The Red Hot Chili Peppers
“We want Chilly Willy! We want Chilly Willy!” – Barney Gumbel
“His girlfriend gafe up her toe! She sought we'd be getting million dollars! Iss not fair!” – Flea
“Well John has such as insatiable appetite for new music that eventually he will have been influenced by every form of music ever invented.” – Anthony Kiedis
Albums Reviewed:
I like the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I don’t love the Red Hot Chili Peppers. But I like the Red Hot Chili Peppers. They’ve had a very winding, twisting, and interesting career for the last twenty years, and it only took them fifteen to discover what they were really good at! But at least they finally did. See, this whole “pioneering and influential funk-metal band” thing? It’s a load of bullshit, really. The stuff they were doing in the mid-80’s is the definition of mediocrity, and the number of bands it really influenced probably isn’t that many (Incubus’ first album springs to mind, but they did it better than the Peppers). “Original” guitarist Hillel Slovak today is placed on a pedestal and revered for his position in co-founding this group, but that’s mostly because he died of a drug overdose, and many rockers who die early of a drug overdose end up being overrated. Truth is, if he had never died, you might not know who this band is, because John Frusciante, in my opinion, is the real musical genius of the band. He deserves a whoooole heaping load of credit for shifting them from “OK band that will never have commercial success…ever” to “huge commercial stars,” a change that, no matter what deluded Hillel supporters might tell you, they didn’t artistically deserve until they actually got it.
The picture above is of the current, most famous, and best lineup of the band. From left to right, we have drummer Chad Smith, singer Anthony Kiedis, bassist Michael Balzary (or “Flea,” and one FUCKING PHENOMENAL BASSIST), and guitarist John Frusciante. The “original” lineup had Kiedis, Flea, Slovak, and drummer Jack Irons, and I put “original” in quotation marks for a reason, and that is neither Slovak nor Irons actually played on the band’s first album (and, if the All Music Guide is correct, Irons didn’t play on their second, either!). The other notable member of the band is Jane’s Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro, who played on One Hot Minute while John was busy sucking dicks for heroin money or something, but there have been a grand total of three drummers and SEVEN guitarists in this band at one point or another, although only four guitarists have been featured on albums. Thus, the others must have come and gone in a few weeks on a tour or something. Which is kind of funny. Also, in the early days they’d often take the stage wearing nothing but a sock over their johnson. Which is kind of funny.
And, onto the reviews!
Oleg
Sobolev (dima@aspol.ru) writes:
These RHCP reviews are most likeley
the truest RHCP reviews I've ever read.
And they are fuckin' hilarious too.
Cheers!
Oleg
Brian Birnbaum (nairb454@yahoo.com) writes:
I just gotta
say I really like your reviews, good shit, funny as
shit too. I'm a huge peppers fan so I always take a peek at those reviews
first. I just wanna ask why "BSSM" is
always rated below "Californication" by the
WRC? It's not just because I, personally, think it's better (which I do), but also because it's like some
kind of secret code between you all..... just seems kinda weird.
A
few other things. Thank god
someone else besides me respects "One Hot Minute." Obviously the chemistry
isn't working as well as "BSSM" or "Californication,"
but there is definately some great musicianship on
that record. Also, I would give "Falling into Grace" another listen, it really is a well organized song, and actually one
of my favorites by the peppers.
I have to say, I do agree
with your rating on the Chili's first album (although I would have gone a
little lower, actually), but I actually found Freaky Styley
and Uplift to be more around the 6 or 6.5 range. But I'm probably talking out
of my ass because I would give everything from "Mother's Milk" on an
8 or higher.
The last thing is
on your Stadium Arcadium Review. Please give it
another listen. It outshines Californication by a
good deal. The only filler tracks are "C'mon Girl" and "She Looks
to Me," and they are pretty damn good filler.
IMO, it is easily as good as "Mellon Collie...." I have never heard
guitar work like Frusciante on "Stadium."
And the layering and harmonies are absolutely ridiculous. You can tell they
spent a fuckload of time in the studio to make this
the best record it could be. Although "BSSM" will always be my
favorite (I'll admit, I love the funk, and it's just so fuckin
raw before Frusciante went all pussy), Stadium is a
damn close second.
Keep up the good work, your
site is incredible.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers (1984)
Rating: 6
Best Song: “Mommy Where’s Daddy”
First off, let me ask a question here: Where the hell is Hillel Slovak? Much of this page is gonna be dedicated to completely eradicating the notion that Hillel was worth bullshit, but the fact that he doesn’t even play on the band’s debut album, a fact VH1’s Chili Peppers documentary (which spent about 45 minutes talking about Mr. Slovak) conveniently left out, really takes the cake for me. He couldn’t have been that great a friend of Anthony and Flea, given that he was off playing in some other band called What is This? that lasted all of two fucking weeks or something, and this fact puts a real damper on the idea that Hillel was the musical driving force of this band. The fact that the Peppers didn’t really get any good until he died doesn’t hurt either.
And that segues me nicely into the second myth I wanna dispel with these reviews, and that is the supposed “quality” of early Chili Peppers. Now, they were never really bad in the early days, but they weren’t that good either. Merely adequate, I’d say. Honestly, I have no idea how “groundbreaking” this “synthesis” of Flea’s funk bass, some pseudo-metallic guitar stuff, and Anthony’s sex-obsessed funk-rapping was back in the mid-eighties, but I CAN tell you how it sounds in 2003: boring, sterile, and unexciting, but fun in a kinda moronic way. The best moments of the early Peppers aren’t good because of any exciting synthesis of elements of music that were heretofore never combined in any forum in the history of music-kind. At their best, early Peppers are just dumb and fun and stupid. And, at their worst, early Peppers are mundane and boring. And stupid.
