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• Red Hot Chili Peppers (1984)
• Freaky Styley (1985)
• The Uplift Mofo Party Plan (1987)
• Mother's Milk (1989)
• Blood Sugar Sex Magik (1991)
• What Hits!? (1992)
• One Hot Minute (1995)
• Californication (1999)

The Red Hot Chili Peppers (1984)

5

True Men Don’t Kill Coyotes / Baby Appeal / Buckle Down / Get Up and Jump / Why Don’t You Love Me / Green Heaven / Mommy Where’s Daddy / Out in L.A. / Police Helicopter / You Always Sing / Grand Pappy Du Plenty

1st question: Is the debut by The Red Hot Chili Peppers an influential album? Yes, undeniably so. While I’m hardly a specialist on funk-rock or the Californian music scene in the ‘80s, it’s hard not to consider them an innovating funk-rock band. Their influence on rap/funk-inclined bands such as The Beastie Boys and Rage Against the Machine is obvious, while they probably paved the way for vaguely similar bands like Fishbone, Living Colour, Infectious Grooves and countless contemporary bands as well. Taking their cues from P-funk and Funkadelic, they added a rock/punk flavour to it that wasn’t done yet, except for maybe by Gang of Four’s bass-heavy agitprop. That said, I find the band’s love for punk somewhat overblown: there are hardly any instances you can point out and say “Hey, listen, this is what they got from listening to Bad Brains or Black Flag.” Now, since this website isn’t primarily concerned with what’s influential and what not, let’s get on to the 2nd question: is the debut by The Red Hot Chili Peppers a good album? Well, no. It certainly isn’t a disastrous affair or anything, and the boys obviously know how to play, but it’s definitely a weak affair that doesn’t get any better with repeated listens. On the contrary: their brand of funk-rock is rather artificial, strained and clumsy, while a substantial part of the album is very slight, despite its short duration (32 minutes).

While I still can’t make sense of it (“Well, I'm gonna ride a sabertooth horse, through the Hollywood hills, just don't show me anything 'cos that's the way I feel, well, I dig the dirt and I dig the dust, I barbecue my meals, ridin’ wild on paisley dragon, through the Hollywood Hills” – is that some sort of WWF-statement or what?), it’s understandable why “True Men Don’t Kill Coyotes” is one of the few tracks from this album that still gets mentioned once in a while. Kiedis’ performance is a lot gruffer than he sounds nowadays and the chorus is kinda catchy. The major problem with this song though, and with the entire album, is the completely lifeless sound. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with it sounding clean, but Andy Gill’s production robs the music entirely of the party-vibe they probably were looking for. Check out The Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime for an example of terrific cleanness. After the opening track, it’s quite a chore to find the good tracks: though the hectic funk of “Get up and Jump” comes off as pretty formulaic, Flea’s lightning-fast slapping is quite impressive, while Kiedis gives his all to keep up. Guitarist Jack Sherman and drummer Cliff Martinez, who temporarily replaced Hillel Slovak and Jack Irons, are also adequate players (I kinda dig Sherman’s jazzy hard rock solo in “Buckle Down”), but they can’t help it that the album just doesn’t click. I still dig the ecological anthem “Green Heaven,” that captures the band at their most political (“We got a government, so twisted and bent, bombs, tanks and guns is how our money is spent, we got V.D., heroin greed and prostitution, tension, aggravation, L. Ron Hubbard solution…”) quite a lot, and that’s about it. The self-congratulatory “Baby Appeal” is just too stupid to be true, “Why Don’t You Love Me” is struttin’ funk-rock by the book, while the female vocals in the otherwise fine “Mommy Where’s Daddy” get REALLY tedious after a while. That’s when you get to the album’s final tracks, which are a wicked bunch: “Out in L.A.” is mainly a showcase for Kiedis’ inane poetry (“My body loves to scrump when I lick the ripe pick, like a comb on a thumb, poppin’ hump” – Right on, Tony!), “Police Helicopter” a flimsy but enjoyable speed-funk track and “You Always Sing” 15 seconds of goofing around; which leaves you with “Grand Pappy,” a directionless instrumental that’s about as exciting as watching Bob Saget’s eyebrows go up and down. There you go: a few standouts and a bunch of half-assed efforts that come off as silly, underdeveloped or plain annoying (whether because of annoying ticks or the dated production), sometimes all of that at once. FRUSTRATING.

