Does anyone really like the Red Hot Chili Peppers?

I saw a guy in a running suit who I thought was Flea a few years back, but he was Flea so I couldn’t catch up with him to ask and be sure.

Who has saved more on shirts, Flea, Matt Pike or Iggy? Prolly Iggy.

Just based on length of career, Iggy for sure. You're talking 50 years of shirtlessness.

Do you think he wakes up, goes to the closet, and wonders: which shirt won't I wear today?

picturing him strolling through a walk-in closet with this very thought but yes

Now that they’re middle-aged, those guys wear argyle socks on their c0cks.

i thought people loved flea because they can't get enough slap bass

he’s one of the few guys who do it that I actually like

The Red Hot Chili Peppers are an amazing band and every CD by them is great. I like how they're music has matured with them which seems to be the reason a lot of you don't like them here. They may not be as crazy as they used to be but you can't do the same stuff forever. The Chili Peppers are one of the only bands I know who can change with the times and still be successful and write good music.
If you really want something to complain about why don't you try nagging about all that damn emo screamo or whatever you call it, you know like fall out boy, good charlotte or panic! at the disco. It's a whole bunch of boys who haven't hit puberty yet singing like they've got their balls in a vice grip. Did I mention they also can't play their instruments worth shit?

Even if you don't like Anthony's voice (I love it) you have to admit that the rest of the band is pretty impressive and if you disagree then you obviously have no appreciation for good music. I would go see the Chili Peppers just to see Flea himself because he's one of the best bass players out there. John Frusciante is also a breathtaking guitar player and Chad is a damn good drummer.

On the other hand if you just don't like their style of music then that's ok don't listen to it, it's that simple.

― lizz (chikkabam), Thursday, August 3, 2006 3:40 AM (thirteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm

You kids don't know the Spicy Red Chili Peppers? The breathtaking guitarsmanship of John Frusciante? The wild shirtless bass of Flea? The bong-rattling lyrics of Anthony Kiedis? The damn good drumwork of Chad Smith? Oh, man.

They and U2 could be the last bands standing where regular folk could name more than one (sock covered) member.

Limbomaniacs were better.

As maybe the only other poster who's actually heard the Limbomaniacs album...no, they were not.

:)

it took me a minute to recognize flea in queen & slim, maybe it’s bc he’s wearing a shirt

i thought people loved flea because they can't get enough slap bass

― 💠 (crüt), Sunday, December 29, 2019 7:48 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

he’s one of the few guys who do it that I actually like

― The Soundtrack of Burl Ives (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, December 29, 2019 7:57 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

he also, deliberately i think, significantly dialed down the slapping in his parts around the time of one hot minute/californication

I seem to remember him talking around that time about Kim Gordon who was being quite scathing in the press about all that cock rock slap bass stuff and how he felt chastened by it.

As early as BSSM, apparently (#4 here): https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/red-hot-chili-peppers-blood-sugar-sex-magik-10-things-you-didnt-know-121474/amp/

imagine being chastened about slap bass, thinking about it critically, then continuing to slap so hard

He talks about getting introduced to it by hearing another high school band practicing and being impressed by how in your face it was. He says getting down the non stop 16th note downstroke parts of Fear as the real challenge. He also cites Les from the Bunnymen as a huge influence.

So weird, Les is an interesting bass player and the master of very simple, slightly off-kilter rhythmically repetitive bass riffs but there is *no* discernible influence on what Flea telegraphs to us in his style whatsoever, like nada.

Like if he wanted to namecheck some cool post-punk player I would have expected Tracey Wormworth or Sara Lee.

I didn’t know those River Phoenix / Sinéad O’Connor details.

Also:

“There are definitely ghosts in this house,” he told Interview magazine. “One of the rooms has a very spiritually sexual vibe, and I actually heard a woman being fucked in there one day. I hadn’t masturbated the whole time that we’d been here, because I was so concentrated on my music, but then I slept in that room and I couldn’t resist the temptation to masturbate.”