This record’s OK, though! Short, somewhat thin and lacking, and the one-album rent-a-players of drummer Cliff Martinez (despite apparently being Captain Beefheart’s former drummer) and guitarist Jack Sherman (although Sherman has a few nice textures in places and some cool soloing in “Baby Appeal”) do very few interesting things. Combined with the fact that Anthony Kiedis still doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing as a frontman (he hasn’t developed that expert, rapid-fire delivery yet, and he never really learns how to sing until Californication), the reasons to listen to this record are: 1) a bunch of real fun, dumb, catchy songs that are stupid but nevertheless cool and 2) Flea, who, even this early on, RULES MY ASS on the bass, especially that slap-bass action in “Get up and Jump,” which is probably the only thing that approaches “funky” on the debut album from this “groundbreaking funk-metal act.”
I like this album to the degree that I do basically because, for enough of the time, it’s just fun, since there isn’t a single song here I’d classify as above “OK.” Most of the songs here ARE classified as “OK,” but, still, nothing here is gonna give you too much of a rush. “True Men Don’t Kill Coyotes,” the opener, is the “classic” here, I think, but it doesn’t really do all that much for me. The vocals sound like Anthony truly has NO FUCKING IDEA how to be a frontman yet. He can’t decide whether to rap, sing, growl, or just turn around and take a crap on the microphone like Barbra Streisand would, but at least (“PRAISE GOD!” – Pat Robertson, before he personally eats a hispanic baby and fucks another in the ass) he can’t change the fact that the song is dumb and fun and catchy.
All of the first seven tracks here, really, are OK, and this is just about the most overwhelmingly “eh, OK” album I’ve heard in a loooong time (if not EVER, in my LIFE). “Baby Appeal” features Anthony failing miserably at rapping (hell, even I know when a guy can’t rap, and I HATE most rap!), but the line “the Chili Peppers have…BABY APPEAL!!” is hiiiiiiiilarious. “Get up and Jump” is easily the funkiest thing here, with horns and some female singers chanting in some funny stuff at weird times, though I suppose “Why Don’t You Love Me” tries to be funky, too (it fails). (And it’s stupid). (I like bassline, though). (Flea is cool). Both “Buckle Down” and “Green Heaven” alternate heavy metall-ish parts with softer, quasi-funkier parts, thus showing that the Peppers hadn’t really figured out how to integrate the two (and did they ever? A GOOD QUESTION!), but they’re, um, OK. I personally get a big kick out of “Mommy Where’s Daddy,” though. Just a sly, sort of funk groove with GREAT horn parts, funny women going “Mommyyyyyy…where’s daddy??” followed by Anthony (FUNNY!) telling these women to sit on his lap and generally sounding like a dirty, dirty, dirty man. And this is my favorite song here. I think it tells you something about both me and the album in question, don’t you?
The last tune, “Grand Pappy Du Plenty,” doesn’t make any sense and smacks of “retarted avant-garde thing by a band who isn’t very talented at this point,” and tracks 8-10 were clearly written and layed down in about a day combined, thus illustrating the Peppers’ annoying habit of sticking douchebag nothing filler tracks at the end of their albums to fill up space, something they wouldn’t completely rid themselves of until Blood Sugar Sex Magik. I mean, “You Always Sing” is seventeen seconds long! SEVENTEEN SECONDS! Poop on that. A big, smelly, nasty poop that I performed after Nacho Day sometime last year, BECAUSE THIS YEAR THE FUCKING DINING HALL TOOK NACHO DAY OFF THE MENU. Bastards.
You want a conclusion to this review, eh? You do? OK. Well, it’s boring and unfunky and stupid, but it’s not that bad, and still not any worse than either record Hillel Slovak cut with the band (and most definitely better than the first one). Hillel Slovak is just about the most overrated person in the history of the planet.
Except Ja Rule.
Mike Noto
(thepublicimage79@hotmail.com) writes:
The reason Hillel and Jack Irons weren't on the early stuff was
because of
contractual obligations; the other band they were in had signed to a
different label before the Chili Peppers had been signed, and the label the
Chili Peppers were on wouldn't let Hillel and Jack
record until the other
band was dissolved. Hillel and Jack were always part
of the live lineup, and
therefore considered true band members. So that's why the band had to use
the studio guitarist Jack Sherman and the drummer Cliff Martinez, who was
one of many former Beefheart members.
However, I'm not that big of a fan of the early stuff, either: just telling
you why it happened that way.
Freaky Styley (1985)
Rating: 5
Best Song: “Hollywood
YES! Hillel Slovak is
BACK! To make a MEDIOCRE RECORD! That’s REALLY NOT VERY GOOD! Because he’s VERY, VERY OVERRATED! Just like THE EARLY PERIOD OF THIS BAND! They’re supposed to be a FUNK BAND, RIGHT? Then how come THEY AREN’T FUNKY? At ALL?
I can’t dance to ANY OF THIS STUFF!
This Cliff
Ah, FUCK IT.
Seriously,
though, the early Slovak-inspired version of this band is really, really, grossly
overrated, especially by the All Music Guide, which gives this record four and
a half stars and calls it a “masterpiece.”
Ofcourse, AMG also says the band was rooted in
“pure, uncut funk” at this time, which is just about the most ridiculous thing
I’ve ever heard. See, just because
George Clinton produces an album, and he’s the King of P-Funk, this doesn’t
mean than said album is automatically “funky.”
