Red Hot Chili Peppers

One Liner: One of the greatest rock bands ever (IMO), and boast the prime time funk of Flea.
Wikipedia Genre: Funk rock, alternative rock, funk metal, rap rock
Spotify Says Similar To:  Rage Against the Machine (huh?), Foo Fighters (mmm, OK?).
Home: Los Angeles, CA

Poster Position: 1
Slot: ?

Thoughts:  I freaking love the Red Hot Chili Peppers.  I've heard people griping because they were here a few years ago and they are old and blah blah blah.  They are one of the most exciting bands I can think of to fill my eardrums, and live they usually bring the house. I've seen them three times now, and although my wish for the last time (ACL 2013) was unrequited, and they never played anything older than Blood Sugar Sex Magic, that doesn't mean that they won't dip deep into the catalog this time.  As I've done in the past with some of the major headliners, I'll go through the RHCP catalog and list them in order of badassery.

Before I get to it, I wanted to mention that if you dig the Chilis, you should definitely go read the autobiography that Anthony Kiedis put out a few years ago called Scar Tissue.  It is a crazy ass look into his personal history, from a wild childhood (including humping his Dad's girlfriend) to drug binges (including stuff that should have killed him repeatedly) to groupie love, as well as some cool insight into how and why he wrote some of the greatest songs the band has ever made.  It also helped to understand a little bit about the tortured history of the guitarist position in the band.  Short history:

• Hillel Slovak.  Founding member, with the band up to Uplift Mofo in 1987 (with a small break or three), died of heroin overdose.
• Jack Sherman.  Helped out in the early days when Slovak left the band to move forward with another band called What Is This?  Was pretty much just on the first album.
• John Frusciante.  The best of the group (for my money) who was on Mother's Milk, Blood Sugar, Californication, By the Way, and Stadium Arcadium.  Took a break in the mid-90's before leaving for good.
• Dave Navarro.  The Jane's Addiction guitarist who filled in for Frusciante in the mid-90's, but actually did a great job with the band on One Hot Minute.
• Josh Klinghoffer.  Current guy, who had been with a bunch of minor bands and then had been playing with the Peppers on their Stadium Arcadium tour as a backing guitarist, but when Frusciante quit again, he just stepped in.  

1.  Blood Sugar Sex Magik (1991).

A formative album for me.  My sister, Sharon, had put me on to the band with Mother's Milk, which I also love, but this one hit me right when it mattered most to find the coolest bass player in the world mixed with freaky, funky, weird lyrics.  I was weird in high school.  I guess I am still weird, being that I write a billion words about music that only like 8 people read, but back then I was in band and theatre and lacrosse and these dudes were a great complement to the more straight-forward rock of grunge but they were infinitely weirder, which was very appealing.  So, this album was a massive hit, and it very well might be everyone's favorite Chili's album, but even beyond the "Give it Away" and "Under the Bridge" hit tunes, I don't understand how the opening track ("Power of Equality") can't make you just want to jump up and freak.  Or the semi-scary sexual storytelling of "Apache Rose Peacock" and "Sir Psycho Sexy."  Or the feels of "Breaking the Girl."  Or the total abandon of "The Greeting Song."  Flea is the reason that this band is the best thing ever, and he is prominently featured and makes this whole album the best thing.  Like, what other band makes things like "Mellowship Slinky in B Major" with their bassist just weaving around like that?  Love it.  I've got the album art on the wall in my office right at this moment.

2.  Mother's Milk (1989). 

The interview snippets in the midst of that video above for "Good Time Boys" are fantastic. Easy call for the second best album for me, as if BSSM had never existed, this would have always been the best Chili's album ever.  This is where they finally honed the wild punk style of the first few albums into the right combination of punk and funk and rock and freak. Their cover of Stevie Wonder's "Higher Ground" is the best stuff, but "Subway to Venus" and "Knock me Down" are both awesome.  The cover of "Fire," nonstop blast of flames that it is, also rocks out. "Pretty Little Ditty" was sampled by that shitty "Butterfly" song from that shitty band Crazy Town, which despite both that band and song being crap, was kind of cool (although the version of that song on the copy of Mother's Milk that you can stream on Spotify is wrong, it is not the same version as was included on my CD of this album from 30 years ago).  And even though I think the Lakers suck, I still can't hate on the fact that these guys made an awesome homage song for their team and released it like a regular track to the album.  No one does stuff like that anymore.  Most of this album just jams out and is fun as hell.  Do it.