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Freaky Styley (1985)

5.5

Jungle Man / Hollywood / American Ghost Dance / If You Want Me to Stay / Nevermind / Freaky Styley / Blackeyed Blonde / The Brothers Cup / Battle Ship / Lovin’ and Touchin’ / Catholic School Girls Rule / Sex Rap / Thirty Dirty Birds / Yertle the Turtle

At this point in their career, the Red Hot Chili Peppers seemed hell bent for just one thing: PARTYING. From the colourful artwork, the ridiculous costumes, obsession to present themselves as a Californian answer to Parliament, to Kiedis’ – how shall we say this? – rather moronic (childish, inane, degrading) lyrics, they ooze out this wise-ass vibe of carelessness and sleaze. For some reason, their debut must’ve made an impression on the right people, because for their second release, the band left for Detroit Funk City, to record with no less than funkmeister George Clinton himself, while horns greats Maceo Parker and Fred Wesley (a.o.) are also helping out. Pretty promising on paper if you ask me, and the band does come up with some stuff they’d never been capable of a bit earlier, but of course their adolescent sense of humor and self-satisfaction got in the way of an impressive final result (even though a lot of hardcore fans seem to consider Freaky Styley the point where the band hit their stride). It’s admittedly something entirely different from most other acts – R.E.M., The Smiths, U2, to name just a few - at the time (post-punk conventions dictated you shouldn’t have fun), but it’s no surprise their releases still stand as the decade’s finer products, while you can hardly make a similar case for Freaky Styley.

It starts out quite promising though. No one in their right mind would go as far as to proclaim “Jungle Man” a classic in the Peppers catalogue, but at least it’s a song, no matter how off-putting Kiedis’ hiccupping vocals and the semi-tribal percussion may be. “Hollywood, “ a cover of a Meters-song is better. Whereas the band isn’t capable yet of sustaining a 5-minute funk groove like their influences could, the track has some nifty horn arrangements and allows guitarist Slovak to display his considerable chops with a terrific, jangly solo. That the band’s main defect lies in the songwriting department is proven by another cover, Sly Stone’s “If You Want Me to Stay,” which is easily the album’s finest song as the band renders a pretty faithful version, without its typical excess. A great melodic bass-line is the song’s key ingredient, but also the sweeping horns and vocal layers are particularly successful. The hard funk of “Nevermind,” on the other hand, shows them at their most obnoxious as they get their fun out of dissing contemporaries (Soft Cell, Duran Duran) and mentioning their own name as often as possible, but as long as there is memorable poetry like “Nevermind Hall and Oates, those guys are a couple of goats,” you won’t hear me complaining, no sir. So far, the boys have delivered a considerable improvement over the debut – the only dud being the boring “American Ghost Dance,” but unfortunately the sagging pudding-effect is up next, as the remainder of the album is a terribly uneven affair. Things start to go downhill with the droning title track and its ridiculous “Fuck ‘em, just to see the look on their face”-line. “Blackeyed Blonde,” a dressed up jam they could’ve invented ten minutes earlier, is basically an opportunity for Flea to come up with his trademark bass-slapping, “Battle Ship” (political concerns?) and “Sex Rap” are punk-funk blasts that are energetic but very slight, while “Lovin’ and Touchin’” and “Thirty Dirty Birds” are this album’s ultra-short throwaways. That leaves two decent songs: the enjoyable, by-the-books funk of “The Brothers Cup” that suggests the boys were better when they got rid of the outrageousness and finally album closer “Yertle the Turtle,” with lyrics from Dr. Seuss, which makes it another “highlight” that’s basically a cover. If the band had continued the decent quality of the first five songs, the album might still be worth checking out nearly twenty years after its release, but due to an irritating amount of filler/misfires, it ends up not even half as interesting and entertaining as the title and artwork suggest.

Note: Don’t get me started on semi-classic “Catholic School Girls Rule.” What’s there to say about a song that’s basically one giant rip-off of AC/DC’s “Let There Be Rock”?