To be “funky,” and consist of “pure, uncut funk,” an album must also be
“entertaining” and “danceable.” This
record is NOT. I count two tracks
(out of FIFTEEN) that I enjoy a good bit, and both of them are covers. “
Nothing
else here is really any good, though I’m not sure how much of it is bad
either. The rest consists mainly of
“funk that isn’t funky” or “ridiculous novelty tracks that add nothing to this
world,” and, to be honest, there might be only two more fully-developed, real
“songs” on this record besides the two covers, and both of them (“Jungle Man”
and “American Ghost Dance”) BLOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWW AAASSSSSSSSSS. They’re just the kind of boring, sterile,
uninteresting, unfunky “funk” that was more or less
this band’s calling card in the early days.
And these two songs and the two covers are the first four tracks on the
album. You know what that means? RIGHT!
The rest of the album is just a
bunch of retarted random shit. I like “Brothers Cup” alright (not due to the
complete lack of a “groove,” but the part when the ten-year old comes in and
does the vocals is GREAT!), “Battle Ship” has a goofy, interesting, weird
section that comes up twice, and “Catholic School Girls Rule” is funny and neat
in a way that should be obvious from its title, but what the hell is the rest
of this crap? And this album is a
MASTERPIECE? My POOPER!!!!!
Ugh.
This record is just stupid, and it’s only getting a 5 because it has a
decent number of good tracks (all mentioned above), and to get a truly bad
rating on my scale an album has to be actively bad, not just “not
good.” This album is just “not
good.” “Nevermind”
is not NEARLY as good as the Nirvana album of the same name, and just functions
as an excuse for the band to yell out who they are REALLY LOUD. “RED
HOOOT…CHILIIIII…PEP-PEEEEERRRRRRRRS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Yeah!
Eat me. Write a fucking
song. The title track is three and a
half minutes of one groove that refuses to do anything besides be boring. “Lovin’ and Touchin’” is 36 seconds long. “Thirty Dirty Birds” is FOURTEEN SECONDS
LONG. “Yertle
the Turtle” is not NEARLY as good as the Dr. Seuss book of the same name. And Hillel Slovak
is overrated.
Harrumph. If you want a reason that the Chili Peppers
had to toil away for four or five albums before becoming famous, take a listen
to this record. It’ll show you what
happens when a band sticks like glue to one style without realizing they suck
at it. What we need is a tragic death,
followed by a few tear-jerking ballads.
They’re just a few albums off, don’t worry.
David.M.Tarr.02@Alum.Dartmouth.org writes:
if you were genuinely asking:
old school pioneering funk band from
meters'. they kick ass. or kicked ass i
should say since i dont
think
they're together anymore.
i have no idea how i found
your website but i found it before i got out of
undergrad and i think its pretty good
The Uplift Mofo Party Plan (1987)
Rating: 6
Best Song: “Me And My Friends”
Better than the last Hillel
record, and maybe roughly even with the debut recorded by Anthony, Flea and
scabs, but still not at all recommendable.
More “adequate”-ness from the band, but a different kind than the first
two albums, which were truly consistent in their average mediocrity. This album presents a definite contrast
between a first half of truly entertaining songs and a second half of complete
bullshit that sucks my balls until I spooge all over
its terrible album cover and then make it clean itself off, because I gotta run back to my girlfriend before she realizes I was
cheating on her with a mediocre early-period Red Hot Chili Peppers album. That wouldn’t go over too well.
Anyhoo, WHY the sudden ability to write good songs? Well, they’ve dumped George Clinton and added the “metal” back into their “funk-metal” equation, which was sorely missing from Unfreaky Unstylish. Hell, I’d say the first three songs on this album are the three best the band recorded before Hillel died and they NOT COINCIDENTALLY became good. “Fight Like a Brave” is just like a better, tighter, faster, more energetic version of “True Men Don’t Kill Coyotes,” and there is some SUPERB metal guitar work in there (Fuck me, Hillel did something interesting!). “Funky Crime” is (seriously) FUNKY! The funkiest thing they recorded with Hillel in the band, definitely, and HOO-DOGGIE, do I love the treated vocals. HOORAY FOR TREATED VOCALS!! And, also, HOORAY FOR REALLY, REALLY CATCHY HOOKS, one of which they finally manage to come up with on “Me and My Friends.” “ME AND MY ME AND MY ME AND MY ME AND MY ME AND MY FRIENDS!” Great stuff there, and so is Flea’s bass intro. Even on this band’s early records (and probably the main reason why I can trash them and still give them not-awful ratings), you can always listen to Flea’s bass work and be entertained. The man is GOD. And he was in The Big Lebowski! HOW COOL IS THAT!!?? And further proving Mr. Slovak’s mediocrity is the point in the tune where Anthony urges his buddy to “take it,” at which point Hillel most decidedly does not “take it,” delivering a mediocre guitar solo that’s so buried in the mix it’s barely even audible. Thankfully, it’s not long, and makes way for the catchy hook soon enough!
The rest of the first half of this record is pretty good, as well, and I have to say this record has an interesting structure (which I’ll get to in a little bit). Right NOW I have to praise the catchiness of “Backwoods,” the silliness of “Skinny Sweaty Man,” and the pretty, interesting textures and sitar use (!!) of “Behind the Sun.” And now I’m done, and now I can get to this record’s interesting structure. See, the band had six solid tracks and five crappy-ass ones (which I’ll get to in a little bit). So they needed a way to divide them. What did they come up with to do so, you ask? Well, OFCOURSE, a Freaky Styley-esque generic funk cover of Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues!” DUH!!!!!!!!! *Slaps forehead in realization that any other way would have been true folly* Really, though, the song is at least interesting, in that it sounds absolutely NOTHING like Bob Dylan, and I guarantee that if you heard it, even if you had somehow memorized every lyric to the original, you still wouldn’t be able to recognize it in this format. It’s truly unfathomably ridiculous.