3.  Californication (1999). 

Without looking, I would have bet that this was their most commercially successful album, with several legit hits.  From reviewing Wikipedia, it looks like that is questionable.  Blood Sugar sold the most U.S. copies at 7 million (Californication comes in right behind that at 6 million), and while this one charted well, it did not do as well as Stadium Arcadium which hit number 1 in every market tracked on Wikipedia.  But, where this album won the race is in worldwide sales, as it apparently sold more than 16 million worldwide, versus 13.8 for BSSM or 7.6 million for Stadium.  But this one boasts more hits than the others, with "Scar Tissue," "Around the World," "Otherside," "Californication" and "Road Trippin'" all charting well.

From what I remember about last time they came to ACL, they leaned hard on this album and Stadium Arcadium, so I might expect to hear some of those hits again. The chorus of "Scar Tissue" is one of my favorites from them - the longing tone of voice and guitar going along under "with the birds I share this lonely view," it just works out perfectly for the feel of the song.  There are a ton of official videos for this album, so if you feel like going down that wormhole, you can get a bunch of them on YouTube.  I'll just give you the one above for the title track (although that video does not age well with those jenky video game graphics). And with this album, even beyond the hits, you've got great rockers like "Get On Top."  When trying to consider where to rank albums, my instinct was that this one should go lower, but its just too good.

4.  One Hot Minute (1995).

I'm already in a bind here, because honestly I could have put any of the next few into this slot.  But I gotta put them in order, so I'm giving this one the slight edge.  This is the one album with Dave Navarro, so from what I've heard they rarely (if ever) play any of the songs from this one live, so we never get to check out the genius of "Walkabout" or "Pea" in person.  I think it also helps that I listened to this album a million times during college when I had a lot of spare time to appreciate tunes, so this one has a happy memory space for me. Even the late tunes on the album like "Shallow Be Thy Game" jam out.  This is why I listen to the Chilis, to get my funk out and jam.

5.  The Uplift Mofo Party Plan (1987).

That video features quite a few boobs and a lot of Flea's bare butt, so fair warning here. The greatness of this album is the raw fury and my nostalgia for how I felt at age 15 (or whatever) yelling along to "Special Secret Song Inside" ("I want to party on your puuuuuuuusssssay") or "No Chump Love Sucker" ("How could I ever Have kissed that bitch, So what if she's GOT BIG TITS!!!"). For young Jack, those lines were highly fun to furtively boast, sotto voce, in my bedroom alone, or full voiced in my car.  This was also probably my first real exposure to a Dylan song with "Subterranean Homesick Blues."  This one just has the most frantic tracks, I think, with "Love Trilogy," and "Skinny Sweaty Man," and "Me and My Friends."  I have some good memories of this disc in high school, cruising around in my friend's Bronco II and jamming this thing.

6.  By the Way (2002)

This one was up at #4 for a while in early drafts of this post, but after listening to all the albums a few more times, I think I get sucked in to the two fantastic tunes on here and think the entire album is better than it is.  Namely, "Can't Stop" is one of the best tunes that the Chilis have ever put together (#3 currently on their popular songs listing on Spotify, with 139 million streams). "By the Way" is great, "Dosed" is really good too.  But the album has a lot of tunes that I'd call filler. On that weird ass video up above, I'm hearing hand claps in the chorus that I've never heard in listening to that song a million times.  That is strange.  I'm not saying this album is bad or anything, in fact it is really good, but it just can't beat out those ones up above.

7.  The Getaway (2016).

Recently reviewed this one, and its only grown on me since.  I keep hearing "Go Robot" on the radio and its such a cool track, funk bass flailing and then some disco-fied Duran Duran sounding synth breakdowns.  I think this album may crawl up the hierarchy of albums over time, but this is where it falls for me for now.   I love the opening of the album, with the title track, where I can see Flea making that hissing cymbal sound with his mouth while contorting his face around the mike with each hiss.  "Dark Necessities" is also a good tune, although I've tried to parse the lyrics out and have no clue what the hell is going on there.  I talked about "Dreams of a Samurai" before, with its Radiohead-leaning sound, and I still like that one too.

8.  Stadium Arcadium (2006).

My big beef with this one is just with the filler stuff.  If they would have cut down the album into a single disc of the strongest songs, this one could be really great, but instead when you listen you get two hours and thirty-one freaking minutes of tunes.  It's just bloated.  That being said, "Snow (Hey Oh)" and "Tell Me Baby" especially that second one, are awesome. Give me more of the nonsense spewing lyrics over the funk roll. "chilichilibittysomething about nittygritty life can be a little shitty something Boston and Kansas City jibba jabba pennies!"   "Dani California" is good too, but overplayed enough to have less punch for me now.   And I like "Slow Cheetah" too.  Weird that this album is already 11 years old - seems newish to me.  Hell, even the silly ass "Hump de Bump" is pretty fun - "nothin' but a two beach comber!" - that nimble bass is freaking awesome.  So I gave you that one up above. AND, that video is top notch with some fly dancing, homeless trumpet guys, Chris Rock, Craig Robinson, and a terrible looking grill on Kiedis.  But on the first disc, after about "Torture Me," the majority of those songs just stop holding my interest and kind of fart away into the wind.  Same with most of the second disc, just unnecessary.

