Red Hot Chili Peppers - Red Hot Chili Peppers
|
List Price: Our Price: $4.53 You Save: $5.40 (54%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Music CD See more new music releases 
|
|---|
Buy this Music CD at online store in your country
Canadian Music Store
Canadian Music Store
Free Music Notes for Red Hot Chili Peppers
Free Music Review: Funk, Rap, Punk, and Ughhh, All Rolled Into One
Hit: 5 Stars
This is the Chili Peppers first album, and it is a completely different band then what they are today. This music is like a genre in itself. It mixes Funk, Rap, Punk, and Ughhh all into one. It is great for any Chili Pepper fan to know where the band has come from. This album is also great for anyone interested in a new and great type of music. I highly recomend this album to anyone. And any music fan can and will enjoy this unique sampling of great music.Free Music Review: Seriously?
Hit: 5 Stars
All you people who think this album is "ok," well then you don't know what the Chili's are all about. They're are defiantally better at playing Funk/Rock then what they're doing now. But, even if you don't really like this album you have to like Flea's kickass bass lines.Free Music Review: Rock with a Sock on Your... uh.... it starts with a "C"
Hit: 4 Stars
As a thirty-something Gen-X lad, I'm one of the few who has been listening to the Chili Peppers since the mid 1980s. I say this not because I'm one of those insufferable gits who thinks his devotion to a band is more authentic because he was a fan before they became popular. Rather, I mention it to provide the context for my review of this album.
Younger folks who find this album puzzling because it bears no relation to the Chili Peppers they started listening to in the mid to late 90s or even in the 2000s need to understand that this album is not an anomaly or a one-off. It is the essence of what the Chili Peppers sounded like for a decade before today's twenty-somethings started hearing them on the radio and college-bar juke boxes in the 90s. And fortunately for those twenty-somethings, they were not around to witness the unrelentingly bland music scene that obtained in the mid-80s. Even punk had lost its edge by then and morphed into new-wave (Go-Gos turning from punk girls into a mainstream chick-band, Johnny Rotten reverting to John Lydon and fronting PIL, Mick Jones fronting Big Audio Dynamite, etc.). In a radio landscape filled with cheesy synth-pop and poof-haired makeup-wearing metal bands, hearing this and the next three Chili Peppers albums was veritably mind-blowing. Those of us who heard the Chili Peppers in the mid-80s finally understood what our parents felt like when they heard the Beatles or Led Zepplin for the first time.
"Hyperbole," one might be tempted to retort. "If the sound was so fresh, great and mind-blowing, then why did it not achieve the sort of commercial success that the Beatles and Led Zepplin did?" Quite simply, this album was a bit TOO far ahead of its time. Younger folks who complain this album is "dated" don't appreciate how completely ahead of itself this album was nor just how much the sound that was introduced by this album -- and subsequently perfected by the Chili Peppers by the end of the 80s -- influenced the music of the 90s and beyond. (Contemporary acts like Hoobastank and Linkin Park owe a huge debt to the legacy left by the Chili Peppers and many of the Seattle-grunge bands.)
Nonetheless, musical tastes eventually caught up with the Chili Peppers when their 4th album "Mother's Milk" garnered solid commercial success. And in true Chili Peppers' fashion, by the time their sound finally "caught on," they had already turned in a rather different direction. With the 1991 release of "Blood Sugar Sex Magik" the Chili Peppers were again one step ahead of the game and were helping to define future musical tastes, just as they are doing again in this decade and just as they had done in the 80s -- starting with this album.
Is the quality of the music on this album outstanding? Not really, no. It lacks polish, its production quality leaves vast room for improvement (I still have the original CD release -- haven't heard the remastered version yet) and it even falls flat on its face on a couple of tracks. Yet most tracks rock hard with fresh, raw, angst-free energy, and a couple might still fit right in on today's alternative-format radio stations. But most importantly, it's crucial not to lose sight of the context of the dreadfully dull music scene into which this truly groundbreaking yet underrated (at the time) album was thrust. It's also worth keeping in mind that these guys were about 20 years old when this album was recorded, so they weren't exactly the veteran musicians of today's polished and practiced RHCP.
