Off the Record
Folks,
There was a bug at Substack yesterday and I had to manually push the post on Good Charlotte again, even though the dashboard said it was published per schedule. I pushed it late evening EST, so apologies if it caused any confusion.
That outta the way, I’d like to welcome James and Tracey! Thanks for joining and hope you like the newsletter!
Back to the Music
There are times when we deep dive into a band’s discography and times when we just listen to the radio hits and call it a day. It’s a necessary sacrifice to make at times, with the risk that we might sleep on a track that’s making waves. For me, an example of the first scenario is Laura Marling. I’ve followed her career since its inception, bought CDs of her first three studio albums, and managed to hunt down the B-sides. With the Red Hot Chili Peppers (Chili henceforth), I fell into the latter category.
So when a good friend of mine told me to listen to Black Summer off their 2022 album titled Unlimited Love, it was an invitation to revisit Chili with a fresh pair of eyes (and ears).
But let’s start with Californication.
This epic single was released in 2000 and it blew up all over the world. Anthony Kiedis, the lead vocalist, divined on the duality of innocence and sin, of minimalism and gross excess. California was (and still is) a tortured paradise: redwood rainforests, majestic wildlife, and temperate climates mixed with the drugs, sex, and the hedonistic culture of Hollywood.
Psychic spies from China try to steal your mind's elation
And little girls from Sweden dream of silver screen quotation
And if you want these kind of dreams it's Californication
Over the Chili’s long road from the eighties through the nineties, bandmates struggled with drug addiction. Hillel Slovak, one of the founders, passed away from an overdose. Jack Irons left after Slovak’s death, not wishing to see any more of his friends succumb. The Chili’s guitarist, John Frusciante, is a big part of the band’s identity. He joined before the debut of Californication, and his presence had a stabilizing effect on the band and lent it its unique sound.
Cut to 2006’s Stadium Arcadium, and Chili found themselves with another solid win. It went straight to the top of the Billboard and won 5 out of 7 Grammy awards, including one for Best Rock Album. The song that was on everyone’s lips was Dani California. It was a commercial hit no doubt, but that didn’t mean there weren’t detractors who suspected the track was heavily borrowed from artists and songs that are way before my time.
For the readers who are versed in music theory and can play the guitar, I’ll leave YouTuber Pat Finnerty’s take on why this song “stinks”. To Finnerty’s credit, he fully admits the scale of the challenge he’s undertaking and notes that he expects “anthrax in the mailbox” for this take. I liked the song, but hey, this newsletter is about introducing divergent viewpoints. Jump to the 8:15 timestamp.
In 2009, John Frusciante left the band to pursue his solo career and returned a decade later to work on Unlimited Love.