Red Hot Chili Peppers. They are pillars of the community. Icons in a city of icons. They have sponsored community programs that have given the gift of music and more to the people of Los Angeles. They are former students of Fairfax High School. They are die-hard, mother fucking LA Lakers homers! Actors, authors, fathers, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees. You name it! I even heard Flea might be running for mayor. I know! It is not for any of these reasons that I write these words. Those reasons make this harder than it has to be.
The reason is that every single time “Tell Me Baby,” or “Snow (Hey Oh),” come on, I change the radio station as fast as possible and then slap myself for still listening the radio. It’s led to an outright auditory protest in my brain, and it’s bled over into material that I had once considered perfect. So it’s not for being bastions of goodness blood-soaked in sexual innuendo and copious amounts of narcotics, but for the shitty, shitty music of late.
This column is supposed to be about giving one last hurrah to a band that you really loved at one point. And then shooting them dead. It’s what I didn’t make clear enough in my Wu-Tang version of this rant. Who would’ve cried at the end of the Old Yeller if that stupid dog wasn’t truly fucking loved!? But, in the end, though Red Hot Chili Peppers’ music truly spoke to me, made me reevaluate everything, moved me in a way that made me actually feel something, even if for a fleeting moment, well, it’s become a rabies-infested mongrel foaming at the mouth, ready to sink its infected teeth indiscernibly into any exposed nearby flesh. So with that out of the way, I’m going to take Red Hot Chili Peppers for a walk under the bridge downtown. Seems like an appropriate place turned down the heat, and put these former heroes to sleep.
It had to be the late 80s, right? I met this guy who was the son of a friend of my step-dad’s. He was maybe ten years older than me, in his early twenties. To my peach-fuzzed nut sack, dude seemed like the coolest person on the planet. Then again, I was in full-fledged hescher mode: complete with cut-offs jeans, well worn Iron Maiden Eddie shirt, long hair, and an insolent, permanently annoyed face – permanoyed? It’s like permafrost only colder. And I may or may not have had a full-on skull earring dangling from my left ear. I made no qualms about how stupid and pointless I thought everybody and everything was. I must have been a dream to parent. It’s no wonder I only had three friends and we set stuff on fire all the time.
This was about the time I missed my 6th grade culmination because I got caught shoplifting a Whoo-pee cushion, a whirring whistle, and a bunch of candy on our class field trip to Six Flags. I might have had a few issues. Still do.
So, this guy, (I can’t remember his name for the life of me – we’ll call him Dickface because I’m so mature like that!) Dickface, had a flannel shirt tied around his waist, and a Blood Sugar Sex Magik T-shirt on. Why, at the time, these guys seemed like they were cool, I’ll never know. Maybe back then they were. I can imagine him now though trying to rub one out while wishing he could do the Cabbage Patch! He was probably as washed out as his jeans, but to the prepubes me, he embodied a lifestyle that ate, breathed, and shat music. I have always shat for music.
Dickface gives me a cassette after seeing my heavy metal tee. He says to me, “Dude, metal is done. It’s ALL about Red Hot Chili Peppers.” What a fucking retard thing say, right? But as a kid, it was like gospel! It instantly shifted my perspective from power chords riffing the holy hog nuts out my ability to hear certain frequencies, to a more varied range of the rock and roll spectrum. Red Hot Chili Peppers were at the epicenter of that shift.
They did more to extricate me from my a life spent head banging to once spent grooving the funk out! It was, like in some kind of a dream, I watched a baaaaby-faced RHCP fucking murder the Arsenio Hall show with Higher Ground Whoo whoo whoo whoo! It wouldn’t be long before their logos and lyrics took up ample space on my brown paper bag-covered text books.
Soon it was on to all kinds of new music. Bad Religion, Big Drill Car, NOFX. Then, Alice in Chains. Stone Temple Pilots. Jane’s Addiction. Pearl Jam. Nir-fucking-vana! These years musically represented this kind mish-mash of styles dominated by grunge. If hip hop was a girl, or a gun, or whatever the Fuck, then rock during this time was your schizophrenic uncle. Red Hot Chili Peppers’ ascent was during this era.
At the time they were unable to be classified, turkey-bastering songs with Kiedis’ alternating scatty rapping and Morrison-esque wailing, Flea’s epically funked out bass, all kinds of thrashy guitars, and outfits that included tank tops cut-off at the belly button, tube socks dangling on their junk, and stuffed-animal pants! People didn’t know what to call it, but it was funky, and fun, and heartfelt all at the same time.
But like lot of the bands I’ve mentioned, RHCP should have had the decency to phase out. Or at the very least reincarnate i.e. Dave Groehl. Adding Dave Navarro’s indulgent psychedelic rock riffs don’t count! Something tells me there were chances, close calls, and, after 30-odd years of making music, a lot of near-death experiences. Consider this a metaphorical addition to a long list.
I literally can’t stand these guys’ new music. They’ve grown so much as musicians. But “Dani California” makes me want to punch my mom in face. They’ve sold millions of records. But Stadium Arcadium might be the stupidest album title ever. They’ve won Grammies. But the “Hump de Bump” video just makes me profoundly sad for some reason. Their range has widened to include ballads and very real themes of addiction, heartbreak, parenthood, friendship. But RHCP’s new stuff has made me hate “Under the Bridge”. It’s come to that.
Seriously, I changed the radio station when “Under the Bridge” came on. A song that I’ve sung at the top of my fucking lungs, a song that has actually made mantears stream down my soggy beard, a song that is an anthem for a metropolis, and I changed the channel like, eh. It was a reflex. It wasn’t something conscious, but a response to the stimuli of all the annoying saturation. I literally can’t take it anymore. I knew at that moment that it would come to this. I smiled not the remainder of my commute.
Guys, I’ve grown up to your music. My scrote have long since become a garden of luscious curlies. It’s been fun. Believe me it has. But the time has come. It really pains me to do this, but I’m going to have to confiscate your instruments. And then club you to death with them, analogically speaking. Please understand that this offing is parabolic in nature. It’s the story of what needs to happen, of a boy who has come to a point in his life where he’s gotta do what he’s gotta do. Sure you’ve defended us from ravenous wolves. But unfortunately the disease has taken hold. Now, musically speaking, you’re no different. The foam is beginning to form in the corners of your mouths. And so it is with great sorrow, that I cock this mother fucker and handle business.
[cue Chopin’s “Funeral March”]