Me and My Friends #59 - Preserving Jams
Howdy.
Firstly, I must apologise for this letter being a little tardy - I try to have one out at least once a month - but I am working on my next full length RHCP thing, along with other writing, and my day job, and my actual life, so this newsletter is the thing that might have to fall by the wayside occasionally.
Luckily, this entry was written by the ever-reliable Leni from the RHCP Live Archive.
The other day I was doing some research - when exactly did John start doing his "Tiny Dancer" cover? A quick look on Leni's site and there was its earliest recorded appearance: February 6, 1990. Not only that, there's a link to stream (or download!) a bootleg of that performance right there, and you can hear for yourself that it's a hell of a good one.
What a miracle it is to have something like that in our community.
The rest of this letter is all Leni's words. I hope you enjoy.
See you, well, hopefully soon.
H.
If you’ve been on Twitter lately, you’ve surely heard about all the drama and discourse that has surfaced after Flea quoted a fan asking the band to cut down the jams on stadium shows.
The Chili Peppers have always made it clear that this is a band that loves jamming and excels at doing it. But do fans actually like it? That’s a different issue and we’ll try to get into it eventually.
But first, here’s a selection of truly great jams based on my own personal taste. They’re all fan-titled except for the ones officially released:
November 14, 1999: “Switching It Up”
FilaForum di Assago, Milan, IT
Let’s start with their first outro jam ever, and I have to say it’s quite a unique one. Maybe this was premeditated, maybe not, but they felt like doing something different to end this show: switching instruments. This is the first of only two times the band jammed like this, the latter being a few years later in Venezuela, but unfortunately there’s no recording of that.
At the end, Flea goes on a destruction rampage knocking down Chad drums, his own amps and smashing his bass. I can picture John’s guitar tech stressing out and hoping Flea wouldn’t touch any of his vintage gear. Thankfully, he knew better.
Starting in early 2000, these outro jams became more serious and would remain a staple for many years to come as a way to end most of their shows. Here are three other choices from that era that were officially released:
January 24, 2000: “End of Show Brisbane” (released on the “Californication” CD1 single)
April 5, 2000: “End of Show State College” (released on the “Californication” CD2 single)
September 21, 2000: “End of Show Portland” (released as an extra on the “Off the Map” DVD video release and later on the “By the Way” CD2 single)
January 24, 2001: “Waste No Time”
Estadio José Amalfitani, Buenos Aires, AR
A very loose, experimental psychedelic jam. I love everything about it, Anthony’s great lyrical improvisation, John’s hot guitar sound, Flea’s dark bass tone and Chad locking the groove and keeping it together no matter what. Everything just naturally flows; it gets wild at times but they tame it down again finishing in a kind of melancholic way. The chemistry these guys have on stage is unmatched.
December 31, 2002: “Nothing to Lose”
The Joint at Hard Rock Hotel, Las Vegas, NV
A New Year’s Eve show at a 1,400-capacity venue sounds like a recipe for a great show – and this outro jam completely proves it. Officially released on the “Can’t Stop” CD2 single, the band is firing on all cylinders here, it’s truly an outstanding performance.
I highly suspect this comes from something the band had been working on at some point. Almost nine months later, on September 6, 2003, they did another outro jam with the exact same initial chord progression, although Anthony’s “lyrics” and vocal melody are quite different.
January 31, 2003: “I See You”
Fila Forum di Assago, Milan, IT
Now this is another remarkable outro jam and it’s quite clear at this point that the band was getting really comfortable at jamming onstage.
March 22, 2003: “Saturday Night in Hamburg”
Color Line Arena, Hamburg, DE
You can’t do a list of jams and leave this one out. I’m sure you’ve heard about it at one point, but it’s worth bringing it back. This is the longest outro jam ever performed by the band. Joined by Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Michael Rother, they went on and on for over forty minutes, making this the longest show in their career clocking in at nearly two and a half hours (but we’ll get into show lengths later.)
August 19, 2003: “Tuesday Night in Berlin”
Parkbüne Wuhlheide, Berlin, DE
Another incredible extended outro jam in Germany, this time featuring Ekkehard Ehlers on synths. Fun fact: during the last part when Flea plays trumpet, that’s John taking on the bass duties. This jam was also officially released, this time on the “Fortune Faded” CD2 single, which also features a remix of “Californication” by Ekkehard Ehlers.
July 25, 2004: “Don’t You Ever Leave”
Rock Odyssey Festival, Yokohama, JP
Annexed as an outro to “Throw Away Your Television” for the first time on August 13, 2003 and repeated without exception every time they’d perform the song until John’s last show on August 26, 2007 before his second departure. Unfortunately, it wasn’t brought back on the few times the song was performed during the current tour nor during the Klinghoffer years.
There’s an interesting fact to keep into account here. That first performance of this jam was the first show right after the studio sessions for Greatest Hits took place. Was it a coincidence? I don’t think so. It’s the only structured jam the band has repeatedly performed for a long period of time (124 times, to be exact). If I had to guess, I’d say it was at least initially worked on as its own song during those sessions but probably never finished. Or maybe it’s just something they came up during rehearsals for that tour leg. We’ll probably never know for sure. The following performance happened almost a year later, but it’s my favorite one.
July 2, 2005: “Light and Jazzy”
Silver Bowl Sports Complex, Las Vegas, NV
At encore break during a free show in celebration of Las Vegas 100th anniversary, we see another rare occurrence of John jamming on Flea’s bass while he’s playing some trumpet.
April 14, 2006: “My Boy, My Girl”
Canvas Club, London, UK
A mid-show jam during an exclusive show for five hundred BBC Radio 1 competition winners. Contrary to popular belief, this is not the long lost 38th Stadium Arcadium song (if it even exists). Anthony himself says so at the end of the jam: “that was another one just made up especially for you, tonight”.