Moving on now, like I said, the last five songs suck and are a total waste of time. The alternate title of “Special Secret Song Inside” is “Party on your Pussy,” and most of the lyrics consist of the line “I want to party on your pussy, baby! I want to party on your puss-ay!” repeated ad nauseum, and a neat metallic guitar run at the end cannot save what is undoubtedly the stupidest song I’ve ever heard in my life not by Creed. “No Chump Love Sucker,” “Walkin’ on Down the Road,” and “Organic Anti-Beatbox Band” are simply faceless, random, unmemorable, and shoddily-written, and the only song left that sticks in my head at ALL is “Love Trilogy,” for two reasons. First, for the first minute or so, the band tries to do reggae. They probably shouldn’t have. Second, when the full-on funk-metal fury (excepting Flea’s slap bass tastiness, *YAWN*) comes in later on, Anthony goes “My love…is my dick in my hand!!!!” a few times, which is, you know, funny and stuff.
Thankfully for those of us who appreciate music of high quality, Hillel Slovak died of a heroin overdose after this album was completed, and the band replaced him with John Frusciante, one of their biggest fans and a far superior guitarist and musician to Mr. Slovak. And for those of you who are offended by my constant put-downs of Hillel and apparent happiness at his untimely death, I just think he’s an incredibly overrated, boring, uninteresting musician. And if I can’t celebrate when he dies a tragic, early death from a heroin overdose, then, goshdarnit, aren’t we just one step away from letting the Taliban rape Laura Bush?
And on that note, “original drummer” Jack Irons finally played on an album. Good for him! He doesn’t play on the next one.
Mother’s Milk (1989)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Knock Me Down”
A
better drummer (Chad Smith) + a better guitarist (John Frusciante)
+ a vocalist who finally sounds like he knows what the hell he’s doing (Your
mom) = the best Chili Peppers album yet, although a number of retarted filler nothing bullshit tracks prevent me from
breaking out a “recommended” (i.e. 8+) rating for this puppy. To my knowledge, this was also the first
Peppers record to make real headway commercially, and to that I say
“huzzah!” The public has always been
about right when it comes to the Peppers (except for maybe liking Blood
Sugar Sex Magik a little too much, but it’s a
perfectly fine album with great singles, so I won’t nitpick), and this
is the first Peppers album that I think should have sold worth crap, and
it did, so, um…hooray for the public!
They’re not as retarted as you might think,
even if
And the reason? Well, although (at least on the best numbers) the band’s songwriting has advanced, it’s all John Frusciante. He’s truly a superlative guitarist. Even though he spends most of this record doing his best Hillel Slovak impression (and consequently doing Hillel’s schtick better) and doesn’t break out the true melodicicity until the next album, for the most part, you can still tell he’s better than Shitlel. Take a listen to the riffing in “Subway to Venus,” for instance. It’s just so energetic and alive! Hillel couldn’t riff like that. No way in hell. Add in some truly impressive Anthony pseudo-rapping (I told you he finally knows what he’s doing!) and some FANTASTIC horn lines, and I’d call this my second favorite song on the album. Yes. Yes, I would.
A lot of the second half sort of falls apart and doesn’t do much for me, but the first half, mostly, is A-OK by this retarted soon-to-be-unemployed Classics major! The opener “Good Time Boys” is another good time metal-funk-rocker in the grand tradition of “True Men Don’t Kill Coyotes” and “Fight Like a Brave” (but not “Jungle Man,” since that song sucks goat testicles), and the following cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Higher Ground,” one of two on the album (the other, Jimi Hendrix’s “Fire,” is awful and sounds like it was tossed off in five minutes, by the way), is indeed an excellent performance. My favorite part of the song is how Stevie’s awesome bubbly-synth intro is played solely by Flea’s bass, and nevertheless sounds AWESOME. That Flea can play a meeeaaaaaaaan bass guitar. Yes. Yes, he can.
Looking deeper into the first half, “Magic Johnson” is an absurdly entertaining goof track that I think is great (but probably only because I’m a sports fan), with lyrics like “L.A. LAKERS! FAST BREAK TAKERS! KINGS OF THE COURT SHAKE AND BAKE ALL TAKERS!” Following this, “Nobody Weird Like Me” blows, and later on “Taste the Pain” is a nice song, but right in between them the anti-drug anthem “Knock Me Down” is AWESOME, and the first “great” tune the Chili Peppers had written at this point. They had written plenty of “good” songs, but never a “great” one. Until now. And it’s not really funky at all! It’s the first evidence of the pop song-craft that would bloom on later records, but for now is buried under sexist “funky” filler tracks like “Stone Cold Bush” (which contains audio of a female orgasm, hoo-doggy!) and “Sexy Mexican Maid.” But it’s there! It’s just wriggling around, waiting to get out! Hi! Hi, pop song-craft! How are you? I like you! Yes I do! So do lots of other people! But the Peppers don’t know yet that that’s what their best at. Hold on, though! Your time will come! Just settle back behind the funk and wait for it to wear itself out.
OK, now I’d
like to spend a paragraph making fun of
Most of the rest of the record is uneventful. For the most part, it’s really no better than The Uplift Mofo Party Plan, outside of “Knock Me Down,” which is filled with so much quality it’s bursting at the seems, “Subway to Venus” and the “Higher Ground Cover,” as well as improved musicianship overall, thanks to my boys John and Chad. The most interesting thing left is that “Punk Rock Classic” goes into the guitar line from “Sweet Child O’ Mine” for like five seconds, which is funny, but it’s really just a filler novelty crap track that you don’t need to hear ever.
