Any would-be rock gods should note that fame is a paradoxical business. Enduring success is no way to develop a mythic reputation. The quickest route is to show promise, but never fulfill your potential. Popular options include dying horribly, or breaking up in drug-addled acrimony. Your reputation will flourish, based largely on the rose-tinted recollections of concert-goers, who will helpfully insist that "you really had to see them live".

Such is the case of Jane's Addiction. In the late 1980s, when metal still meant spandex and widdly guitar solos, the LA quartet offered a unique hybrid of hard rock, funk and prog rock. After three albums they took the drug-addled-acrimony route, and watched their mythology build. You really had to see them live.

Now, 12 years after their final album, Ritual De Lo Habitual, you can. Once famed for sporting neon dreadlocks and a girdle, singer Perry Farrell is still admirably unaware of the concept of dignity. Stick-thin, he dances onstage in a see-through white satin suit and the sort of enormous feathered hat a flamboyant Edwardian hostess might have chosen for Ascot. It is a diverting entrance, followed by anti-climax. The band are beset by technical difficulties. Farrell's microphone cuts out. The first three songs are punctuated only by random yelps. Then guitarist Dave Navarro's amplifier blows, and Jane's Addiction stalk offstage.

When they return, new problems emerge. The passage of time has not been kind to Jane's Addiction. Been Caught Stealing still thunders impressively, but has been divested of its individuality over the years: the shock of the new has been replaced by nostalgia. They clearly had a lot of important ideas about hard rock before anyone else, but they're still touting the same ideas now, long after everyone else has cottoned on.

"What's up, youth?" cries Farrell, now 43. "Are we gonna make our move?" The audience roar their approval, but the suspicion lingers that Jane's Addiction squandered their moves long ago.