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The Uplift Mofo Party Plan (1987)

4

Fight Like a Brave / Funky Crime / Me & My Friends / Backwoods / Skinny Sweaty Man / Behind the Sun / Subterranean Homesick Blues / Party on Your Pussy (“Special Secret Song Inside”) / No Chump Love Sucker / Walkin’ on Down the Road / Love Trilogy / Organic Anti-Beat Box Band

… and the party goes on, and for a while it seems that the boys have found a way to wrap their misogynistic macho anthems in decent wrappings. 1987 proved to be something of a crucial year for the Peppers, as the controversial Abbey Road EP (on which they were naked except for the socks over the cocks-stint) soon would get them some extra notoriety and mass acceptance seemed to come nearer and nearer. Uplift Mofo Party Plan sounds very much like an album they’d like to score with, as they again picked up the funk sound of Freaky Styley, but added more elements from hard rock, making it their most ‘metallic’ album yet. The album starts of on a high note, with the tight beat and catchy riff of “Fight Like a Brave.” In a way, you still had to be stupid to even think about recording a song like it, but I’m still glad they did, as it’s so damn hard to resist and contains some cool guitar parts by Slovak, who repeatedly lets loose on the album. Unfortunately, there’s nothing even remotely as interesting on the album. The main part of the first album half is taken up by decent, but average, songs that try to reconcile (hard) rock, funk and pop, but rarely find an agreeable balance: “Funky Crime” is the kind of party song that gets tedious really fast, the tight salvos and exuberant atmosphere of “Me & Me Friends” can’t hide the fact that it’s an awkward song, while “Backwoods” just isn’t much of a song at all. Maybe I should point out that all these songs contain some fine musicianship (Flea’s slapping, Slovak’s guitar gymnastics and Irons’ drum kit abuse are certainly more confident than average), but a stack of wood isn’t a chair either.

The album’s second best song is, gasp, a sort of fake-ass psychedelic pop song: “Behind the Sun.” Even though it boasts a second hand melody, and Slovak’s sitar playing is quite alien, it comes as a relief after the unremarkable funk-rock of the previous songs. So far, disaster hasn’t struck yet, but that’s when you get to song #7, a cover of Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” First of all, if you’re going to play a song by a lauded songwriter, make sure you DO NOT pick one of his most legendary songs, and second, don’t make it sound like you’ve read How to Mutilate a Bob Dylan Song as Thoroughly as Possible, like XTC (“All Along the Watchtower”) or, a few years later, Guns n’ Roses (that song). Some of you might call it an impressive attempt at funkifying a classic rock song. I call it rape, mutilation and bad taste. They’d better stick to Sly, The Meters or Dr. Seuss. The back cover mentions the next song as “Special Secret Song Inside,” so apparently they knew how stupid “Party on Your Pussy” really is. I’m not really offended by its sexist tone in itself (the Stranglers’ “Peaches” and Cocknoose’s “Get Back in the Kitchen” are in their own sweet way more appropriate candidates), but I am because of their stupidity to continue in that vein. Leave the sexist comments to the midget from Minneapolis and he’ll get away with it, but in the hands of these guys, it’s just another brainless, adolescent joke. Unfunny. The most atrocious thing about it all is that they continue the silliness with “No Chump Love Sucker,’ after which I always have to force myself to listen to the three final songs. Although they’re not nearly as offensive as the three previous ones, there’s nothing memorable about ‘em either: “Walkin’ on Down the Road” doesn’t find the right groove in its 3:45, “Love Trilogy” is a lot of blah blah blah and “Organic Anti-Beat Box Band” the Xth superfluous party anthem. If I’d been around in 1987, I’d given these guys not ONE chance that they’d ever release a MATURE album with REAL songs. I’m usually not a fan of the obnoxious approach, but given the nature of the album’s misfires and the fact that the band’s attitude became increasingly more juvenile, I’ll say SCREW The Uplift Mofo Party Plan.

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Mother’s Milk (1989)

6.5

Good Time Boys / Higher Ground / Subway to Venus / Magic Johnson / Nobody Weird Like Me / Knock Me Down / Taste the Pain / Stone Cold Bush / Fire / Pretty Little Ditty / Punk Rock Classic / Sexy Mexican Maid / Johnny, Kick a Hole in the Sky