Good album, though! No more than “good,” but this new lineup shows promise! I have a feeling they might be able to break through soon! Don’t you think?
Blood Sugar Sex Magik (1991)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Sir Psycho Sexy”
Hey! They broke through! Good for them. Although this is the only record in the Chili Peppers catalog I’d probably call overrated (leaving aside the first three albums as another matter entirely), that’s mainly because it’s waayyyyyy toooooooo loooooooooooooooooong. From this point on, the Chili Peppers become one of the biggest culprits of the CD-age “Hey! We have all this room! Might as well use it!” phenomenon (non-rap category, at least), consistently churning out excellent 40-45 minute albums that turn into good but uneven 60-75 minute bloated bags of too many goddamn fucking songs. Why is this thing 73 minutes long, huh? There’s not a single bad song on the album, but so many tracks are so overwhelmingly samey and “OK” that by the time “Sir Psycho Sexy” comes on at the end to save the day, I am usually tired, irritable, cranky, and in dire need of a fresh batch of Ramen noodles. WHY? DAMN YOU, CD AGE!!!!!
However, the other thing that you can for the most part count on from the Chili Peppers from this point on is that their singles will be money. “Suck My Kiss” and “Give it Away” break no new stylistic ground for the band, but they’re just so much better-written than all their other funk-metal jam things. You can KEEP all that fucking early bullshit. Give me two tunes like these any day, partially because of improved songwriting, partially because John is starting to move away from Hillel-imitations into his own brand of nice, interesting, melodic playing, and partially because this is the record where Anthony finally comes into his own. If he figured out how to be a frontman on Mother’s Milk, he figured out how to be good at being a frontman on this record. His performances on the rap-esque stuff (especially the two singles I already mentioned) are consistently stunning, and, lo and behold, he’s finally developed a half-decent singing voice! “Knock me Down” was a great song, yeah, but the vocals were WEAK. I’m sure long-time followers of the band were shocked when they first heard “Under the Bridge.” I mean…Anthony can SING! He like hits the right notes and stuff! When did that happen? And the guitar playing is nothing but vintage Frusciante, the type of stuff he’ll always be best at. Minimalist and sort of simple-sounding, but so melodic and perfect for the song.
Unfortunately, not every attempt at balladry here comes out as well as “Under the Bridge,” and not every attempt at regular Peppers stuff comes out as well as “Give it Away.” The acoustic “Breaking the Girl” is good, but not great (except for that percussion break! Love that shit!), and “I Could Have Lied” is just underdeveloped and boring, though, um…nice. And the amount of nearly-interchangeable funk tracks that reside on here is astronomical (every song not already mentioned bar the goofy ending nothing “They’re Red Hot,” actually). Most of the ones near the beginning are still ace stuff (“If You Have to Ask” and “Funky Monks” ESPECIALLY rule my ass), and the ones in the middle interspersed among the singles are solid as well (“Mellowship Slinky in B Major” is as cool as its title suggests), but the bundle near the end after “Under the Bridge” are where this record begins to annoy the CRAP out of me for being way too fucking LOOOOOOOOOONG. The playing throughout the album is phenomenal and interesting (anyone who says these four dudes aren’t the quintessential Chili Peppers lineup has his head up his ass), even the most useless songs (like “Naked in the Rain,” for instance) are often saved by some instrumental tastiness, and there is some diversity to be found among the endless string of funk numbers (some faster, some slower and more metallic, some with more rapping, some with more melodic development), but not everything these guys touch turns to gold. There are just TOO MANY FUCKING SONGS on this record.
Damn, they close on a high note, though, and the amount that I love the sex epic “Sir Psycho Sexy” is completely nonsensical and ridiculous. Clearly the funkiest thing here, with some goofy sound effect (on the guitar or bass or just an extra keyboard added? I’ve got no idea) adding to the goodness, and the vocals in it first half are absolutely HILARIOUS! Not even mentioning the “Sir Psycho! Sir Psycho! Yeah!” interludes followed by some dude who sounds like Isaac Hayes delivering Shaft-esque boasting lines, when writing the lyrics Anthony clearly thought something like “I’m gonna be ridiculous here, let’s just make this song porno.” “There’s a devil in my dick and some demons in my semen!” “Creamy beaver! Hotter than a fever!” “I said, ‘What’s up? Now suck my dick!’” “On her crotch so very warm, I could feel her getting wet through her uniform!” These are the types of lines you can expect from this song, including my favorite: “Now I lay me down to sleep! I pray the funk will make me freak! If I should die before I waked, allow me lord to rock out naked!” Then, completely unexpectedly and randomly, at about the 5:30 or 6:00 mark, the song turns gorgeous, and the outro is absolutely the most beautiful thing on any Chili Peppers album to date (i.e. today, in December, 2003). And then they ruin the mood with that “They’re Red Hot” speedy shuffle filler track for no reason like the Beatles did with “Her Majesty” on Abbey Road.
Not that I’m comparing this band to the Beatles in any way, shape, or form, but that’s what the thing makes me think of.
OK, you know what? Eat me.
One Hot Minute (1995)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Warped”
John Frusciante decided to leave the band a year or two after Pus Salt Intercourse Voodoo got released to live in his house and shoot heroin all day, hoping that this would eventually to a Hillel Slovak-esque, ultra-ironic early death, so the band recruited former (and current…man, does “Just Because” RULE MY RECTUM) Jane’s Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro to fill the void. The collaboration had the potential to turn out incredibly cool, with the funk stylings of the Peppers combined with technically jawdropping lead guitar work of Mr. Navarro, but, alas, it didn’t work out that way. However, I’d still say the record’s a little underrated (the All Music Guide claims it’s the worst album the band ever released…BULLSHIT!), and I probably enjoy it about as much as Mother’s Milk.
