The Red Hot Chili Peppers Essay

Introduction

For many music specialists and several generations of alternative rock fans, California-based band Red Hot Chili Peppers constitutes what alternative music has to be: original, impulsive, rhythmic, endless, and ultimately creative. Although the band started its music activity back in 1983, the real success came to musicians in 1991 with the release of famous Blood Sugar Sex Magik album. The Red Hot Chili Peppers Blood Sugar Sex Magik was recorded in an old mansion in Laurel Canyon outside of Los Angeles. Most of the band stayed together in the house during recording, literally living with the project. All the members agreed it was the best recording experience they had ever had, avoiding what Anthony Kiedis calls the impersonal, anal-retentive, tight-ass quality that studios have (Bonzai, 104). Bassist Flea recalls that the casual atmosphere was stimulating for our creativity.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

The Red Hot Chili Peppers Analysis

Drummer Chad Smith, the only band member who did not sleep at the house, summarizes the general feeling among the group, including producer Rick Rubin and engineer Brendan OBrien: It was so relaxed, as opposed to the atmosphere of most recording studios. It gave the music real character. And we could record anywhere in the house. You dont need an exactomundo environment. A room and mics, and you make the noise (Bonzai, 105).

Comparing to other alternative groups during that time, like Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots, and later Soundgarden, songs composed and performed by the Red Hot Chili Peppers have been always different in terms of music, rhythm and performance capacity. Equally for music experts and rock fans it was evident that every single piece in bands album has been marked with creativity, passion, and hard work. In the case of the Red Hot Chili Peppers Blood Sugar Sex Magik, seven months were spent working on the material, because in producer Rick Rubins view, the process of getting the music onto tape is very simple, but getting the music to the point where its even ready to be recorded is very tough (Blair, 148).

According to lead singer Anthony Kiedis, much of this time was spent just soaking up life, creating music before we ever got into the studio (Blair, 148). The process succeeded in heightening the band members sensitivity to one another musically, allowing them to develop a fluid musical conversation. Bassist Flea extends the communication metaphor to the psychic level. By the time we made this record, he says, we had an intense telepathic thing going musically.

Because the Chili Peppers interactive performances are so integral to the material indeed, all band members are credited equally as songwriters on all tracks honing their musical communication was a crucial aspect of pre-production. In a sequential and cumulative approach where jamming, songwriting, arranging, and rehearsal were stages that occurred prior to recording, the songs and arrangements developed in terms of their live representations, the sound of which became a point of reference throughout the process of making the record. When I hear [this record], says Flea, I get a picture of a hand hitting a guitar, a string vibrating. This is four guys playing music (Bonzai, 104).

Another notable feature of the Red Hot Chili Peppers is an ability to unite with their listeners. At the beginning of their Under the Bridge, a track on Blood Sugar Sex Magik, both guitarist John Frusciante and singer Anthony Kiedis seem to be standing in the same room as the listener. Rather than drawing the listener into the record, they seem to come forth from the loudspeakers, entering the listeners personal space. The singer demands an intimate hearing. Is he here to share a secret? Will we have to get involved? The song turns out to be a confession of loneliness, and ultimately, a haunted memory of the singers mortal confrontation with drug addiction. The lack of ambient distance gives the track a gritty, vrit quality that lends a stark edge to the confessional tale.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers repeat their astonishing success after Blood Sugar Sex Magik in 1998 with the release of Californication. Unlike all the previous albums, Californication still containing drive, impulse and Peppers unique rhythm and melody is socially oriented. In this album for instance, the Red Hot Chili Peppers are expressing their views on the deterioration of American society from pregnant teenagers to plastic surgery.

Conclusion

They raise the problems of authenticity, and point to the facts that American music industry, which is supposed to be are, have degraded more than ever. Finally, as the Red Hot Chili Pepper portray in song, America realizes that Hollywood sells californication and this reality becomes inevitable as Kiedis sings, and title waves couldnt save the world from californication.

Bibliography

Iain Blair, Rick Rubin: Forever Def, Mix, January, 1992

Mr. Bonzai, Red Hot Chili Peppers: Some Like It Hotter, Mix, October 1991