Great Debate - Are The Red Hot Chili Peppers Still Hot?

By Brendan Butler and Michael Fraiman: 2007-03-13 20:43:52

Music fans are an uber-opinionated bunch, and our staff here is no exception. With that, I introduce to you a brand spankin’ new column called “Great Debate,” which will be posted every Tuesday. So what the heck is it? This new platform to flaunt our outspoken ways will see two alternating CB Music writers duke it out over varying topics in 300 words or less. At the end of each article, you’ll be asked the question: Where do you stand? If you like music, then you surely have plenty to say about it. We’re listening. -- Lexi Feinberg, Music Editor.

Are The Red Hot Chili Peppers Still Hot?

Yay!

-- Brendan Butler

Has any band consistently crafted a blend of contemporary, changing rock sounds while maintaining a special funk kinship to the 1970s as well as the Red Hot Chili Peppers have? The answer is, of course, no.

Some people try to label the living legends as something of a one-hit wonder. The main flaw in their analysis is that they can’t decide whether the band’s one hit was “Give It Away,” “Under The Bridge,” “Suck My Kiss,” “Californication,” “Otherside,” “Soul To Squeeze,” “Scar Tissue,” or any of their other great songs from over the years. Sort of makes that argument seem silly, eh?

The 2006 release of Stadium Arcadium shows that there is plenty left in the tank. The Peppers can still hit us with the catchy, radio-consuming anthem “Dani California” and still provide a two-disc album with 28 tracks of solid gold. There isn’t one song on the record that I don’t like.

Just as “Give It Away” made me boogie around my parent’s living room when I was 14, “Hump De Hump” inspired an equal desire to do funky dances around my apartment, but I usually suppress such urges. “Only 18” is full of wild-string bluesy riffs and the booming passion we love so much.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers still sell out lots of concerts, sell millions of CDs and even got some Grammy-love this year. Some would say they’ve come a long way from the band that performed wearing only socks on their jocks, but really, they’re the same guys jamming new music for the simple love of music. Stadium Arcadium is not a product of an old act trying to recapture old magic but rather a group expanding their magic.

Do not let the naysayer fool you; the Red Hot Chili Peppers are definitely still cooking.

Nay!

-- Michael Fraiman

Coachella’s 2007 setlist came out a few weeks ago, and the second-day headliners are the Red Hot Chili Peppers. This is likely because Stadium Arcadium was the highest selling album last year, with over 6 million copies sold.

Or maybe the reason is that the band’s always had a knack for catchy tunes garnering radio attention, or that it attracts such creative music video directors. It’s a matter of publicity—they’re conventional enough for the mainstream populous but genuinely talented enough for the harsher critics.

Now, I like the Chili Peppers. I saw them in concert last September and they put on a really energized show. But their best songs of the night were their classics—“Blood Sugar Sex Magik,” “By The Way,” “Under the Bridge”—and the crowd seemed to know it.

Arcadium is, at best, a good album. It seems to me that it’s another case of merely good recent efforts eliciting overwhelming nostalgia, thus yielding an unwarranted positive response.

The latest “Zelda” video game was (somewhat) recently released: It wasn’t fantastic, but I loved it regardless because it reminded me of playing through “Ocarina of Time” as an awe-struck youth. It seems that unless a new effort is appallingly bad or surprisingly terrific, its commercial success too often depends on the success of the preceding work by whatever artist is in question.

Arcadium has some catchy tunes, though I’d argue only enough for one disc, not two, which is its biggest problem. And though I enjoyed their concert—I’d see them again at Coachella—Arcadium is one of the most overrated albums of 2006, if only because there were far better releases that deserved to sell over 6 million copies worldwide.

But what can you do? The Chili Peppers are on a Red-Hot streak, and I can’t stop them.

Where Do You Stand?

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