There are two reasons that I’m gonna postulate led to the disappointing (yet still good, dammit!) quality of this album. First, Dave’s style doesn’t really fit with the band. If you just listen to what Dave’s doing, you’ll often be completely blown away by some of the shit he pulls off, from solos to powerful riffing to texture to whatever, but if you listen to everything together as a whole, on a good number of the tracks here (mostly the “funk” ones), everything doesn’t gel quite as well as it does with John. Second, besides his superior-to-Hillel-in-every-way guitar playing, I really believe John brought a lot of songwriting skill to the band that they simply didn’t have without him. You can’t tell from the credits, since the band credits every song to every member, but I’d guess Mr. Frusciante was the driving musical force behind Blood Sugar, Californication, AND By the Way (not so much Mother’s Milk, since he was the “new guy”). Once again, the singles are money, but there’s just not enough consistent songwriting on this thing to make me believe John didn’t have a LOT to do with the quantum leap in this band’s quality of material (not just instrumental skill) when he joined.
However, I think I’d say the first, oh, 20 minutes or so of this album are the best opening 20 minutes you can find on any Peppers record. The opener “Warped” is astonishing, strange, weird, interesting, and, just…cool, with echoed vocals and different sections and fills going in and out and shit. I know it’s blasphemy to say this, since it’s from “that album with Dave Navarro on it,” but it might be my favorite Peppers tune ever. So bite me. “Aeroplane” is great, but is so for two reasons only, because the main melody of the chorus is a little flimsy. First, the part where the little kids sing at the end is cute. Second, FLEA. On the verses to this song, his work is simply astounding, and I am left floored by it every time. He carries this song almost entirely by himself, and pulls it off with aplomb (Oh! Harvard expression!). “My Friends” is a great, catchy acoustic single as well (better than “Breaking the Girl,” but not quite “Under the Bridge”-level), and “Deep Kick” is phenomenal, as well as probably the only tune on which Dave is totally integrated into one of the Peppers’ funk-metal grooves. The song has so many sections that it’s practically prog-funk-metal or some crap, but it’s so fucking COOL, man. The little spoken intro is fun, the outro is hilarious (Love Flea’s vocal! “We did some good, and we did sooooooome real bad stuff…but the Butthole Surfers said…”), and the middle contains many, many sections, each finger-lickin’ good! I must particularly complement the Flea vocal interlude (Yes, the song contains two!) followed by some perfectly timed “Hell, yeah!” stuff by Anthony. Really great stuff, that is.
The rest of
the record, however, is incredibly uneven (and it’s over an hour long! DERRRRRFFFF!!!!!). The instrumental break in the middle of
“Coffee Shop” is splurgetastic, but the rest of the
song is terrible, and so is the entirety of “One Big Mob.” I like Flea’s little solo showcase “Pea”
(It’s CUTE!!), “Walkabout” is brilliant, fun, laid-back, funky, and by far the best thing out of what’s left, and the
end of “Tearjerker” turns the song from a mediocre, dickless
ballad into a pure musical orgasm with mellotron strings
and sitars, but the rest of the album is faceless and useless. The title track is too long (that damn
two-chord riff at the end goes on forever), and “Falling into Grace” and “Shallow be
thy Game” have no reason whatsoever to exist despite not out-and-out sucking. I guess I like the closing
“Transcending,” though, at least its first half, before it turns into another
boring, rote, funk-metal jam.
That’s the main problem I have with the album, really. There are no more sexist lyrics, the instrumental playing is excellent (better than Blood Sugar, even), and Anthony is still cool, but the funky jammy songs that make up about half this record, with the notable exception of “Deep Kick,” go absolutely NOWHERE. In most of them Dave Navarro will start off on some nuts-o wah-wah metal man guitar solo for a bit, and more often than not it rules, but he just doesn’t know how to play with the rest of the band. His playing is awesome, you see, but it doesn’t fit, and so the random Blood Sugar Sex Magik funk-metal song is fine, but the random One Hot Minute funk-metal song is plodding, annoying and too far into the “metal” side of the combo. John doesn’t really write “riffs,” per se, but instead excels at simple little melodic runs that compliment the rhythm section perfectly. Dave’s schtick is more traditional, riffs and solos, and he’s great at it, just not as good when combined with the other dudes. Technical flash and skill (no matter how jawdropping) cannot make up for lack of musical chemistry.
But, nevertheless, this album’s still good. Just like the last one, there are too many random funk-metal tracks that could be edited out, and the random tracks are worse here because the band isn’t working together as well. The singles (especially “Warped,” which is FASCINATING), “Deep Kick,” and “Walkabout” are still awesome, though. Enough high points for a 7. Or some shit.
Californication (1999)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “Californication”
Well, John’s attempt at killing himself with heroin failed when he, being the QUITTER that he is, decided to go and clean himself up. It was clear that Dave Navarro, despite his prodigious talents, wasn’t working out with the band either (he might have already left before John rejoined, I’ve got no idea), so John reenlisted and reunited the best (and only truly great) lineup the Peppers ever had. When you realize that all this crap with the guitarists was going on, it makes it somewhat more palatable that this is now only the second album in eight years released by these guys. However, it doesn’t mean they aren’t a bunch of lazy ass-munching retards who insist on making their albums too damn long.
