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66 of 74 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Essential For Newcomers To The Red Hot Chili Peppers, June 20, 2004
Since I bought their 2002 album "By The Way," the Red Hot Chili Peppers have gone on to become one of my all-time favourite bands. Since then I have bought "Californication," "One Hot Minute," "Blood Sugar Sex Magik," "Mother's Milk" and this latest release, "Greatest Hits." At some point I plan on buying their entire back catalogue of albums, because to me they are so much more than just your typical rock band. Music is their lives and you can definitely tell on the songs they put out - the sheer funk, the brash and out-there vocals and the odd lyrics make them stand out from the crowd. They're also one of the biggest selling groups in history and fame doesn't seem to have affected them. Anthony Kiedis is pretty much a rock icon and deservedly so. He isn't the only talent on show though.
You have the fantastic Flea, John Frusciante and Chad Smith. These four men are all different in their ways and possess beautiful musical qualities. Flea says that their backgrounds are from four completely different corners of the globe, and when they come together and make this music, it just click and feels right. Now some fans might say that the Chilis messed up in releasing this greatest hits album in the fall of 2003, but I think it was a wise move to allow newcomers to their music to round up on the past decade. True, the album focuses mainly on material from albums such as Californication and BSSM, but this is no bad thing.
The album opens with two really fantastic songs, both from the same album. The first is "Under The Bridge," and is definitely the song that made the Chilis real stars, allowing them to appeal to a mass worldwide audience. The second is "Give It Away," the funk-laden rocker that became a true anthem. We're then brought up to the relative present with two cuts from 1999 - "Californication" is one of the band's greatest songs ever and has a stunning video to accompany it. The guitars and the vocals along with the lyrics just click and they completely nail it. Classic song. The second is "Scar Tissue" which is a much more laid-back, chilled out song. The guitar on this song is most memorable because it's just so beautiful. You really could listen to this song for many decades to come, and I'm sure I will be. "Soul To Squeeze" is another fantastic song, but I'm not sure which album it was taken from as it's not on any of the studio albums that I own by the group. The guitar is very evocative on this song and the chorus is very melancholy. Just relax and chill.
"Otherside" is a heartbreaking song taken from the Californication album and another highlight from their career. I wish "Get On Top" was on this album, even thought it wasn't released as a single because sometimes I feel that it's a song that everyone in the world should hear. It's just too good to pass by! "Suck My Kiss" is taken from the BSSM album and became a big funky classic. With its brash guitars and drums, along with Kiedis' suggestive lyrical content, it's a true anthem from the Chili camp. "By The Way" follows up and was the lead single from the 2002 album of the same name. The song was a massive hit all over the world, and rightly so. It saw the band mellowing a little bit, but with some rocking sections inbetween the choruses. "Parallel Universe" is an almost sneaky song that gradually creeps in on you, like as if you're sleeping. The guitar is very fast-paced and it instantly became one of my favourites from the Californication album when I first heard it.
"Breaking The Girl" from the BSSM album is a very outrageous song with loud-vocal verses and a very harmonised chorus that really stands out as a Chili Peppers classic. "My Friends" is another really brilliant song and the only cut to feature here from the underrated 1995 album One Hot Minute. "Higher Ground" is taken from 1989's Mother's Milk and the only song here to feature so. It's an average song, and shows the band in early development stages. The promise and spark is there, but it would take following albums to tune their craft well enough. "Universally Speaking" from the By The Way album is the only song I feel shouldn't be on this album, because it's just too poppy. It's a good song, but "The Zephyr Song" or "Can't Stop" would have been more appropriate. "Road Trippin'" closed the Californication album in fine style with its ambiguous and ominous style and works well here, before the two new songs play...
OVERALL GRADE: 8/10
The first of the new songs is the beautiful "Fortune Faded" which sounds a bit like it should have been on the By The Way album. The guitar stands out here very well as does the chorus. This is followed by "Save The Population," the latest song from the band which isn't as good as its predecessor, but still worthy on a compilation by perhaps the most consistent rock band of the past 20 years. What you have on offer here is just a brief selection of some of the Chili Peppers greatest - and definitely most popular - music recorded. To compile all the greatest music from the band would take something like a double disc or perhaps even a triple box set. Since that isn't going to happen any time soon, you'll have to settle for this. Enjoy.
