Does anyone really like the Red Hot Chili Peppers?

I cringe when I hear Kiedis's voice on the radio these days.

And every time I'm in a guitar store, some 15 year old is playing "Under the Bridge"

Ewww. That is unfortunate.

why? well in my past i'd say i'd hate bands cos of their image and possible pretentiousness, laziness, delusion of how relevant they are, egos etc. but i cant think of a particular band now that have a strong dynamic and lots of energy (both on stage and on record) and have been known to write fine tunes over the years that i could actually HATE...i'm not really interested in the CHili Peppers anymore but ten years ago i liked them just as much as i liked Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Faith No More etc. which makes me sound like a casual/token rock fan which i probably was but still

i just wonder what really makes you HATE a band like them, i've said i hate Coldplay before but i dont really, just hate the hype around them cos i feel they're mediocre at best but whatever...

either way the Chilis are definitely past their best and should stop i guess

i dont think the thrust of the songs are the vocals tho, thought that was flea and navarro's wanky riffs

"tattoos and fucking extreme sports and obviously dancing around in underwear" - this America most definitely does exist (turn on ESPN2 next time you're stateside).

_By The Way_ is damn good, by the way. (Oh, ha.)

* this may not be true

Mr. Blount clearly hasn't had the pleasure of listening to Phish.

and if you dont think stuff like that is important then you can fuck right off

RHCP write good singles though, "Road Trippin'" especially.

Bonus: Movie climaxes with Elliot deliberately crashing a jet, just barely missing the Twin Towers.

A lot of people, seemingly. Not me, mind. Flea maybe a technically great musician, but his plinking-plonking-twanging bass sound is one of my least favourite sounds, not even just in the musical field. It's worse than the sound of belching. Ugh. "Californication" was in my top 5 least favourite albums of all time, it's an absolute dog of an album.

maybe, but i would argue that the self-indulgent/dull/irritating moments in JA are at least as bad as anything RHCP did. i think the fact that JA broke up before most of their fans outgrew their stuff is their critical shining armor.

the 1988 Sam Elliot/Paul Weller film

I would pay money to see Sam Elliot kill Paul Weller on film. Or at least abuse him.

As for the question at hand...I'll grant 'em "Give It Away" and Frusciante really is a fantastic musician on his own. But that's it.

there is a lot of good stuff on the album so far

So this one seems to be the "talented 7th grade trumpeter with a producer dad who lends him studio time and some session killers" to Andre's "doomed jam session with the guy who absolutely can't hang but has great drugs."

Surely destined to be remembered as a trivia answer to where the Nick Cave version of Wichita Lineman comes from

what I want to know is what happened between "I"m forever next to a stereo, hearing the worst shit imaginable, asking who it is, and the answer is always RHCP," and "yes I'll do this."

Flea’s the cover star of the current issue of Downbeat.

This is honestly one of the best pieces I've read on these guys in forever (maybe ever?). I appreciate it is not out to halo polish, for one thing.

https://defector.com/the-red-hot-chili-peppers-beyond-good-and-evil?giftLink=6f5889e62636c0d51356179203f9356a

Also this bit is blowing my mind slightly. But is probably accurate?

Gen Z has at the very least absorbed elements of their music secondhand, mostly by way of John Frusciante. (His solo releases crop up on vibe-based background music playlists not infrequently, and a perverted version of his signature two-note, wide-interval chord voicing has become a central part of contemporary Christian music’s vocabulary—and has entered the world of Nashville country through the megachurch back door.)

I should check out more of Frusciante’s stuff. I had the Niandra Lades/T-shirt cd for a while before I realized he was in RHCP. Love that album.

To Record Only Water… remains an unfuckwithable classic. The rest… meh.

To Record Only Water is indeed an unfuckwithable classic. I also really like Shadows Collide With People. Haven't listened to the whole thing in years but a few tracks have wound up in rotation on playlists. At its best, I feel like it takes ideas from To Record Only Water and fits them to more anthemic tunes. "Song to Sing When I'm Lonely" is fantastic. Can't beat the stripped down vulnerability of To Record Only Water, though. Don't think I've listened to any of the rest of his solo stuff.

xpost Ned, the contemporary Christian music thing is hilarious.

It is! But I'm not questioning it either, I could see that happening.

Flea plays trumpet

a friend tried to persuade me RHCP were good actually and lent me this Frusciante LP, I will admit that this track is great

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8JcXrATdeI

That is easily the smartest thing I've ever read about the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I've still never heard any of their post-Blood Sugar albums in full, but when I revisited the early stuff not that long ago, Uplift Mofo Party Plan kinda held up.