Disaster struck in 1988, when Hillel Slovak overdosed, and even though it was a shame – the guy was a wonderfully versatile guitar player – it also made the boys rethink (or so it seems) their act. Superficially, nothing much has changed, as opening track “Good Time Boys” already announces, but they’ve undeniably matured some, learned how to write and sequence songs and kept their silliness in check, for the most part. Of course, there’s also the entrance of Chad Smith, who replaced Jack Irons after Dead Kennedys drummer D.H. Peligro had done so for a while, and John Frusciante, Slovak’s greatest fan and at the time a prodigy of barely 18 years old. Even though the album’s peculiar production and songs aren’t the best thing that could’ve happened to the band, Frusciante shines throughout the album with some ridiculously tight playing and an immensely eccentric cocktail of funky licks, hard rock riffs, lightning-fast tricks and other assorted stuff. For the first time around, the Peppers sound like a band who should be taken seriously, instead of a bunch of 24/7 party-goers who happen to be good musicians. That said, a large part of the album is still as messy and directionless as the previous albums. There are simply way too much instances when they all wanna show off their considerable skills but don’t know how to dose ‘em, which often makes me turn this (and the previous) album off after only a few songs. Most of the time, it’s just to too much too take, and the nearly bottomless sound doesn’t help any.

But hey, when digested in small doses, the album’s perfectly enjoyable. The energetic and pounding “Good Time Boys” not only shows they’re capable of irony (“Our devotion to emotion is more than evident”) and having good taste (name-checking Joe Doe and fIREHOSE), but also that they’ve finally found a way to channel their energy in a swaggering party anthem. Even better is their take on Stevie Wonder’s “Higher Ground,” which was the first of their songs I ever heard. It’s not that it beats the original, but I like they way in which they turn it into a real Peppers song that rocks hard, without feeling the need to overdo things. There are three more songs that I really like on this album: the first, “Knock Me Down,” already hints at the more melodic, pop-oriented stuff they’d come up with in the nineties, combining well-sung verses with a tighter, muscular chorus. It’s also one of their most restrained songs yet (up there with “If You Want Me to Stay”), which is quite fitting, as it reads like a letter to Slovak. It also contains the lines “If you see me getting high, knock me down, I’m not bigger than life,” making it one of their humblest, wistful songs. Another favorite of mine (most other people seem to dismiss it) is the speedy funk-rocker “’Stone Cold Bush.” OK, its lyrics are pretty silly (these guys just don’t get away with tales about murder – at least, that’s what I guess it’s about), but at least it has got a great groove going, while Frusciante’s ultra-tight playing and wah wah-effects are a blast. The same also goes for their messy but energetic cover of Jimi Hendrix’s “Fire,” a track that was actually recorded with Slovak and Irons the year before. And that’s about it. The remaining songs often have some amazing interplay ‘Johnny, Kick a Hole in the Sky,” “Subway to Venus”), some nice grooves (“Sexy Mexican Maid”), Flea playing trumpet (“Taste the Pain”) or a whole lotta speedy nonsense that for once isn’t annoying (“Magic Johnson,” “Punk Rock Classic” – which has some funny lyrics about “the biz”), but too much of it passes by without making a real impact. After having heard it, you’ll vividly remember a few songs, but will have trouble remembering any of the rest. But that’s still better than having to go through The Uplift Mofo Party Plan, of course.

Note: It also contains the “Pretty Little Ditty,” mostly famous because its main lick was sampled by those fake-ass pilgrim suntanned Crazy Town morons. Exactly the kind of band I’ll never spend my time and/or energy on.

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Blood Sugar Sex Magic (1991)

8

The Power of Equality / If You Have to Ask / Breaking the Girl / Funky Monks / Suck My Kiss / I Could Have Lied / Mellowship Slinky in Bmajor / The Righteous & the Wicked / Give It Away / Blood Sugar Sex Magik / Under the Bridge / Naked in the Rain / Apache Rose Peacock / The Greeting Song / My Lovely Man / Sir Psycho Sexy / They’re Red Hot

I’m well aware that the hardcore Peppers-fans (that bunch of L.A. freakos that have been following the band’s eventful career since they first discovered hedonism in the early ‘80’s) consider this album a failure, a mass-oriented first step in a decline characterized by loss of spontaneity, energy and innovation, but I say they’re all wrong. I do understand the people who claim that the pre-breakthrough version of the band was a bunch of adventurous outlaws who constantly defied the notions of good taste and politically correctness, but I just can’t ignore the fact that they improved immeasurable since Mother’s Milk. For the first time in their career, the band sounds as if it’s aware of its own strengths and weaknesses, comes up with not one, but a bunch of terrific songs (and not just pieces of music between 3 and 5 minutes long), and excellent musicianship that’s so much more obvious thanks to the production job done by Rick Rubin and Brendan O’Brien. Gone is that plastic 80’s sheen, the clickety-clack of the drums and the bass and the metallic, thin guitar lines. After Mother’s Milk, the Peppers badly needed another guy who could direct them into a more interesting direction, and Rubin’s just done that. On the downside, the band has perhaps been a bit too self-assured by releasing a 74-minute opus that badly needs a shaving. If it had been a 40-minute album, it would’ve contained a consistent string of songs, but now you’ll get exhausted after a dozen songs or so, while this kind of stuff just doesn’t sound that enjoyable in huge doses.

