RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS

By the way

CD/LP, Warner Brothers

This is the album that will make the Red Hot Chili Peppers as big as U2 finally (or at least REM), and if I look at it that way, that is a good thing. I still remember, when people responded to the bandname with a hearty “Red hot… what?”. Back then I knew only one other person who knew that band. That was the time of “Uplift Mofo Party Plan” and that is a hell of a long time ago.

The Chili Peppers have turned into a great alternative-radio-act, producing CDs that are chock-full with hitsingles and they have upped the pop-appeal and downed the funk-parts. But that is okay, because it was a natural evolution. I always gave them credit for not making records when they were on heavy drugs. And whatever they say on television or in magazines, the regular schedule of the Chili Peppers is as follows: make a great record, tour the world, build up a heavy drug-habit, go into rehab, repeat. Or have you ever wondered, why it always takes them three years to come up with a new record? Just like the epitome of “Los Angeles rock band” that they are. Maybe the sun and the place does that to people and especially musicians: think of the Stone Temple Pilots or Mother Tongue - Same routine.

The last record “Californication” was also a great one, and listening back to it now, you’ll realise how poppy the band has become. Not to speak of “Blood Sugar Sex Magik” or even older records. Is Flea getting bored with playing his wild-style bass? I don’t think so, he is just getting older and more settled. The same goes for the other band-members. I remember interviews, where they couldn’t even talk straight because their minds were so overrun with ideas and connections and, of course, drugs. Must have been interviews, where they were on the last leg of their tour. Now, these four have really found their connection and have become an impeccable creative unit, pounding out songs and ideas as if there wasn’t anything easier. The new CD proves that. It starts off with a great song, which also the first single: “By the way”. You have seen the video by now. Now, let’s guess which ones will be the next singles to be released: I’d say it could by any or all of the next six songs on this record. Really, they’d all go perfectly into summertime radio. “By the way” was a dangerous choice anyway, with it’s pounding bass-line and high speed verses. But the melody of the refrain is so intriguing that with the second listen latest, this song has cemented itself in your musical memory forever and that exactly the way it is now. That is what you call a perfect pop song.

On the last third of the record, the Chili Peppers move into strange terrain: mexicana and ska, which is awful in some ways, but they always wind up the song perfectly in the refrain, which is pure Red Hot Chili Peppers pop again. “By the way” is one of the few CDs that you can really listen to through for the whole length, because it keeps up its standard for the whole running time (even if it gets a little drawn out in the end). There is not a lot better you can say about a record. And if the mainstream charts get a little dose of good music, such as this, then that is not a bad thing, as well. No reasons, to cry over times gone by with a future like this.

07/2002