"two-note, wide-interval chord voicing"

i'm sort of interested in what this refers to? like his lead at the beginning of "give it away"? or is this a later pepps dev?

The first seconds of "Scar Tissue" are probably the clearest example of a two-note, wide interval chord voicing.

the hendrix-y thing he does?

hey brimstead that phrase jumped out at me too. let me google that for you and it's a guy named richie zellen giving props to john scofield for that minimal comping style. at 2m23s he explains that chord voicing style: "these are the guide tones, which are the 3rd+7th. or one guide tone in combination with an upper extension, like a 9th or 13th." pretty good playing example in the video too. (tho obviously way more jazzcentric)

i think mitch might be fudging some guitar tech talk because that's just another way of saying 'syncopated arpeggio' afaic, that particular thing frusciante does is like a funkier flatpicking rhythm not really proper chords and yes very influenced by jimi

I always found something immediately distinctive about Frusciante's guitar playing but couldn't put a finger on what it was. Yep, that's it, the two-note, wide-interval chord voicing! Like instead of strumming a G-major chord (usually G, B, and D) he'll just strum the first and third of the chord (G and B) leaving the fifth (D) implied. But instead of the B being just a few notes (a third) higher than the G as it's usually played, it will be 1-1/3 octaves higher. So a low G and a high B strummed together, often repeatedly to establish rhythm. That's not all that common but all over Frusciante's work, both solo and with the Peppers.

(apologies for losing any non-musicians)

i will take this opportunity to reiterate one of the main themes of this thread: regardless of how you feel about the rest of the band, frusciante is a f'kn brilliant player.

^ Frusciante is an Eno type to me. Absolutely disciplined, eternally in love with the craft, in it for the joy and thrill of creation and that's pretty much it. I love his guitar parts for RHCP *and* his solo career to bits.

Also a fairly big RHCP fan just in general. I always have time for Anthony as a lyricist, at least from One Hot Minute onward. I've been fascinated with his writing style for years (no wait... decades, at this point; three of them) but have never tried to articulate why... he's free-associative in a way that I would normally be impatient with, but in his case, he's clever on a sonic level, he'll write lines no one else would, he won't worry about sounding goofy or dumb. He can align his sort-of nonsense to John's emotional fireworks in strange & cool ways... "I don't wanna fight, I wanna get along with you / This time of night's for singing songs about the local news" ... "Walking on down to the burial ground / It's a very old dance with a merry old sound" ... "Bells around St. Petersburg when I saw you" ... "You try to be a lady, but you're walking like a sauerkraut" ... "Blue, you sit so pretty west of the one / Sparkles light with yellow icing / just a mirror for the sun" ... "I saw you there so unaware, those hummingbirds all in your hair / Elementary sun, but it's so—" ... "Hot as Hades, early eighties" -- not so far-removed from the kinds of lyrical games Eno was playing back on Taking Tiger Mountain, come to look at it. "My, what a good day for a walk outside."

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also absolute brilliance by a passionate musician.

Thanks for the clarification, Austin and Davey D :-)

kinda hate that defector piece. lots of trailing off non-sequiturs that are trying to seem smart but are incoherent or ultimately smarmy. you know who has never tried to seem smart, despite being one of the worst men on earth? anthony kiedis.

also one of the reasons this band is undeniable imo is they have real musical chemistry and you can tell bc when they replace the guitarist the chemistry is weirded out or disrupted. i know this is something *i* keep emphasizing but it’s really key

appreciate the explanations of the chord voicing stuff, that jumped out to me

I should check out more of Frusciante’s stuff. I had the Niandra Lades/T-shirt cd for a while before I realized he was in RHCP. Love that album.

― Cow_Art, Thursday, August 27, 2026 3:26 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

To Record Only Water… remains an unfuckwithable classic. The rest… meh.

― licorice oratorio (baaderonixx), Thursday, August 27, 2026 3:46 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

The Empyrean is his masterpiece, imo.

he could’ve just put out niandra lades and died and it’d be legendary. and that’s what nearly happened

i love all of his records pretty unreservedly except for that electroacoustic drone thing he put out most recently, and even that’s further evidence of how uncompromising he is

i like the post-second-rhcp-departure stuff more than most, world’s still catching up to enclosure

I had Niandra for probably ten years before I realized it was not Nianda Ladies.

giving props to john scofield

as one should, always and everywhere

The "John Frusciante Has 10 Solo Albums wtf?" Poll

i saw this guy play a *very* poorly promoted outdoor solo show in the mid 90s at some community college near LA, after the show he ended up drooling on the ground and drawing pictures with the drool. i can't remember what any of his music sounded like, other than one song was kinda like 1983 (a merman i will be).

