NEW ORLEANS-- Perry Farrell [ tickets ], the once and future frontman for the band Jane's Addiction, performed a Saturday-night DJ set (9/1) at the House of Blues in the French Quarter during an especially active Labor Day party weekend.

One might have assumed that Farrell would have had a full house for the New Orleans stop on his brief DJ tour, thanks to the recently returned college students and the revelers enjoying Southern Decadence, an annual insurgence of global gay tourism. Instead, potential Farrell fans seemed to have been siphoned away by other events.

Farrell spent two hours behind a pair of turntables, emphasizing trancey techno, with touches of diva-tinged house music and some of the drum and bass that lent its ricochet rhythms to his recent debut solo album, "Song Yet to Be Sung" (Virgin). He only used the microphone once, in order to say hello. He performed under the name DJ Peretz, but most local flyers and advertising clearly identified Peretz as Perry Farrell. (The marketing didn't seem to mention Jane's Addiction or Farrell's other band, Porno for Pyros--or, for that matter, the name he was born with in 1959: Perry Bernstein.)

Yoga-lean, his shirt stretched tight by shoulder blades that flexed like girdled wings, Farrell was the sole focus of attention from the moment he emerged on stage. While the opening DJ brought his set to a close, Farrell sat patiently in full view, smiling his familiar vivid grin. Once he got started, the audience cheered his every move, which generally involved him tucking his shirt back into his pants. Occasionally he would pump his fist in time with the music, which really got the audience going.

Which was the problem. Nothing Farrell did with his turntables could compete with the simple fact of his presence.

His skills were not in question. He ably segued into his set from the record left playing by the previous DJ, and expertly matched beats between the subsequent 12-inch singles he pulled from his milk crate. He would tweak the knobs on his mixer to amplify beats, cut out certain sonic ranges, fill the house with echoes of digital delay. He would raise the volume to dramatic highs, and create digital counterpoint by playing beats closely against each other. He would drop the volume out entirely for a second that seemed to last a minute, and let everyone feel the shock of the resulting vacuum of sound. But none of those actions had a tenth of the audience impact of him simply raising his arm over his head.

In the week leading up to the New Orleans DJ gig, news had emerged of a Jane's Addiction reunion tour. The inevitability made Farrell's DJ tour seem along the lines of a summer vacation--and that, like the many local college students in attendance, he'd soon be focused on the real work to come.

By the time Farrell left the stage, at close to four in the morning, a polite assortment of admirers remained on the HoB's ground floor, and the balcony was all but empty. House security personnel managed to restrain themselves, rather than the audience, when a dozen or so attendees jumped on stage to dance with Farrell at the end of his set.