But I kid! The album overstuffing is less a problem on this record (only a SCANT 56 minutes!!!!) than the others they’ve released in the nineties and noughts, but I’d still say some of the good-but-ultimately-underwhelming second half could have been chopped off (like “Porcelain!” That song BLOWS!). The band has (thankfully, because I’m still gonna maintain this is what they were always best at) dumped much of their funk tendencies for a bunch of slick ballad-ish pop songs. And they’re REALLY, REALLY GOOD! Again, the singles (WHORES!!!!!) are the best of the bunch, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do to defend yourself against the expert songwriting, fantastic singing (Anthony just keeps getting better!), and somewhat minimalist (I love John! He’s like David Gilmour, in that the fewer notes he plays, the better he sounds sometimes) arrangements of “Scar Tissue,” “Otherside,” and the title track. The little guitar melodies that John comes up with are just…GREAT! They’re great. They’re catchier than the vocal melodies sometimes. And let me also say I fully support the embryonic usage (to be fully explored on the next album) of keyboard touches (the title track) and purty vocal harmonies (“Otherside”). I enjoy little production touches like these that make my ears fat and happy.
As I completely disregard the need for a segway between unconnected thoughts, what’s funny about this album is that the band still tries a few sort of random fun funk tracks here and there, and, even though it isn’t their stock and trade anymore, they turn out better than they ever have. I LOVE both “Get on Top” and “I Like Dirt,” as stupid as they are. I suppose “Get on Top,” being in the first half and having that nice middle break section, could be called a “serious composition,” but the same canNOT be said for “I Like Dirt,” and it might be my favorite song on the album outside of the singles. Goddamn, it’s BOUNCY! I like bouncy. And Flea’s bass, though the emphasis has been shifted away from it for a lot of this album, still packs a mean punch. And the metal wah-wah solo! It’s like John’s saying “you want flashy Dave Navarro stuff? HERE YOU GO! Now I’ll never do it ever, ever again. Unless you give me some heroin.”
The rest of the first half (“First half” means “first six tracks” and “second half” means “last nine tracks,” by the way, due to my fuzzy math) is made up of the ass-kicking, bass-licking, funky opener “Around the World” and the curiously new wave-ish “Parallel Universe,” both of which rule my ass up and down the highway (or something…), and, as I said before, the second half presents a bit of a dropoff. The only bad song here is the sickeningly boring and underdeveloped “Porcelain,” which I mentioned before (It sucks so nice I trashed it TWICE!!!), but only “I Like Dirt” and the gorgeous closing acoustic ballad “Road Trippin’” can match up to the first-class orgiastic anal penetration of the first “half.” All the songs left are nice songs, and I enjoy them, since they’re nice songs and all, but that’s all they are: nice songs. They’re nice enough, and there’s enough superb tunes here (Like half the album!) to keep a 9 up there in the rating spot, but they’re still, finally, just, simply, nice songs. Let me say, however, that I do thoroughly enjoy the multi-tracked guitar solos at the end of “Easily” and the line “What could be wetter than an English girl, American man?” in the oh-so-cleverly (*rolls eyes*) titled “Emit Remmus.”
What else
to say? Not much! This is just an album of nice pop songs that
clearly takes its cue from “Under the Bridge” and basically goes from there for
an hour. It deserved to be a hit. It deserved to put the Peppers back on the
map. It was a hit. It put the Peppers back on the map. The arrangements are pretty simple, but
that’s the charm, since John’s wonderfully melodic guitar playing takes
center stage and drives the band up I-95 until it passes into
By The Way (2002)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “By The Way”
With this album, the Peppers’ journey from juvenile funk-metal-rap weasels with socks on their dicks to mature, adult, tasty AM popsters with socks on their dicks is complete. The upbeat funk is, for the most part, gone. Only “Can’t Stop” really recalls the energetic days of yore, and it’s one of the weaker songs on the album. “Throw Away Your Television” is also fast, but it’s not “funk” in the least, and about half the title track could be classified as such, but, come on, when that song’s over, what do you remember about it? Yup! The chorus. “Standing in line to see the shooowww tonight…” and all that. Just look at the picture on the back of the album! They’re wearing sweaters and ties and crap and leaning on each other like they’re too old to walk by themselves. And how old is Chad Smith now? He looks like he’s 50 or something! This band has about as much in common with the group that did Freaky Styley as Coldplay.
However, as
you’ll remember, Freaky Styley blows a dong,
and so I very much like what the band’s turned into. Sometimes it gets a little slow, yeah,
but I think they’re really aging gracefully.
So, although they’ve wholly exchanged groovy musical interesting-osity (what happened to Flea and
):-O
So, yes, the transformation first hinted at on Blood Sugar Sex Magik and begun in earnest on Calipornography is complete, and I think Anthony even said the Mamas and the Papas (Gah!) were an influence when making this album. And now that I’ve spend a few lines saying stuff I already said, here’s a little thumbnail guide to what’s going on here: 1) The songs are slow. 2) The melodies and hooks are always pretty great. 3) The arrangements are cool and inventive, and use all sorts of instruments that, until now, it wasn’t clear the Chili Peppers even knew existed. 4) John Frusciante overdubs 800 copies of himself in every single tune, leading to most of the songs here containing vocal harmonies that make the ones in “Otherside” seem objectively like child’s play (even if they may not be as cool as those all the time). And this happens sixteen times. If that sounds good to you, go pick it up. If not, go put on The Uplift Mofo Party Plan and pretend “Party on Your Pussy” isn’t fucking retarted.
