Does anyone really like the Red Hot Chili Peppers?

100% awful lyricist

100% terrible band for at least for the past 20 years. probably longer.

Wiki for this band is kind of amazing in its self-serious minutiae

http://rhcp2014.com/

^^^Jon Daly's fake RHCP thing, texted it to a friend and he was like "Kiedis ONLY records dry vocals," all umbraged out – it was a good moment

I hate to mean to anyone but RHCP seem to be made of people who really want to be in a band, talent aside.

they had the best promo photos in the 80s, breath of freshness from the usual 'stand around' rock poses.

https://thegrayishcarpet.com/2016/04/20/blood-sugar-sex-dickheads/

Most of the women I know who worked in the music business in the late 80s and early 90s put up with sexual harrassment. We didn’t talk about it to our friends, for the most part, and not many of us took any action. We were ashamed or afraid or didn’t think we’d be believed. We thought we’d be blamed, or worse, we blamed ourselves. We didn’t want to be perceived as weak, and we thought that in order to succeed, we just had to put up with it. Sexual harrassment came along with working in the music industry — it was an everyday reality — and a lot of us didn’t even realize that anything was wrong. Most of the reasons we kept quiet may never stop being reasons — shame and fear aren’t going to go away — but at least we know now when we’re being harrassed.

I still love the first 3 RHCP albums and like BSSM.

It was unlikely I would purchase any other piece of music featuring these guys regardless of this story, which just gives me a moral reason to avoid them on top of my aesthetic reason.

Answering the original question, I suspect Flea is the only one who really, really likes the RHCP.

"Shopping cart, escalator!"

lovely url there

I think I'm the only person on ILM who thinks Californication is a decent album (though can't stand the title track).

nah, i do too, but I'm a massive frusciante stan so I'll endure a lot to hear his playing/compositions. "porcelain" and "this velvet glove" are gorgeous

i also love by the way where frusciante ramped up the beach boys and nearly broke up the band (flea iirc was really bummed out)

have to think that flea and Frusciante and possibly Kiedis are wounded by the infamous kave kwote (smith: "who's Nick cave?"). those guys want to be respected by punk rock royalty SO BAD. I also imagine Flea wearing down Radiohead's management: "I'm his biggest fan! you don't have to pay me! please hire me to play with him."

I don't think any reasonable person ever thought they were anything but dickheads. As far as dickhead bands go, I like Freaky Styly up to a point, but I bought it long ago and I'm not planning on spending any more money on RHCP. Someday Fishbone will get a similar article, at least if anyone was present at their shows during the 1980s, but it may or may not show up on ILM.

Idk they always just looked like happy go looky goofballs in all their press photos...

https://www.blueinc.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/carpool-xlarge_transNJjoeBT78QIaYdkJdEY4CnGTJFJS74MYhNY6w3GNbO8.jpg

🙅

Once you see it...

sigh

"Moist, pink men are quickly mobilized."

not that i was ever a big fan, but I saw them last night w/ a friend (it was her idea, I just wanted to hang out w/ a friend and hear some live music) and lord are they a boring live band.

the people on the floor were having a good time. up in the nosebleeds, half the audience was bored and on their phones.

their new stuff sounds so bland too (I like the new single tho)

They used to be great live. But the last time I saw them was in 1990.

I would have enjoyed them in that era.

the only songs from pre-Californication that they played last night were

Under the Bridge
Give It Away
Aeroplane
Pea (they went nuts for this shitty song - is this really a fan favorite?)
Higher Ground
Sir Psycho Sexy

and really I could live without ever hearing UtB, HG or GIA ever again

They probably went nuts over "Pea" because they never do anything from One Hot Minute (which has some great songs on it)

I was surprised too cos I thought they hated that album but that barely even counts as a song.

then again, better that than "My Friends"

(the only other one i know from that alb is "Warped" which is aight)

I told myself years ago that I was done with "guilty pleasures" - why feel bad about what you like? If anybody judges you as a person based on your musical taste, fuck 'em, right? But I still feel kinda guilty about liking the Chili Peppers, because I mean come on.

RE the gig you went to - I thought they had totally disowned One Hot Minute, which is not a bad album at all. "Aeroplane" is from that album, so I'm surprised to hear they played that. "Pea" is kind of a nothing song, the type of lyric I would have thrown away even if I'd written it in 10th grade. But with this band bad taste is of the essence, isn't it?

The worst time to hear the RHCP is right after a great Ariel Pink song

Pretty much every covers band I was in or was friends with in college played Aeroplane at some stage.

Bassist: I never get to pick songs
Rest of band: Ok, pick a song and we'll play it
Bassist: Aeroplane, bitches

According to one of my bassist friends the main bassline is ripped off note-for-note from a Graham Central Station song.

this is prob embarrassing but i’ve been listening to by the way a lot lately and what a weird power pop record masquerading as mainstream funk rock. “dosed” is so beautiful. wish i could hear a version of this record without kiedis but you take the good with the bad with these dudes

Yes, that is a good way to put it

was gonna post a picture of these dudes with socks on their dicks but...

like whoa

how many times did they perform naked with socks on their dicks?????

i still stan for that Zephyr song off that album, it’s the last lovely thing they did

That picture slightly upthread vaguely reminds of that photo of the French National Soccer Team on break. You know the one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7i_22PrQsp8

w t f

love the concept of rarity on youtube

incredibly, it really goes downhill later on

The Flea memoir is pretty good, but the man remains a mystery. How could anyone with such great talent and taste, and cred for days, participate in music so consistently shitty and uninteresting?

A steady paycheck?

rhcp occur to me as one of the more tasteless evolutions of hardcore back when hardcore was splintering off into multiple things. while everyone was tastefully incorporating dub these guys were like “there is absolutely no reason why our punk band can’t be a funk and rap band, lets just do it and be legends” and the rest is history. but that’s also why flea has the cred and the taste

xpost Money for sure, but of course he doesn't need the money, and he has plenty of side projects. He even explicitly says in his book how he thinks popular equals boring, which says a lot about his own music.

when they started that kind of funk/punk/metal skatebro diaspora was pretty in vogue and they were not remotely the only ones working that vein.... they also got tons of critical acclaim

it's kind of Monday morning quarterbacking to say otherwise

Never understood why these guys are so bad and hated.

ums otm

I dunno, I think they got some shit, iirc, from those paying attention, like Xgau. And by Party on Your Pussy, people knew that shit was ugly.

didn’t mean to suggest they were the only ones doing it, and yes, somehow, people liked it (i like rhcp)

Anyway, my point was that reading the Flea book, it's amazing that, like em or not, the sum total of all the stuff bouncing around in the guy's brains is the Chili Peppers.