That said, there are a couple of excellent tracks on this album, which immediately found their way in my Top 10 Peppers Songs-list and still reside there. Maybe I’m a mainstream dude after all, but the songs they released as singles are overall the most convincing in the songwriting department: there’s simply no denying that “Give It Away” is one of the most memorable and unique singles of 1991 (yes, that year), a hard-rocking affair with a throbbing bass line, some great guitar tricks by Frusciante (who just kept getting better and better) and Kiedis’ wicked rap delivery. Played to death, but a very nice song, “Under the Bridge” became the band’s commercial breakthrough, a wistful, low-key ballad about Kiedis’ drug past. My personal favorite has always been “Suck My Kiss” though, their first truly successful hanky panky-song. It’s just much more powerful than anything they’d ever done before, the guitar and bass hammering away in unison and Kiedis delivering his vocals with an appropriate horniness. The first album half contains a few more successful ballads: “I Could Have Lied” is a touching, humble ode to a love that could not be, while the near-anthemic “Breaking the Girl,” with its wonderful chorus (“Twisting and turning, your feelings are burning, you’re breaking the giiiiiiiirl”) and mellotron parts, shows Kiedis’ maturity to full effect. While those are all album highlights, there are a few more excellent songs, but those are mainly to be found in the beginning: “Power of Quality” is a memorable piece of ultra-tight hard funk, “The Righteous & the Wicked” progresses at a cool mid-tempo and has some great guitar parts, while “Naked in the Rain” is one of the album’s most radio-ready songs. Some of the songs contain great musicianship but hardly stuck with me (“Mellowship Slinky in Bmajor,” the title track), and that’s also the problem with the final six songs or so. “My Lovely Man” (allegedly another tribute to Slovak) and “The Greeting Song” are energetic, but ultimately rather unremarkable, while “Sir Psycho Sexy” simply doesn’t deserve to go on for 8 minutes, but they don’t prevent the album from containing a shitload of good stuff as well. With several ‘lesser’ than songs, I perhaps shouldn’t give it an ‘8’, but since I usually skip those, I might as well give you the appropriate track list:

The Power of Equality
Breaking the Girl
Funky Monks
Suck My Kiss
I Could Have Lied
The Righteous & the Wicked
Give It Away
Under the Bridge
Naked in the Rain

Now THAT’s an EXCELLENT 40-minute album!

Note: The album’s dedicated to Mike Watt. Ha!

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What Hits!? (1992)

7

Higher Ground / Fight Like a Brave / Behind the Sun / Me & My Friends / Backwoods / True Men Don’t Kill Coyotes / Fire / Get Up and Jump / Knock Me Down / Under the Bridge / Show Me Your Soul / If You Want Me to Stay / Hollywood / Jungle Man / The Brothers Cup / Taste the Pain / Catholic School Girls Rule / Johnny Kick a Hole in the Sky

What Hits!? is a compilation that gathers 18 tracks and focuses on the pre-Blood Sugar Sex Magik period (but somehow contains “Under the Bridge,” confirming that the people at EMI are a bunch of cash-in assholes) and does a remarkably good job at that. Even though the first four albums are insanely uneven (I still stand by the statement that the only passable early album is Mother’s Milk), most of them contained at least a few decent or good songs and most of those wound up on this compilation. Freaky Styley and The Uplift Mofo Party Plan are represented by five songs each (luckily, only two songs from the debut were included) and that’s too generous, but at least they didn’t include crap like “Party on Your Pussy” or “No Chump Love Sucker.” What you do get is four covers (by Stevie Wonder, Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone and The Meters, they wisely left out the successful attempt at ruining “Subterranean Homesick Blues”), a few strutting party anthems that work well if you’re drunk or the kind of guy/girl that puts up with everything (“Fight Like a Brave,” “Johnny Kick a Hole in the Sky”), a few early attempts at something ‘different’ (“Behind the Sun,” Knock Me Down,’ “Taste the Pain”), a mediocre song from the Pretty Woman-soundtrack (“Show Me Your Soul” – SOUL? haha!) and a bunch of tracks that offer a nice perspective on their early concerns (“Me and My Friends,” “Get Up and Jump,” etc.). I could do without several of these (“Jungle Man,” “Backwoods”), but the only shitty song that annoys the hell out of me is “Catholic School Girls Rule.” So, even though What Hits!? had the potential to be a really, really crappy compilation, it turned out pretty well. It basically contains all the early Peppers you need (hence the 7), unless you’re a fan, in which case you’ll probably think I’m horribly wrong anyway.

