Me and My Friends #12 - Consequence and change
What is the least consequential Chili Peppers song?
I don’t mean the worst, or the one with that charted the lowest, or the one that the band have dismissed, or the one that I skip every time it comes on, or the one that fans treat with open derision.
I mean the track that the Chili Peppers put out into the universe, and that the universe did nothing with. The track that could, if possible, be completely forgotten.
That’s not to say it’s a bad song. In fact, it’s bound to be someone’s favourite. But where some are monsters that tear down anything they come across, others are sprites in the woods that leave no trace. This is about a lasting effect.
But before we start, let’s try the inverse - what’s their most important – or consequential – song? The obvious answer is probably Under the Bridge – it’s their biggest track by far, and it’s the one that allowed them to reach the lofty heights they’re at today.
But it could also be Out In L.A. – the first song, the first line of the first chapter, and the thing that kicked them off like a rocket. If they had gotten up at the Rhythm Lounge all those years ago and played something else, even something slightly different, everything would have gone very, very differently.
We could dig further - was it Green Heaven - the first time the band did something more substantial than just a frenetic riff? Was it Behind the Sun - the first time they implemented real melody and real singing into the mix (or was that actually Knock Me Down)?
Was it Higher Ground, because it introduced college radio and the MTV crowd to the band? Was it Scar Tissue, because it was the thing that got them back on their feet after years in the (relative) wilderness?
Flea says it’s Give it Away in this video, which makes sense, in a way. He’s right: it’s probably the track that represents their spirit the best. It’s the song they’ve played the most, and it’s probably their best known song after Under the Bridge – it’s the song they did on The Simpsons and at the Super Bowl, and that must mean something.
Or was it Love Rollercoaster? Because – Just kidding.
I’m not sure there is an answer to this question (unless it’s just Under the Bridge), and I don’t think there’s an answer to the opposite end of the question either. But it’s something that’s been knocking around in my mind for the past couple of weeks, and so I thought I’d present a few answers.
There has to be a criteria, though. I suppose we can automatically rule out any single, and there are a number of beloved tracks, like Don’t Forget Me, that will never be suitable for the list. There are also tracks that have some element of story behind them, even if it’s just a little interesting factoid, and so they’re remembered for some reason, like Omar Rodriguez-Lopez’s solo on Especially in Michigan.
It also can’t be any of the unreleased tracks, such as those performed during the Teatro sessions; the band never intended for them to come out, and so it’d be unfair to consider them as lacking in effect.
Let’s start with their lowest played songs on Spotify.
We run into an immediate problem here, because the EMI era of the catalogue is completely ignored compared to the WB era. A majority of the least-played tracks are the May 1983 demos, and there’s no way these historic (yes… I said historic) recordings should be considered “without consequence”. So I’ll leave those out.
But maybe we also can’t pick songs that have been played live. Once the band have performed them at least once, they’ve entered the atmosphere, in a certain sense. Someone other than the band have witnessed them alive.
But then, of course, we’re only left with B-sides. And perhaps that’s the answer, right there. But it also feels like an easy answer.
Here are the bottom ten most played tracks, excluding the May 1983 demos, excluding songs that have been played live at some point:
- A Certain Someone (285k)
- Mercy Mercy (412k)
- Brave From Afar (417k)
- Open/Close (465k)
- Hanalei (567k)
- The Sunset Sleeps (588k)
- Lately (596k)
- Whatever We Want (597k)
- Victorian Machinery (646k)
- Your Eyes Girl (657k)
I’m loathe to include the I’m Beside You tracks, which the majority of this list is, because they were such a unique addition to the band’s history. 20-odd new tracks, over the course of a year or two, released as singles? What a treat. Alas, they haven’t been played on Spotify all that much, which makes sense.
There’s also the list of tracks that have never been played live:
- The Brothers Cup
- Walkin’ On Down The Road
- Johnny, Kick A Hole In The Sky
- Mellowship Slinky In B Major
- The Righteous and the Wicked
- Apache Rose Peacock
- The Greeting Song
- Tearjerker
- One Hot Minute
- Falling into Grace
- Porcelain
- Midnight
- Tear
- On Mercury
- Slow Cheetah
- Especially In Michigan
- She Looks To Me
- Make You Feel Better
- Animal Bar
- Storm In A Teacup
- We Believe
- Turn It Again
- Death Of A Martian
- The Hunter
There are a number of contenders here – Falling Into Grace, The Hunter – I’d pick Johnny, Kick A Hole In The Sky as mine, but only for personal reasons - I’ve always hated the song, and it was never played live…but am I being biased?