Bottom line: this album is essential for anyone who wishes to understand the Chili Peppers' full body of work and the band's lofty place in musical history.
Free Music Review: Killer debut from a one-of-a-kind group
Hit: 4 Stars
RHCP had been kicking around in various forms for a number of years before getting signed to Capitol records and releasing their debut album in 1984. The band (wisely) decided to select the best 11 songs in their library to record for the new album. The self-titled debut still sounds fresh almost 25 years after it's initial release. For a debut release, the record is surprisingly consistent throughout, much more so than the less-than-stellar followup Freaky Styley which consisted mainly of cover songs and songs that didn't make the cut for this debut release. This album introduces a number of RHCP's unique qualities that would be staples of their music up through the BloodSugarSexMagik era (Kiedis' fast rap delivery over Flea's fast slap/plucking bass). The album proves to be one of group's better 80s efforts, second only to the phenomenal Uplift Mofo Party Plan. Where this album falters in comparison to later works is in the lyrics department-- let's just say Anthony's lyrical writing has much improved since 1984.
True Men Don't Kill Coyotes-- A timeless RHCP classic, wouldn't have been out of place on any of their albums.
Baby Appeal-- Sort of the antithesis of TMDKC, Baby Appeal dates itself as a clear product of the 1980s. Not a bad song by any means, but falls victim to the aforementioned juvenile lyrics, among other things.
Buckle Down-- Great song through and through, Buckle is where the album really takes flight.
Get Up and Jump-- Picks right up where Buckle Down left off, the title of this one pretty much reflects what you'll hear.
Why Don't You Love Me-- A strange song; not an uncommon phenomenon on early RHCP efforts. A fun one. You just have to hear it.
Green Heaven-- ....is where the albums really climaxes. Great lyrics that rival the best Kiedis has ever written, a very environmentally conscious number. Probably my favorite on the album.
Mommy Where's Daddy-- Classify this one next to "Why Don't You Love Me". Nice interlude-like number.
Out in LA-- Back to the meat, another one of the album's finest. An autobiographical number that pretty much outlines RHCP-- both lyrically and musically.
Police Helicopter-- The definition of the classic RHCP sound. Fast, bass-heavy, loud.
You Always Sing the Same-- Probably the weakest track on the album, sounds more like something you'd hear on Freaky Styley. Luckily it's only 10 seconds long.
Grand Pappy Du Plenty-- Actually an interesting instrumental. RHCP instrumentals are always good, but they stopped doing them after Mother's Milk's "Pretty Little Ditty." This one is actually a dark sounding song, much different than the rest of the tunes here.
If you spring for a copy of this record, make sure you grab the 2003 remastered disc. I've owned both that and the original, and the remastered one sounds about 1,000 times better than the original mix. They did a fantastic job-- instruments are loud, in your face, and Kiedis' vocals have never sounded better. The remastered version also offers demo versions of the tracks on the album in addition to the studio cuts, all of which are skippable except the fantastic "What It Is" as the album closer. It fits right in with all the studio tracks and it's a shame it was left off the record.
Free Music Review: Where It All Began
Hit: 4 Stars
It is fair to say the guys were very imature way back when they started and you can hear it in these songs. Anthony even stated in his book that he didn't take his music very seriously at this stage, and nor did the fans take their music very seriously. At the time, they merely entertained high school and college students and didn't care too much for the stardom that would one day await them.
But over the years after releasing more and more records, fans of the band have slowly but surely added this debut effort to their Red Hot Chili Peppers catalogue and I doubt many would be disappointed with it.
While not as good as the albums that would follow it, it does contain a couple of really good tracks (Out in LA, Green Heaven) with solid guitar riffs and a couple of their usual funky sounding tracks (Baby Appeal, Grand Pappy Du Plenty).
Is is mainly Flea and Anthony's album as Hillel and Jack Irons were absent on this album, but Jack Sherman was still a decent guitarist in his own right and will be remembered through a few of these songs.
If you are a keen Chili Peppers fan and haven't gone right back to the beginning yet, now is a good time to buy this album as it contains 5 bonus demos that weren't available on the original release.