There is more diversity than you might think from what I’ve typed so far, though. “Cabron” is a super little like Spanish acoustic guitar jig thing. “Tear” is disturbingly downbeat and has a kick-ass keyboard tone (if a keyboard tone can, in fact, “kick ass”). The closer “Venice Queen” has a bit of an epic feel to it, and the fast, acoustic second part is a good time. But, really, fuck all that. Diversity is not why you’d get this album. It’s the big, swooping choruses like in the title track and “Universally Speaking” and “The Zephyr Song” and (my personal favorite chorus hook, if not favorite song, because the verses put me to sleep) “Dosed.” That and consistency. Yeah, the record’s too long, but it’s nearly impossible to pinpoint which songs should be cut out, because everything is so even, and there’s no obvious section near the end where the band dumped all their “random, half-assed songs” like the last three records (yes, even Californication). Precisely because it’s so long, though, this consistency is a bit of a turn-off when you first listen to the album. Once the title track slaps you silly with its energy and brilliance to lead things off, everything else just sort of lazily and samily drifts by without leaving much of an impression. But the hooks begin to eat into you after a while, and trust me when I say the record will grow on you like it did me.
However, if the Peppers keep going in this direction, they’ll sound like the Carpenters before too long. That would be a bad thing. Can you picture Karen Carpenter with a sock on her dick?
Stadium Arcadium (2006)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Stadium Arcadium”
Shockingly high-quality two-hour double album from the stunningly reinvigorated and now middle-aged kings of relaxed SoCal happy rock to which Pitchfork gave a 4 because THEY ARE RETARDED, Stadium Arcadium and its regrettable pseudo-Latin title (the only valid point in the predictably ass-poor review by unnamed RETARDED Pitchfork hack that hates life #63, whom I at least know wasn’t my former Harvard Classics classmate Nick Sylvester because the review was in complete sentences) are very, very, very good, so good even that I’m gonna come right out and say I think this is the band’s 2nd best work, which if you were to scroll up on the webpage you are now reading means that I believe it’s better than Blood Sugar Sex Magik. And though I don’t see a real sizeable difference between the two, I’m quite serious in claiming this. People may lament that getting older has softened the funk-metal “edge” of the Peppers and turned them into radio-ready pop superstars palatable to teenage girls and their Monkees-loving mothers alike, and while this may be true, this is not automatically a bad thing. Because, as I have stated ad nauseum on this very webpage, this is what the Red Hot Chili Peppers are good at. They hit their funk-metal ceiling on Blood Sugar Sex Magik, which is fantastic because the biggest hit and debatably best song on the entire thing was everyone’s favorite prom song “Under the Bridge,” then within two albums they totally abandoned the funk-metal thing and consequently made what still stands as their best album ever in Californication. I for one was a little worried they were losing it a bit on the supremely melodic but disturbingly low-key and tame By the Way, but it turns out I was incorrect! On Stadium Arcadium, they’ve successfully re-energized themselves without losing their melodic edge! So relax and sit back for two hours of rock-solid, well-crafted, melodic pop-rock hooks!
You think that’s good enough to get quoted on Metacritic?
OK,
refocusing, it’s just about impossible for a band not named the Beatles to make
an album two hours long and twenty-eight songs deep and not run out of steam at
some point, so once you get to the 2nd half of the 2nd
disc you’re gonna discern a lack of really
distinguishable tunes (and the spoken word part in the “epic” closer “Death of
a Martian” is just odd), but there’s nothing on there that makes me want to
turn this thing off, you know? The consistent listenability
of it is remarkable, and there are enough true gems tossed into the stew to
make this one of the more worthwhile listens I’ve purchased recently. The band’s returned, for the most part, to a
basic guitar-bass-drums setup and jettisoned all the funky “experimentation” on
By the Way (like the ukulele song or
whatever instrument they used on “Cabron,” which I’ve
since learned is a dirty, dirty word in Puerto Rico that can get you seriously
hurt if you use it. Fantastic!). Oh sure, there are keyboards or a trumpet or
something sprinkled in a handful of songs (I love the horn in “Hump de Bump,”
which is so close to being my favorite song here I can’t believe how much of an
idiot I am for thinking that), but one of the feelings you’ll get from this is
just how good the band is able to
sound with just their rhythm section and Frusciante
using whatever effects pedal he chose to use in the song you’re listening
to. They’re muscular yet light, and the
few poor moments they have (“Readymade,” for instance, which is clumsy as hell
and needed to be either worked on a helluva a lot
more or dumped entirely, or, failing that, ended with a banging-metal part
straight out of Blood Sugar Sex Magik that sounds really fucking cool (i.e. what they
did)) are made up for by all the winners.
The single “Dani
There are so many songs on this that to talk about them individually is just asinine. There also isn’t all that much variety, which admittedly doesn’t help matters. Just lots of really well-done, very chill, very relaxed, very melodic pop-rock. They try to break out the old funk-metal a handful of times, but except for the aforementioned excellent “Hump de Bump,” these are not the album’s best moments. This is an adult pop band for people that don’t mind really commercial music as long as it’s well-written. The fact that they were an immature funk-metal act that ran around with socks on their dicks for a while is an inconvenience, and anyone who treasures Freaky Styley while lambasting the last seven years of this band’s output as sell-out crap is an out-and-out moron. There are loads of cool rhythm section parts, plenty of neat guitar runs (like the ones on Californication! Remember those? Weren’t those the shit? They’re back!), the vocals are well-done (I can’t believe that 20 years ago Anthony couldn’t hit a note if you paid him; he sounds great now), and, hell, a few neat horn charts too. Why not? Just good song after good song after good song. The first five or so songs on disc one are absolutely phenomenal and some of the band’s best-ever work, and then the album slips into a relaxed, very-good-but-not-mindblowingly-awesome groove that carries on with few interruptions for another hundred or so minutes. If you cut out half of it I don’t even think you’d make it that much better. It’s just so even. If you had told me a year ago the Red Hot Chili Peppers would be releasing a two-hour double album and it’d be appreciably better than a new record by Tool released at roughly the same time, I’d have laughed in your face. ‘HA! HA HA!” I would go. But there you go. This record is damn good.