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One Hot Minute (1995)

5

Warped / Aeroplane / Deep Kick / My Friends / Coffee Shop / Pea / One Big Mob / Walkabout / Tearjerker / One Hot Minute / Falling Into Grace / Shallow By Thy Name / Transcending

Blood Sugar Sex Magik finally proved to be the band’s first mature album. However, things didn’t go according to plans and Frusciante left the band to keep himself busy with more interesting stuff, like doing drugs. The band experimented with a few different guitar players, until they finally settled with Dave Navarro of Jane’s Addiction-fame. That seemed a pretty choice, considering Navarro’s considerable chops and tenure with another notorious party band that – like the Peppers – turned a hedonistic lifestyle into art and a unit that had also been all over the musical spectre. The result of this is that the Peppers became a less funky and playful, more metallic band. This needn’t be a problem, if it weren’t for the fact that a huge part of this album sounds fucking bland. Professional? Oh yes, great musicianship. Good sound? Definitely, Rubin gave his all, undoubtedly. Satisfying? Not at all. Too much of this sounds as if they’re trying to hard to prove they’re still the same band - but have moved on as well in the meantime -, but it all feels so calculated and soulless, lacking the carefree energy of the previous two albums. The two sides of the new version are already combined at the beginning of the album. While the pretty heavy opener “Warped” contains some great, propulsive stuff by the rhythm section (similar to what they’d use to open the next album) and a metallic attack by Navarro, who also adds some psychedelic accents, it’s ultimately a song that never really takes off and doesn’t offer any memorable melody or hook to remember it by.

Much better are the poppy singles “Aeroplane” and “My Friends.” Even though they’re obviously trying to appeal to the audience that turned “Under the Bridge” in such a million-seller, and in a way fooling that very same audience, because this album isn’t nearly as catchy as the previous one, the two songs are immediately likeable. The chorus of the former is almost too sugary and silly (“Music is my aeroplane” – HUH?), but it’s the kind of song that’s really hard to get rid of. The latter is so obviously using “Under the Bridge” as a blueprint that it’s almost embarrassing, but it has its own fine moments, like when the band returns from the chorus to the second verse. Good stuff. But, like it said, they’re not really representative of the album, which has a darker tone than any of their albums yet. “Coffee Shop,” for instance, is their loudest song yet, based on a metal riff, but also containing some funky licks. The lyrics are kinda inane (“Confucius might have been confused, and Buddha might have blown a fuse, I ooze the muse, meet me at the coffee shop, we can dance like Iggy Pop”), but the song’s fun, just like “Shallow Be Thy Name,” a similarly hard-rocking affair hidden near the end of the album. And that’s about it. Why? Because “One Big Mob” and the title track are the kind of loud track that gives me a headache. Loud, but also obnoxious, with the same stale riff and vocal melody repeating and repeating itself (I swear, when Kiedis sings “Sitting in the fiiiiiiiireeeee, get along and have some fun” in the latter, I’m about to pinch somebody’s throat shut). Then there’s also stuff like “Deep Kick” (featuring a long spoken word-introduction about the band’s past, etc), the Cobain tribute “Tearjerker” (well, Cobain may not be MY hero, but he sure deserved something better than this insipid ballad) and “Falling Into Grace,” songs that despite some cool sounds and studio tricks never appealed to me. Not all of it is like that – the jazz-tinged “Walkabout” and closing song “Transcending” are pretty nice, but they’re also really monotonous. It wouldn’t surprise me if One Hot Minute is still a favorite among youngsters who discovered the band (and alternative rock in general) in the mid ‘90’s, but I expect a bit more of a band like that, or music in general. I dislike the messiness and directionless of the first three albums, but in a way I dislike the self-indulgent professionalism of this album even more, as it’s sonically impressive, but ultimately a rather lame, spineless album that’s too self-satisfied, too unremarkable and too long to boot. It’s probably the kind of album that 7th-generation grunge/funk-rock bands cite as an influence. Well, let ‘em have it.

