{"id":791,"date":"2018-11-25T02:38:00","date_gmt":"2018-11-25T02:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/?p=791"},"modified":"2026-06-25T02:40:54","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T02:40:54","slug":"red-hot-chili-peppers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/?p=791","title":{"rendered":"Red Hot Chili Peppers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

June 2003, Sound Advice Amphitheatre, <\/strong>West Palm Beach, Fla.<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re looking back for years with great albums, 1991 is a pretty good place to stop. Nevermind<\/em>, Gish<\/em>, Out of Time, The Low End Theory, Actung Baby, Ten, Girlfriend, Loveless<\/em> and Metallica\u2019s Black<\/em> album were released, a veritable list of all-time greats, albums defining entire genres.<\/p>\n

Sometimes lost amidst this list is Blood Sugar Sex Magik<\/em>, a tour de force from the Red Hot Chili Peppers which also defined its genre. Rock-rap was not much a thing before the Red Hots turned it into art, and Blood Sugar Sex Magik<\/em> influenced more good (and bad) albums than can be listed. I didn\u2019t think it was possible for the band to make a better album.<\/p>\n

But By the Way<\/em>, RHCP\u2019s 2002 album, came pretty close in my book. It\u2019s a more mature album than BSSM<\/em>, both lyrically and sonically, but has enough bite to be fully a Chili Pepper classic. I listened By the Way<\/em> endlessly, there was something about it which captured my heart.<\/p>\n

So seeing the band on tour was a foregone conclusion. I\u2019m not one for amphitheater shows, they can be impersonal and underwhelming with the wrong band. But with the right band they can be electric \u2014 15,000 people delirious in unison.<\/p>\n

I went with my wife Kristen and we had decent seats, enough to get the power coming from the stage. Amphitheater stages aren\u2019t for every band, but they were built for the Chili Peppers.<\/p>\n

They came out with \u201cBy the Way,\u201d Anthony Kiedis\u2019 familiar voice and Flea\u2019s classic bass setting the tone before Chad Smith\u2019s drums and John Frusciante\u2019s guitar sent the song into overdrive. If you\u2019re looking for a song to best encapsulate the Chili Peppers, \u201cBy the Way\u201d has all the elements \u2014 a building start, a drum-infused rock-rap portion, a bass-laden bridge, and a soaring sing-along chorus. The band followed with \u201cScar Tissue\u201d and \u201cAround the World,\u201d from the band\u2019s excellent Californication<\/em> album, then back to \u201cUniversally Speaking\u201d from By the Way<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The first half of the show was a back-and-forth between the two albums, with a brief interlude that saw Frusciante, on solo guitar in a high-falsetto voice, sing a portion of \u201cMaybe,\u201d a cover from The Chantels. He would later do this with a Funkadelic song, making for an unusual but wholly Chili Peppers\u2019 moment. Blood Sugar Sex Magik<\/em> came through in force in the set\u2019s second half, with \u201cI Could Have Lied\u201d and \u201cBreaking the Girl\u201d warming the audience for \u201cGive It Away\u201d.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s is the pull a great band can have on the audience. It was a hot summer night in West Palm, and as \u201cGive It Away\u201d geared up, Kiedis told everyone in the audience to take off their shirt and wave it like a helicopter over their heads. Everyone did it, happily \u2014 men, women (perhaps some children were there as well). No one cared they were baring themselves to the world. This is what music, done well, can do.<\/p>\n

The four encored with \u201cUnder the Bridge\u201d and \u201cMe & My Friends,\u201d the lone song from the band\u2019s earlier albums (this one from Uplift Mofo Party Plan<\/em>). The selection was apropos \u2014 it really was a night among friends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

June 2003, Sound Advice Amphitheatre, West Palm Beach, Fla. If you\u2019re looking back for years with great albums, 1991 is a pretty good place to stop. Nevermind, Gish, Out of Time, The Low End Theory, Actung Baby, Ten, Girlfriend, Loveless and Metallica\u2019s Black album were released, a veritable list of all-time greats, albums defining entire […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":792,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[85],"class_list":["post-791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-concerts","tag-red-hot-chili-peppers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=791"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":793,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791\/revisions\/793"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}