But this album, back in the BloodSugar house, this is thought to be a return to that driving, blazing, slamming funk. They all insisted that out of 28 tracks, they couldn’t imagine this album without any one of them. Frusciante went so far as to speculate, what if a kid hears one of these songs, and it stops him from killing himself? How could you leave off any of these songs that could do that?
He also waxes at considerable length about Mars and Jupiter, as he’s gotten into astrology of late and believes that Mars is the source of our aggression and hostility, and Jupiter is intelligence. What’s more curious are the burn scars that cover his left arm. He jokes about having removed a girlfriend’s tattoo on his right forearm–you wonder what relationships could have been on his left?
Their new songs sound halfway between the older hard stuff and the poppy moans Kiedis had devolved into. The torrent of bass from Flea’s side is still the wave their music surfs on. They do one take of each song, uncommon for production crews to settle for, but its apparent no one really wants to hassle them for more. And after the joking, riffing, and teasing subside in their sit-down interview, Chad simply stands up and pulls off his mike, while everyone watches and realizes how big he is when he’s not behind his drum kit and that they have no interest in trying to get him to sit back down and blab some more about shallow shit.
For one of the biggest selling bands in the world, the Peppers could be a lot less hospitable. There’s an unspoken understanding that they’re going to show up, deliver a performance and some face time joking around, and then it’s done when they’re done.
Yet their shrewdness in becoming one of the best selling bands in the world is apparent in their even doing this shtick — some house party performance for multiple crews, coordinated in the media to the second like a bombing campaign, so that I got back in my car from the shoot to hear KROQ raving about their new album and launching into some of their recent emo hits. Whereas too many artists treat camera crews like adversaries and a subservient audience, the Peppers are clearly used to delivering their circus act with a circus-like tour schedule.
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