I’m really lost for an answer here, and maybe that’s just as well. Maybe there isn’t an answer. If I had to pick one, I’d probably go with A Certain Someone. Low impact? Yes. Never played live? Yes. No story behind it or fandom effect? Yes. I even did a search for the song’s name on The Chili Source, and there were no results, i.e. it was never mentioned in an interview.
Then again, it was the b-side to Tell Me Baby, in an era when people actually went out and bought CD singles. And a lot of people bought this one. Furthermore, Tree plays on it. Tree!
But maybe that will change. Give it a year, or ten.
What do you think?
I had fun doing those Where Are They Now explorations for Chili Peppers venues in the last letter. Here’s five more, from Europe in 1988 (but not in exact order this time). Are they more likely to keep venues for music open in Europe? Let’s see.
January 31 & February 1, 1988. Mean Fiddler, London, England.
I was almost wrong here. Wikipedia will tell you that The Mean Fiddler (or the Astoria 2 as it was known by that point) was demolished in 2009 to make way for a train station. But that wasn’t the actual “Mean Fiddler” the Chili Peppers played in 1988 - that was the later location.
The original location is closed, but the building is still there. The lower ground is a POUNDLAND now… but at least it’s not a hole in the ground.
February 3, 1988. Markthalle, Hamburg, Germany.
Still kicking.
February 17, 1988. Ancienne Belgique, Brussels, Belgium.
Also still with us.
February 20, 1988. Paradiso, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Still going and bigger than ever.
If the name Paradiso sounds familiar to you, you might recognize it from this classic John Frusciante concert from 2001 (though he played in a back room there, not the same stage the RHCP did).
February 22, 1988. Klub Foot at the Clarendon Hotel, London, England.
The Clarendon was demolished in July 1988, so the Chili Peppers played during the last months it was open.
Where these kids are standing looks like this today:
There are some great photos of the Klub Foot (and the Clarendon Hotel) here.
These are places Hillel played, and so the chance to visit the rooms he blessed is a little more special than just Anthony, Flea, or Jack, right?
Speaking of Anthony, Flea, Jack, and Hillel, I’ve been thinking a lot about their initial demo sessions, recorded in May of 1983. The recording of “Out In L.A.” is probably the best two minutes they ever put to tape, right? I think that’s right.
I’ve “uncovered” some new information about those sessions which isn’t actually new at all. If you go to Wikipedia and really anywhere else on the internet (including this newsletter, and until very recently, my own damn website), you’ll see something like the following:
Except the first demo sessions didn’t happen at Bijou Studios. They happened at Studio 9 Sound Labs, a cheap and not-exactly-cheerful place inside the Hollywood & Western Building. That building has had a very colourful history, and if you’re keeping up with the inevitably disheartening Trump impeachment process, you’ll be interested to hear (maybe) that Rep. Adam Schiff’s offices are in the building now. A far cry from Anthony’s rapping about kangaroos and frogs.
But I digress. That Bijou Studios factoid is sourced from (as far as I can tell) a 1994 biography called True Men Don’t Kill Coyotes. The author, Dave Thompson (completely understandably) confused these May 1983 demos with the session that happened at Bijou in early 1984, with Jack Sherman and Cliff Martinez on guitar and drums. But that line was repeated in the 2004 re-issue of Thompson’s book and the 2004 biography Fornication, which clearly lifted a lot of it’s info from Thompson’s book without doing much original research.
Spit Stix, who happened to engineer and mix the first sessions, mixed and only mixed the second, and so we can understand why this swirling mass of information has become misaligned at a certain point. But this is exactly how it happens; conflation turns to stagnation which turns into misinformation.
But the correct info was out there the whole time: in Scar Tissue, Anthony says:
we rented out three hours of time at a hole-in-the-wall recording studio on Hollywood Boulevard.
Hollywood Boulevard, as in Hollywood and Western.
Flea even says it outright in the Oral/Visual History book:
We had our first demos we had made on Hollywood and Western
I feel bad I let such a big piece of misinformation be spread around. I’ll be more careful in the future. You just need to know where to look....
Here’s a fun little treat. Leandro Cabo made this for me. It’s what the first RHCP gig would have looked like, almost 37 years ago to the day.
That’s the very same stage they would have performed on, in a photo taken the same year, with era-appropriate shots of the band. They weren’t wearing those exact outfits… but it’s pretty close, and it’s probably the closest we’ll get to seeing them on that night. Something fun to think about.
(The original shot is here.)
Have a great month, and a great new year. Here’s hoping 2020 gives us some new RHCP!
H.