But, Spotify has a 30 minute long spoken commentary about the album that is kind of cool.  The character Dani California ends up being from both the songs "Californication" and "By the Way," which is a weird thing to decide, but such it is.  Frusciante apparently crafted his guitars based on the original Wu Tang album's vocal rhythms, which is also weird.  The interesting thing about their commentary is that the first half is only them talking about the best songs - "Snow," "Tell Me Baby," "Dani," and "Stadium," before they start to get into the lesser tunes.  Although Flea says that "Wet Sand" is a top five song for him.  And there is a part at about 19:20 when you can hear Kiedis getting all excited about Flea talking about how the guitar and bass made an organic thing like a tree. Anyway, "Tell Me Baby" is a jam.

9.  Freaky Styley (1985)

So, Freaky Styley is pretty low on my totem pole, I suppose, but it has some tunes on it that I remember with great nostalgia.  I went to youth camp with a bunch of girls from a Houston Catholic school (and had massive crushes on like 40 of them at any given time), so "Catholic School Girls Rule" was a favorite.  The best tune on here is the cover of "If You Want Me to Stay," which is still so freaking perfect.  It's chilled, but they do it perfectly. And then "Yertle the Turtle" is a classic that I find myself singing to myself at random times.  "Yertle the Turle oh marvelous me, for I am ruler of all that I see."  But this album is from the time when Kiedis is still doing a lot of the rap-style singing and the band is significantly more raw and unfinished sounding.

10.  I'm With You (2011).

Honestly, in just re-listening to this album, I think its better than I remember.  But the "hit" from it, "The Adventures of Ran Dance Maggie," is pretty weak, so mentally I think that the whole thing is weaker than it really is.  I say that, but then the stream counts on the album show that it really never got off the ground in comparison to other recent RHCP albums.  The Getaway's top song has over 80 million streams and the three tracks with the lowest streams are still averaging over 8 million streams. On the other hand, this album's top song only has 33 million streams and it has four songs with streams in the 5 millions.  And its been around for 5 times as long.  But giving it another shot right now, its actually super funky and deserves more attention.  If I were to make a guess as to why it hasn't been more on my radar, I think it is the same malaise that has affected almost all albums that have come out in the past five years - if I didn't buy it and just streamed it, then I probably jammed it a few times and then moved on to the next new album.  Which sucks, but is kind of reality.  I'll keep working this one into my brain for a while here.

11.  Red Hot Chili Peppers (1984).

That video is amazing for several reasons.  First, Alan Thicke joking with these morons. Second, how freaking young are these dudes!  Third, Kiedis sounds like the worst lead singer ever in the history of the world.  Thank God he figured out how to sing (and rap with some semblance of tune).

This album definitely doesn't deserve to be the "worst" of the group, but if I'm being honest about it, most of this album is just not that great.  The best track, the reason that this whole thing worked out, is "Get Up and Jump."  I hear them trying to come up with the top-notch funky punk that comes out later, but most of this album has more in common with the terrible rap-nu-metal from the mid-90's than the best stuff the Chili's have to offer.  But you can hear cool bits and pieces that will come together later.  The guitar licks on "Buckle Down."  The frenetic bass flow on "Get Up and Jump." The silliness on half of the tunes. "Mommy Where's Daddy" always used to make me grin - "give daddy a kiss, girl, awwww Dad."  But, with all the good stuff these guys put out after this, no need (in my opinion) to go this far back into the catalog.

So there you have it.  No reviews of the EPs or singles ("Soul to Squeeze" from the Coneheads soundtrack or "Love Rollercoaster" from Beavis & Butthead), and no mention of how amazing their version of Hendrix songs are - "Castles Made of Sand" was always a good one.

While this could change dramatically by the time October rolls around, a look at their current set-lists shows that we are likely to get another set that is light on the old school classics, with their most recent Miami show going as follows:

• The Getaway: 4
• I'm With You: 1
• Stadium Arcadium: 3 (including "Hey," which is surprising)
• By The Way: 2
• Californication: 3
• One Hot Minute: 0
• Blood Sugar: 2
• Mother's Milk: 1
• Non-album covers: 2

I suspect that an ACL show will lean heavy on the hits and not dive out into the ether of the catalog, but here's to hoping that they go deep into Mother's and BSSM.