Thoughts on the Red Hot Chili Peppers and ‘Stadium Arcadium’

For those who have never even heard of or don’t know much about RHCP, as a decent fan of the Chili Peppers I feel it is my responsibility to briefly educate the masses about this great band. Since these are my thoughts on RHCP I will let this post comprise of precisely those and won’t bother with statistical data like year of formation of the band and their albums and their order of releases and things like that. I don’t think such information holds any true interest to most people and moreover it is easily available for those who care.

To begin with, RHCP stands for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Now before we go on please take a moment and note that the word ‘Chili’ is spelt with only one l and not two. So it’s ‘Chili’ and not ‘Chilli’...ok? Good. In case you do make that mistake anywhere please don’t tell anyone that you learnt about RHCP from my blog :P
The Chili peppers are (were?) essentially a funk-rock band. In more than one interview that I’ve seen of them I’ve heard ‘George Clinton’ being mentioned as one of their major influences. So if you’ve heard George Clinton’s music and not RHCP’s my educated guess is you’ll find them to be similar.
The current line up consists of...
-->Anthony Kiedis: He is the lead vocals of RHCP and has been with the band since its inception. I don’t really have anything to say about his singing except that I think it’s pretty good. :)
-->Michael Balzary, better known as Flea: In my opinion he is the best bassist in the world. The bass is most bands’ music is mostly drowned out and doesn’t really add to the feel of the song. On the other hand almost every Chili Peppers song has Flea’s unmistakable, distinctly noticeable trademark sound and many a time Flea does his own bass leads and standalone grooves during concerts. I also think he is the craziest of all the band members. He is always jumping around the most and he performed Woodstock’99 completely naked for the entire show!!!!
-->John Frusciante: The greatest guitarist in the world. Yes I really think he is the greatest guitarist in action today. (Again yes...I think he is better than Hetfield too...but then again they have different styles and this discussion as always will be open-ended). Frusciante is a genius of a musician who can play the most melodious of tunes with as little notes as possible and also the funkiest of riffs. However, I am convinced that his melody prowess is greater than his funk-maestro! RHCP originally had a guitarist called Hillel Slovak and during that time John Frusciante was a very very big fan of RHCP and followed them everywhere while learning all their songs. When Slovak died of a drug overdose, Frusciante was asked to fill his shoes and was more than delighted to do so.
-->Chad Smith: RHCP’s drummer and one of my favourites. He is one of the few drummers who I feel can make very good music with as simple a kit as possible. His drumming style has a distinctive sound and style to it and definitely adds to the RHCP sound.

One thing that I really like about the band is their concerts. They are always jumping around, having fun, improvising their music all the time and jamming around quite often. It’s always fun to watch an RHCP concert. I can only imagine how will I feel when I am in one!

So anyway that’s the band in brief for you.

After being successful for a while they had taken some time out and have now released a 2 disc album called ‘Stadium Arcadium’. It has a total of 28 songs. 14 on one CD called ‘Jupiter’ and 14 on another called ‘Mars’ (some astrology funda behind it). I bought it and listened to the whole album. I am still in the process of digesting all the songs but as of now I have a pretty solid first impression.

I have mixed feelings towards Stadium Arcadium.
I absolutely love most of the songs on the album. But at the same time I couldn’t avoid feeling a little disappointed. Let me try and explain why!

As I have mentioned in a couple of posts about RHCP before, the band has two distinct styles of music. One ‘Funky’ style with songs like ‘Give it away’, ‘Walkabout’, ‘If u have to ask’ etc. and one (for ease of reference, lets call this) ‘Ballad’ (a word I've seen someone else use) style with songs like ‘Under the bridge’, ‘My friends’, ‘Soul to squeeze’ etc. When you listen to these songs, it is almost unbelievable that the same band is making these different styles of music because everything from the vocals to the guitar playing is different.

The first few albums of RHCP were hard-core funk.
Then gradually the albums started incorporating the slow, nice melodious style of songs. It worked perfectly. A perfect balance of funky songs that you could get up and jump to when u felt like it OR relax, lay back and enjoy the other beautiful melodious sounds. I think ‘Californication’ was the best in this category.
Ballads were slowly becoming a big part of RHCP’s music.

And now we have Stadium Arcadium. A double disc album with some of the best songs Ive heard.
Except there's just not enough funk!
It turned out to be a ballad overdose!
That’s where I was disappointed.

I look at the back of the CD at the song listing and I can’t think one funky song which can hold water. Make no mistake...the songs that are there are very good. The music is perfect. The songs are perfect. But they are all...NICE. Turns out RHCP being just nice leaves me unhappy!
Flea’s funky bass sound is missing in most of the songs.
The few songs that start off with funky riffs and vocals immediately mellow down when they reach the bridge or the chorus!
Anthony’s funky voice is conspicuously missing!
Almost as if, they came up with the funky sound only cuz they were expected to and had to but at the slightest opportunity they jump right back into being mellow!


As I was listening to the album I progressively went from thinking...
“Wow...that was such nice melodious lead...that’s a good song.”
.......to......
"Another awesome song...RHCP rocks...but its been a while since something’s come up that makes me want to jump...maybe it'll come in the 2nd CD”
.......to.....
“Sonofagun...enough of this melody already...I want to shout something like GIVEITAWAY GIVEITAWAY GIVEITAWAY NOW...when will that happen?”


Ultimately, I ended up a little disappointed.

But of course this means nothing...like I said I do like the album anyway and will keep listening to it.
If I come up with anything more OR if I find that I missed something I will let you all know.
I don’t want to point out some of the good songs cuz then itll only raise your expectations and we all know what happens then! :)
All I am saying is do buy the album and listen. Who knows...if you don’t care about things like blood, sugar, sex and magik you might have no difficulty in loving this! :P

Until later...

(Music of ‘Suck my Kiss’ in the background fading away)