Day 0898 - Californication

Red Hot Chili Peppers “Californication” (1999) – got it

Another album that I don’t necessarily have to listen to specifically for the list because it’s burned into my memory… but for completism’s sake I gave it another spin.

Following the departure of guitar prodigy John Frusciante, the Chili Peppers tried a couple of different guitarists and carried on with Arik Marshall for their Blood Sugar Sex Magik tour, but when they came to record music, Marshall wasn’t clicking.   They enlisted Jane’s Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro and together made the album “One Hot Minute” which had a much heavier and more layered sound than BSSM.  Personally I love OHM, but fans, some critics, and even the band themselves were less enamoured.  It constantly gets held up as a commercial failure… which is odd as it sold at least a couple of million copies, but I guess that’s not BSSM numbers.

Anyhoo, the partnership with Navarro ended too and the band reunited with Frusciante who had, in the interim released a couple of interesting-to-difficult solo albums and almost destroyed himself with heroin (he had no usable teeth left and his arms were heavily scarred from improper heroin injection).  He managed to clean himself up and switched his obsessive focus from junk back to music.

Which brings us to Californication.  The band reconvened in bass player Flea’s garage and in a really low-key way just started jamming together and coming up with music.

From the opening track “Around the World” it might almost seem like the band were picking up where they left off with a tornado of funk giving way to percussive single-note guitar lines and bouncy bass, but then the melodic chorus with Frusciante’s backing vocals kicks in.   Of course the game had already been given away with lead single “Scar Tissue” that seemed to nicely sum up the band’s journey since BSSM and was a much more melodic direction for the band.  More harmony/backing vocal arrangements from Frusciante and his technique of breaking chords down to 2 or 3 separately plucked clean notes with a bass and treble thing so it's almost mimicking a kick-and-snare rhythm pattern on drums.

I like the album for its simplicity.  The band aren't really looking to play a million miles a minute like they did on Mother's Milk, and Frusciante had not played for a couple of years so was just finding his way back around his instrument.  They explore their new mature melodic side on tracks like "Porcelain", the title track and the lovely acoustic album-closer "Road Trippin" (and singer Anthony Kiedis acquits himself well despite the many criticisms of his singing ability through the years), but they still dip into their funk sound with "Get on top" "I like dirt" and the fun "Purple Stain".  

In subsequent albums Frusciante would become a force to be reckoned with, and would arguably become too controlling in his vision, but here he's back to finding his feet and the four feel like equal partners.

The album isn't perfection.  The band starts to be guilty of "chorus overuse syndrome" repeating hooks on certain songs ad nauseum.   The 'hits' here suffered from radio saturation.  I can't listen to the title track or "Otherside" in isolation any more, though as part of the album as a whole they are still tolerable.

Day 0693 - Blood Sugar Sex Magik

This is a lengthy one because... as I say below, this is a favourite. 


Red Hot Chili Peppers "Blood Sugar Sex Magik" (1991) - got it

I’m a big Chili Pepper’s fan, so here’s some band history.   The Chili Peppers formed, and recorded 3 albums of punky, speedy rap-funk characterised by busy slap-pop bass, minimalist guitar and sex-inspired rhymes, but also exploring elements such as RnB, psychedelic rock and metal.

Original guitarist Hillel Slovak died of a heroin overdose and drummer Jack Irons decided to leave music (though he’d later join Pearl Jam for – arguably – their best albums).

Mainstays Anthony Kiedis and Flea recruited drumming behemoth Chad Smith and teen guitar prodigy John Frusciante and together they released the much heavier “Mother’s Milk” album with wall-to-wall distorted guitar on some tracks, and with each of the players showing off their musical chops.   The band parted company with EMI, and signed to a new label.  They joined forces with young producer Rick Rubin, who had co-founded Def Jam records and was making a name producing rap and metal albums (LL Cool J, Run DMC, Slayer etc.).  He suggested that they rent a house to live and record in, and in that laid-back setting, this collection of tracks was created.

For a time this was my favourite album (in general, not just for the Chili Peppers), until I realised that ‘favourites’ with music are somewhat transitory.  There's over an hour of music across 17 tracks, yet to my tastes, it does not sag at any point.  One of those albums where every other song has been my 'favourite' at some point.

The studio polish that defines the Chili Peppers now was barely starting to show then, which is a good thing.   Where their records now feature tight, compressed polished production; the drums on "give it away" sound like they were recorded in someone's bathroom, and it's fantastic.

Whereas they are now serial offenders for COS (Chorus Overuse Syndrome), on BSSM they would play around a lot more with structures and parts, with lengthy jam sections being injected into songs.   There's something like "Power of Equality" which just keeps going with multiple verses before breaking into a slappy bass outro that eventually winds down to scattered applause.  Even a 'hit' song like "Under the Bridge" has that beautiful opening guitar part... that never pops up again in the rest of the song!

Frusciante would later become somewhat overbearing creatively, but here he is balanced by still finding his place, so provides brilliant playing and ideas but more as a facilitator than as a leader.

The album is diverse, yet has a certain internal logic, helped by the band's MO at that point of having the tracks segue into each other, creating the feeling of an "album" as opposed to just a collection of songs.  The sound is mostly slow, minimalist funk with interplaying parts that don't necessarily ape each other.  There is rock in tracks like "Suck my kiss" and "My lovely man".   There's melodic balladry with songs like "Breaking the girl" and "I could have lied", there's the leisurely psychedelic outro of "Sir Psycho Sexy" and the fun coda of Robert Johnson cover "They're Red Hot", recorded outside at night (you can hear cars driving past in places).

This was lightning in a bottle, and even the Peppers themselves while promoting other albums have often acknowledged that it was special album for them.