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Red Hot Chili Peppers/ August 11, 2006/ Portland, ORAug 14 '06 (Updated Aug 16 '06) Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line The Chili Peppers produce a concert filled with flawless musicianship, but have lost a lot of their anything-goes funk.
I had never been to a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert, which is curious because I wore through several copies of Blood Sugar Sex Magic in my teens, and have since moved on to wear through several John Frusciante albums. When they decided to kick off their tour in the Pacific Northwest, I jumped to buy the rather expensive tickets under the pretense that I would only purchase them if I could get floor admission so I could watch Frusciante play. County Fair or Rose Garden Arena? The Rose Garden, normal home of Portland’s basketball team, was cut in half to accommodate a large crowd, but nothing so large that people in the nosebleed section couldn’t appreciate the music. It was only looking at the crowd that I realized how long the Chili Peppers have been around. Several sets of parents brought their young children, and there were kids there who were my age when I discovered the band in the 90’s. With the exception of a very tall man in a dress, and a silly hat party, no one was a funkified, costumed mess. As I watched people file in, it was as if everyone felt like this concert was the last concert of the summer, but the party had already wound down. The floor seating was not how I expected it. They actually put folding chairs on the floor and there were security harpies making sure everyone got to their seats and stayed there. All of my illusions of a giant crowd of bouncing drunk people were being shattered. I think I saw one person with the early beer; kids had slices of pizza, and a man sold lemonade. Only one lone pot smoker. Was I at the right concert? Portland allows Omar to sleep alone. Mars Volta was the only opener, and they went on exactly at 7:30 pm. In all of the concerts I have ever been to, I have never seen an opening band begin at precisely the time indicated on the ticket. Neither had the rest of Portland apparently, because the seats were not one-third filled as the giant mural of a distorted obese man being hauled away came into focus and the eerie Mexican horn sample started. Mars Volta surrounded the Rose Garden with their ambient, jazz-injected sound. A lot of the music from their current CD, Frances the Mute, contains long tracks divided into smaller sections, and the Mars Volta played through these without stopping. Even in brief pauses, they would only breathe and jump right back into the music. Portland didn’t really know how to deal with this, and even when they played their “mainstream” song, The Widow, it seemed to fall onto deaf ears. The sound quality, even on the floor, was also a bit muffled, making it hard to distinguish when a song ended or started. The guys didn’t seem to notice though; they jammed frequently and Omar’s voice was so loud and strong that it fought though the sound issues to ring out loud and clear throughout the Rose Garden. He danced and spun around like there was no one else in the place. The seat confinement made it harder for Portland to show the guys much love. There was applause when people thought a song had finished, but Omar never paused to say anything to the crowd until he was saying goodbye, so the disconnect was from both sides of the fence. It is unfortunate, because in a different setting I have no reservations that the Mars Volta are a band worth seeing. No socks, but a lot of lights. Once they pulled away the final mural from the Mars Volta, I realized that I had been looking at multiple rows of fluorescent lights, stacked horizontally on each other to form large columns which stretched to the roof of the Rose Garden and extended out over the entire floor area. I thought about them all coming on at once and prepared myself for going blind. Just about a half hour after the Mars Volta exited, the place filled to capacity, and the circular lights that reminded me of spaceships twirled a few times and settled into place and the Rose Garden erupted. Flea came out wearing the strange multi-splattered unitard thing he is wearing in the Tell Me Baby video. In fact, with a fleeting look at some YouTube videos from other concerts, it would seem that John Frusciante is the only one rotating his wardrobe. The stage lighting came on, but was not the blinding come-into-the-light-Carroll-Ann I expected. Four moving screens behind the guys gave those further away a nice revolving close-up of the band members. Here is Flea jumping around! Here is Anthony singing and a distorted blue filter on the camera! Here is Chad looking way too much like Will Ferrell! Here is an obscene close –up of John playing every note! The lighted background was sometimes a video screen and sometimes just nice lighting. From my place on the floor, having the lighting directly overhead immersed me even more into the experience. The Anti-MTV Concert They opened with Can’t Stop and then grooved into Dani California. The crowd on the floor rushed to the stage, and the rest of the arena was on their feet. We wanted to dance, to bounce, to let loose, but the security quickly put us back in our seats. While the entire floor remained standing doing what they could to dance the night away, there was always that feeling of controlled fun, which seemed to contradict my expectations of a Red Hot Chili Pepper concert. The sound was 100% improved from The Mars Volta. They played perfectly, and worked well with each other; just as you would expect from a band who has been together for so many years. The set list very seldom explored Stadium Arcadia past Dani California and Snow. What I really liked, however, was how it seemed tailored for true Chili Pepper fans. They didn’t play Under the Bridge or Californication. If I could sum up the set list in one sentence it would be: Songs you know all the lyrics to, but aren’t sick of hearing on the radio. They played Scar Tissue and Blood Sugar Sex Magic, Fortune Faded and By The Way. One of my highlights was an amazing version of Don't Forget Me. Everyone I was standing with sang right along and tried not to let the security guards with their little flashlights, constantly checking to make sure our feet were not over the aisle line, ruin our good time. Frusciante! Frusciante! Frusciante! While Flea did most of the talking, Anthony Kiedis seemed very low key and mellow- barely moving once he found his place on stage. John was the only one who didn’t stand in a single place all night long, as he would run and play next to Flea or visit the other sides of the stage. He also reminded everyone what a great guitarist he is. Songs from earlier years that were more Flea-dependant were now injected with massive doses of John’s guitar work, so it was like hearing them for the first time. He also sang back-up sometimes better and more loudly than Kiedis, and had two interludes where he sang by himself. While Flea and Chad were given their own moments in the sun, John really stole the show. I was in heaven. --- After an encore which included Give It Away, the Chili Peppers departed and we were out of the Rose Garden just after 11:45. I heard several people exclaim it was the best show from them they had ever seen, but I kept thinking on those great stories I heard from past festivals and earlier, gritty performances in dirty little clubs with huge crowds of people packed together, dancing and signing as one huge mass. Our crowd, despite being a bit constrained, was pumped up for the Peppers, and that energy filled the stadium, but the guys didn't seem to have as much pep. I was thrilled to have been treated to so much Frusciante, but a little sad that I had missed those earlier visceral experiences instead of the happy-but-orderly show we got. I guess this is the Chili Pepper Tour for the whole family. If you catch them on this tour, expect the polished Chili Peppers, and no socks.  |
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