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30 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Does its job admirably., September 30, 2005
Reviewing a compilation is a difficult thing for a fan-- really you have to look at it from a different perspective than you normally would-- does this serve the purpose it's trying to serve? And as a first entry point for a casual listener, is it going to provide a good introduction to the act? It seems that compilations have a habit, regardless of their original intent, of being the first thing people look for. And finally, you have to get past personal preferences on track selection-- everyone has their favorites, but does what is on here serve the purpose it needs to?
So the Red Hot Chili Peppers released an album titled "Greatest Hits", and long and short that's about what this is. It restricts itself to the John Frusciante-era (most likely because any earlier Chili Peppers material, including the piece off of "Mother's Milk" included here, would have had to have been licensed, but also because none of the early stuff saw any real commercial success), and yeah, it provides a good overview of that time in the band's career, it covers pretty much all the hits, so it does what's trying, and it'd serve as a good entry point for a casual listener.
The record leans heavily on "Blood Sugar Sex Magick" and "Californication", with all of the singles from both albums-- "Suck My Kiss", "Give It Away", "Breaking the Girl", and "Under the Bridge" from "Blood Sugar..." as well as recorded-around-the-same-time soundtrack hit (and as a sidenote seemingly endlessly played on radio when I was a junior in high school) "Soul To Squeeze" and "Scar Tissue", "Parallel Universe", "Otherside", "Californication" and "Road Trippin'" from "Californication". This is further augmented by one track from "Mother's Milk" (Stevie Wonder cover "Higher Ground"), one from "One Hot Minute" with Dave Navarro on guitar ("My Friends"), two from "By the Way" (the title track and "Universally Speaking", which did quite well in Europe as I understand it) as well as two new songs.
This is a pretty fair represenation of the band-- it covers pretty much the breadth of the sound they've explored over the past few years-- from the deeply funky ("Higher Ground") to balladry ("Under the Bridge") and quite a bit in between. Just about all the hits are on here-- curiously left off were "The Zephyr Song" and "Can't Stop" from "By the Way" and "Warped" and "Aeroplane" from "One Hot Minute". All of these received substantial airplay, and with the compilation only stretching to 66 minutes, there's certainly room to put them on. Again, I'm not one to argue my favorite album cuts, but it seems odd that these were left off (although oddly enough the companion video disc on the CD/DVD edition includes the videos for all of these but "Warped").
The two new tracks are both pretty good-- "Fortune Faded" has a funky beat like we really didn't see on "By the Way" (not necessarily a bad thing) and a suitably esoteric lyric. "Save the Population" is a bit moodier, and actually of the two the one I prefer, with an odd, sort of mid-tempo muddling (but a superb beat from Chad Smith) and all in all just a kind of wacky piece.
One other point to be made-- the album sounds fantastic-- particularly the "Blood Sugar Sex Magick" material, which really could benefit from a remastering. The liner notes include brief essays (well, some not so brief) from each of the four band members and a number of photos.
All in all, it's a great compilation, and no doubt a good entry point for a newcomer. I'd usually recommend seeking the albums out rather than going after a compilation, in that case I'd recommend "By the Way", which wasn't overflowing with hits, but in my assessment was the best record the band did, but this is certainly as good a place to start.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
SO MANY GOOD SONGS!, February 8, 2004
By A Customer
If there is a song on this cd you haven't heard, you really can't consider yourself a true Chili Peppers Fan. Although missing some of their best work in my opinion, i.e. Aeroplane, Love Rollercoaster, Can't Stop etc. it also has a myriad of awesome stuff. Californication? You bet. Give it Away? Yep. Under the Bridge? Its on there. This cd also sports By the Way, My Friends, Breaking the Girl, Suck My Kiss, and Otherside, some of my other favorites. If you dont like those songs (which should be a crime) then theres plenty more good stuff in here as well. You'll never get tired of this cd. Its one of those gems you can just pop in your cd player and listen to over and over again. So definetly pick this one up.
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