

"Aspen will hold claim to being the first place where this happens," said Farrell about Satellite Party, whose debut album, "Ultra Payloaded," is set for release in May. But Aspen wasn't chosen merely because of the fit with the X Games or the fact that Farrell is a snowboarder, who has hit the local slopes before. Satellite Party concerts are intended as reminders of just what is at stake in the battle against environmental degradation, and staging concerts in spectacular outdoors settings is a way to sharpen that message.

"One specific idea is to bring to the mind, to the consciousness, the sheer beauty and majesty of the world," said Farrell, whose previous Aspen appearance, in his guise as DJ Peretz, was in the Double Diamond, the underground space that now houses the Belly Up music club. "So we put together these great gatherings where people can experience the great outdoors."

Farrell has seen the concert experience from many sides. Jane's Addiction built its reputation on the revelatory shows they played in small. Los Angeles clubs before moving onto bigger venues on the strength of such 1988's "Nothing's Shocking" and 1990's "Ritual de lo Habitual," landmarks of early alternative rock. In 1991, Farrell founded Lollapalooza, a tour that was part rock festival, part traveling circus. In its early heyday, Lollapalooza featured such acts as Soundgarden, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rage Against the Machine and Cypress Hill playing in outdoor venues from coast to coast. (After an absence of several years, Lollapalooza was resurrected as a stationary event in Chicago's Grant Park.) Those shows instilled in Farrell a preference for hearing music in open spaces.