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Californication (1999)

8.5

Around the World / Parallel Universe / Scar Tissue / Other Side / Get on Top / Californication / Easily / Porcelain / Emit Remmus / I Like Dirt / This Velvet Glove / Savior / Purple Stain / Right on Time / Road Trippin’

Fucken’ A! Everything One Hot Minute aspired to be (a worthy follow-up to Blood Sugar Sex Magik) and much, much more. Even though it contains a few less-than-great songs and runs on for a bit too long, Californication easily overshadows all of the band’s earlier work, which is kinda ironic as it’s stylistically the furthest removed from the outrageous funk-rock of before. Ok, there IS still some of that hyper-kinetic funk scattered throughout the album, but this time around, the band has focused on songs and – especially – melody, coming up with several memorable songs that are the best they ever did. If Blood Sugar Sex Magik witnessed the boys finally growing up, and One Hot Minute was a dreary stagnation (regression, actually), the boys have their shit completely together on this album, performing well-written songs with commanding style and class. However, despite the strong songwriting and overall musicianship, it’s my conviction this is ‘the Frusciante album’. Although he’s much less all-over-the-place than he was on Mother’s Milk and Blood Sugar Sex Magik, and by consequence also less concerned with being flashy, the new minimalism as you can hear it on the majority of the songs displays an incredibly increased melodic gift, inspiration and tastefulness. I’d even go as far as to say it’s one of the few albums of the past five years I’d play just to listen to the guitar playing: during the ballads, it’s mellow and occasionally touching, while he also knows how to rock out during the album’s (few) straightforward rock songs.

You could argue that this time around, the album is dominated by the mellow songs, as almost half of the tracks (several of ‘em being highlights on the album) could qualify as ballads or pop-oriented tracks you could also place in that category with a stretch of the imagination. There are also the hyper funk tracks, of course, but they’re in a minority. In between those, there are a few songs that are neither, opting for a more straightforward rock direction. The first of the sissy songs that made an impact, “Scar Tissue,” immediately showed the new course to full effect. More than ever, melody has become the key ingredient in their music, in the song, the playing and the vocals. Just listen to Frusciante’s delicate, minimal technique, which he basically keeps up during the album. Even better than “Scar Tissue” is “Other Side,” a song that still gets to me because of Kiedis’ wonderful performance and those backing vocals that take the song to an entirely different level they hadn’t even explored yet. The same basically goes for the wistful title track - that also contains a short but wonderful solo by Frusciante – and “Porcelain,’ which finds the band entering more fragile territory than ever before. An awesome addition to this list is the acoustic album closer, “Road Trippin’ ”, an introvert song that has more in common with Elliott Smith’s lush portraits than their own previous escapades. Respect. Somewhere hovering between this category and the pop songs are “This Velvet Glove,” a song that’s quite similar to “Californication,” but that comes with occasional rock outbursts. Much better though, are “Parallel Universe” and “Easily,” the first boasting a truly fantastic chorus (and am I really the only who thinks the rhythm section had been listening to KISS’ “I Was Made for Loving You” prior to the recording?), the second probably being the best straight pop song they ever did. Not all of the album’s tracks are as impressive, as “Emit Remmus” with its sustained notes and pounding groove never did anything for me, and neither did the mid-tempo funk-rock of “Purple Stain,” but there are remarkably few filler tracks on the album. Even the nervous funk-inflected mofos are for the most part enjoyable as hell: opening track “Around the World” (yeah, the one with the massive intro) is pleasantly bouncy, “Get on Top” features some bludgeoning bass work by Flea and some of the band’s silliest lyrics (“Gorilla, Cuntilla, Sammy D and Salmonella, come with me ‘cause I’m an ass killer’), while “I Like Dirt” and “Right on Time” despite their flimsiness, are more fun than most of their previous punk-funk blasts. Sure, Californication isn’t a perfect album, but it’s one hell of an album by a band I no longer deemed capable of making. It’s always great when a band surprises you, but when they do it with as much class and superb songs as the Peppers on Californication, it’s quite a blast.

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