June 29, 2006: “Tried To”
Rock Werchter Festival, Werchter, BE
An outro jam that was originally not meant to be. As seen on the handwritten setlist, an encore was initially planned for this festival date but they ended up running out of time, so they kept on jamming until their slot was over.
June 5, 2007: “Acid House Soundcheck”
Tokyo Dome, Tokyo, JP
A little different to the rest in that it wasn't in a proper show, but we’re very lucky to be able to hear this thanks to Japanese bootleggers as they were able to capture the IEM signals from the band’s ear monitors and catch this soundcheck jam in the process, featuring Flea and John with Chad’s drum tech Chris Warren.
Not only this is a nice curiosity, but seven years later John would talk about it in an interview for the Guitar Player magazine:
“I was in Japan for one of our last shows and I was practicing in my room, playing along with all these acid house songs [...] after a while I started getting a feel for it, so when I went to soundcheck I played that way while jamming with Flea and the drum roadie, and it was awesome. But then I got onstage with the band and started playing that way, and spiritually it just could not happen.”
It’s likely you’ve heard this one before with a roadie doing mic-check all over it (and it’s actually pretty funny). I tried my best to remove it using AI instrument separation and mixing the track over again, it’s far from perfect but it’s good enough:
July 1, 2012: “Birth of New Punk-Disco”
Rock Werchter Festival, Werchter, BE
The first shows of the I’m With You tour in late 2011 had little jamming compared to previous years, mainly to the band still getting used to play live on stage with Josh. But things would quickly get rolling and intense jams like this would start appearing:
During this tour, they would also occasionally jam to the basis of what eventually would become “Encore” and “Dreams of a Samurai” on the next record.
September 17, 2017: “Stray Time in the 80’s”
The Meadows Music & Arts Festival, New York City, NY
I want to make clear again that this is a fan title and it originally came from a joke I might have been involved in for a “The Getaway” deluxe edition featuring three extra tracks (the known “Kaly” and “Outer Space,” but unreleased at the time, and a made-up song called “Stray Time”). This jam has nothing to do with it, and I can assure you there’s no song called “Stray Time in the 80’s”. Nevertheless, it’s a great jam!
There are so many more jams I could have added to this list, but this list would never end, so it’s a little showcase from various eras of the band. I’ve spent countless hours developing the RHCP Live Archive, listening to and researching live performances, because that’s what I love the most about this band: the live aspect. And jamming is a big part of that. There are no two shows that are the same, even if they play the same songs, from the initial jam to every guitar solo and little jamming bits and interludes in between.
I also get why some people don’t like the jams and would rather hear 25 songs in a row without interruptions, and their opinion also has a valid justification. This is a very popular band we’re talking about and I really can’t think of any other act, in the same level of popularity, that jams as much as RHCP does. Let’s take a look at how other similar acts have been doing this year on tour:
The Smashing Pumpkins: 21 songs / 2 hours
Foo Fighters: 22 songs / 2 hours
Pearl Jam: 24 songs / 2.5 hours
Guns n’ Roses: 30 songs / 3 hours
Those are all big bands playing large venues and their tickets are in some cases cheaper than the RHCP's. It’s really not about comparing them, but this makes me understand why some people are complaining about the jams. If you’re a regular concert goer and you attend a RHCP show, you’ll notice a difference, as they play between 15-17 songs in 90-100 minutes max. You could argue that age might be a factor for this. But is it really? The guys are looking really healthy and their live showcase is incredibly solid. Their shows have been always leaning on the shorter side, and older artists like Paul McCartney are doing 40 songs per gig. Bruce Springsteen is doing 30 songs a night.
But there’s some key points here: most of these acts have fixed setlists, meaning they play the exact same set every show (maybe changing no more than 1 or 2 songs per night) and they don’t improvise much, if at all. Energy-wise, their show seems to be vastly different too. So, it’s not really a black or white comparison here. Speaking for myself, I absolutely wouldn’t trade the jams for anything else in their set and the videos you’ve seen here make it pretty clear the band wouldn’t either. I also really wouldn’t want to hear the same setlist every night. And they really don’t need to - we can have the best of both worlds! But again, this is a very popular band doing stadium shows, so you know most people in the audience won’t be hardcore fans.
That’s why I believe, the best case scenario here would be to extend the shows just a little bit, maybe up to the 2-hour mark, keeping the jams but playing a few more songs. 20 would be a sweet spot. From what I’ve been reading on socials lately, this seems to be the general consensus and would keep pretty much everyone satisfied. Ultimately, the band has never really cared about what the audience expects from them. They hit the stage and do their own thing like they know how to do it; it’s always been that way and probably always will be. And that’s alright, they don’t owe us shit. I’m absolutely not trying to talk down on the band or their live act. If you’re a bit familiar with me or my work related to them, you know I’m really into the minutia, and love going knee-deep into their music and everything around it. At the end of the day, it’s just for fun, and there’s no need to take this overly seriously. I’m just trying to see this from a neutral point of view.
At the end of the day, when you think about it, we’re incredibly lucky that they’re still touring with their most acclaimed lineup almost forty-one years into their career, taking into account how many times they’ve been really close to calling it quits. And like it or not, they have to be doing something right as the current tour is, by far, their most successful in their career with over 2 million tickets sold and $ 300+ million in revenue. Not only those numbers come solely from their own headlining shows (not counting festivals or special events) but the tour is not over yet – there’s still one last 10-show leg in Latin America starting later this month.
Thank you for reading,
Leandro,