The Sinéad thing is interesting in light of those few lines of dialogue involving her in My Own Private Idaho

(Also, of course, Gus Van Sant directed the “Give It Away” video)

Turns out RHCP later wrote a tribute song to Phoenix, after his death (“Transcending")... I didn’t know that, either.

I mean...

damn emo screamo or whatever you call it, you know like fall out boy, good charlotte or panic! at the disco. It's a whole bunch of boys who haven't hit puberty yet singing like they've got their balls in a vice grip. Did I mention they also can't play their instruments worth shit?

xxxpost He does mention Sara Lee! Re Les, he acknowledges no one would guess, but claims it's there if you listen. Which is certainly one reason I've never noticed.

xpost - people always have the weird idea that inspiration from another musician means you sound like them in an obvious way

also I'd say the fact that he picked the Bunnymen dude is 100% sincere I didn't even know the dude's name and I post on ILM

xpost Gus didn't make the Give It Away video.

Huh, really? My memory fails me.

I think he did Under the Bridge, tho.

Wikipedia sez you’re right

xpost - people always have the weird idea that inspiration from another musician means you sound like them in an obvious way

Okay I see that, but In what other way might Les have influenced Flea?

Flea literally writes that he borrows from him all the time ...

Crazy, can't see it myself, but cool. Les is really quite underrated too.

I just like looking at photos of them from the early 90s and before, they look like a bunch of fun positive (shirtless) guys

i never got the appeal of them neither. even guns n' roses - a band i don't really care about - were more interesting.

they were my favorite band in the late 80s/early 90s. Rather too earnestly, I was concerned that not only mainstream rock & metal but also hardcore in the 1980s was severed from or did not honor black music. So alongside Bad Brains, Fishbone, 24/7 Spyz and Living Colour, RHCP did the trick. Carrying on the way they did live in those days = "rocking." I saw them like I think 8 to 10 times; the final was '91, when the opener was Pearl Jam, producing an instant profound revulsion in me that has never abated.

I thinks it is self evident that Smith didn't really fuck with P-Funk, JB et al, much less any post punk or hardcore, before he joined the band. He's a midwestern drum jock…Chickenfoot is clearly the kind of band that he would have wanted to be in when he was 14 or whatever…

Frusciante is back in the band, evidently.

producing an instant profound revulsion in me that has never abated.

for RHCP or Peal Jam(?)

The thing that makes Freaky Styley so great is that it is obviously a group of stoned white skaters doing their conception of a funk album; the fact that it actually ends up being a funk album is a bonus.

it's kind of like when the Cult put out its Electric album and everyone thought it was a goof, until they realized, no, they were serious about being so stupid.

The most incredible thing about the RHCP is how none of them have been subjected to #MeToo or the cancel culture despite Kiedis, Flea and Smith all having sexual battery charges and in general having a macho/sexist asshole rep towards audience members, music execs, etc

I'd like to think they did some "growth" after the Spring Break thing, which was like 25+ years ago and generally becoming old hippies

Well in that case carry on!

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

After the meeting, I took two of the Chili Peppers to the storage room, where we kept the box sets and CDs, to get the standard sign-with-us swag. As we looked in a cabinet, they pressed up against me and told me about all of the ways we could make a super sexy sandwich.

At first I thought they were joking. When I realized they weren’t, I ran from the storage room to my office, where I closed my door, sat down at my desk, and cried. I was humiliated and weirdly ashamed, and embarrassed that I was humiliated and weirdly ashamed. I thought I was a badass. Being a victim didn’t fit my self-perception.

When the Chili Peppers’ then-manager knocked on my door a few minutes later, I stopped crying and let him in. He offered an apology that sounded memorized; it was one he’d obviously offered many times before. The A&R guy apologized after the Chili Peppers left, and I decided to get over it. I told myself that I knew what I was getting into when I started working in the music business. I was used to the shit that happened late at night, back in Boston, when I was wasted and hanging out at gigs and after show parties. I wasn’t cool with any of it, but I accepted it, and even though the incident with the Chili Peppers took place when I was an executive at a major label, sober and doing my job at 2:00 in the afternoon, I decided to accept that, too. It was just the way things were.

welp

Originally posted upthread

yeah i distinctly remember reading that :\