― quiet and secretively we will always be together (Steve Shasta), Tuesday, December 15, 2009 12:27 AM (sixteen years ago)

lmao that i ever thought to record only water was uneven, it’s a perfect record and totally original

but catch me weighing in on john frusciante’s solo career on ilx for seventeen years running

'Breaking the Girl' is the only actual RHCP radio song I can stomach, and it just screams Frusicante... there's freaking recorders on there

i like that one too, it sort of sounds like something lennon would've written in 1965

his vocals on the chorus make the song

I found a few of his albums at a charity shop in like 2014 or so, at a time when I would listen to A Sphere in the Heart of Silence a lot. There's a lot to enjoy.

Universally Speaking is probably my fav RHCP song

Basically as a Blur fan the main appeal for me was that his solo discography was this strange underacknowledged analogue to Graham's solo career. Definitely Record Only Water is my favourite.

...and Coxon also uses that root-and-octave-third chord voicing himself, see something like "Coffee and TV".

Coxon is a sublime and criminally underrated guitar player. I'm glad his solo work is getting more attention due to his most recent record and the forthcoming re-issues.

world’s still catching up to enclosure

otm

A Sphere in the Heart of Silence is amazing. I love the whole 2004 river of releases — The Will to Death, DC EP, Curtains...!

Going Inside still slays. Hadn’t listened to it in 20 years. Takes me back

Love Frusciante and have since I was in high school and had already rejected the Peps— or at least Kiedis’ singing and lyrics. I don’t think I can name a worse lyricist, and sorry, “not being embarassed to be goofy or dumb” is not actually a virtue in terms of lyricism.

It CAN be a virtue but with Kiedis it seems lazy.

I'll generally take "unabashedly silly" over "too cautious / self-conscious" if I have to choose one of two extremes. Obviously it's best when a writer can dazzle you with wordplay AND make you laugh AND make you cry, of course it is, but there's not a lot of people who can do *that*.

To me it sounds more like Anthony cultivating a particular aesthetic than mere laziness, because he pays so much attention to the sonics! I take him for a craftsman. The alliteration, the multi-syllable rhyming, the twisty associations... I don't get the sense he has much emotional or experiential insight to share, and that's fine with me; sometimes playfulness is enough.

Yeah, I guess I prefer “scooby doo watchoo doo that juice you got stick to me like glue” to “I love you under the moon in June.” Maybe.

that Defector piece is horribly written

These are legendary rock bands, but—especially in the case of the Dead—it can sometimes be hard to tell what all the fuss is about just by listening to their records. When I lived in the Bay and found myself playing gigs in Santa Cruz, I would ask the old-time Deadheads there if they could explain the appeal to me. The answer was usually some variation of: It wasn’t just the music; it was the whole scene. The magic is to be found not in the music, or not only in the music, but in the social world it opens up.

Black Flag was more of a social-phenomenon band than a scene band. As they rolled through endless lineup changes and jammed econo across the country, they became icons of the DIY sensibility, to be emulated for their resourcefulness and defiance at least as much as for their music. It doesn’t surprise me that Black Flag’s Greg Ginn is himself a fan of the Dead. Both bands came to stand for something larger than themselves. To truly love either band is, in some way, to see yourself as a member of a group of misfits: wooks and hardcore kids, hitchhikers and couch crashers.

Uh this is not understanding Black Flag at all. . . and if Black Flag stand for something larger than themselves, doesn't that make them a social phenomenon band??? (I also think they are like the ulitmate scene band?)

i didn't write that well (lol) sorry but i think the writer is terrible and needs to get Black Flag out of his mouth

What do the Red Hot Chili Peppers stand for? Surely they stand for something. They are a T-shirt band; maybe one of the last. They have proven to boomers that the spirits of Sly and Hendrix live on, shown Gen Xers that white dudes in rock bands could rap and that even the most abrasive artists could dominate the charts with middle-of-the-road ballads, and taught millennials—through Stadium Arcadium, and through Guitar Hero—to rock. Gen Z has at the very least absorbed elements of their music secondhand, mostly by way of John Frusciante. (His solo releases crop up on vibe-based background music playlists not infrequently, and a perverted version of his signature two-note, wide-interval chord voicing has become a central part of contemporary Christian music’s vocabulary—and has entered the world of Nashville country through the megachurch back door.) They have sold a lot of albums, and they have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, whatever that is worth these days.

What do the Red Hot Chili Peppers stand for? Well surely by the end of this paragraph the writer will tell us. . .

They stand for punnany at the hootenanny.

put that on the marquee of your soul