Welcome to Dissected, where we disassemble a band’s catalog, a director’s filmography, or some other critical pop-culture collection in the abstract. It’s exact science by way of a few beers. This time, we’re heading to California.
Red Hot Chili Peppers. With nine official studio releases to their name spanning almost three decades — not including their forthcoming release I’m With You due out 8/30 — the band has undergone a gradual evolution from cult following in L.A. clubs to the kind of world-wide fame you secretly resent. From their debut self-titled album in 1984 to their overstuffed 2006 double LP Stadium Arcadium, the band saw its fair share of cliche rock pitfalls: drugs, death, identity crises, maturity, Dave Navarro.
But few bands had as much fun in the machine as the Red Hot Chili Peppers did, which is most assuredly chalked up to the ethos of the two genres RHCP culled from the most: punk and funk — two brothers from another mother. The signature sound of the two together would be their platform upon which they rhapsodized about The Four Tenets: sex, death, drugs, and music with aggro-spitfire raps, stupid amounts of slap bass, the guitar permanently patched through a wah pedal, and the loudest snare drum in rock music.
And often they’d do all this buck-ass naked wearing only cock-socks, so…
-Jeremy D. Larson
Content Director
