Customer Reviews

Red Hot Chili Peppers

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This album is their first, and one of their finest. This is a very different Red Hot Chili Peppers than their present day music, but every bit as good. Twenty years after its release, it holds up powerfully.

If you have never heard "True Men Don't Kill Coyotes," you are missing one of the finest Hollywood/Southern California anthems ever written. Pop? Rap? Rock? I honestly think there is no way to properly classify this song, it's the perfect tune to announce the rival of the Chili Peppers, and pretty much personifies their offbeat charge into the music world.

You can find the abovementioned song on one of their "Best Of" albums, but the rest of the songs on this CD are too good to pass off. The mightiest tracks are 1 through 6, with "Buckle Down" and the overdrive-paced "Get Up and Jump" stealing the show. The diversity of the songs on these first six tracks is impressive.

The Chili Peppers were such a rush of fresh air when they hit the scene in 1984. I remember a plethora of heavy metal and new wave all over the airwaves & record stores; some good, lots bad. No new group, however, crashed the music scene that year quite like The Red Hot Chili Peppers. Pick up this CD and compare it to the playlists of the mid 1980s, and I bet the sheer contrast will show you what a cutting edge band The Red Hot Chili Peppers were when they hit the scene.

Give this album a chance, and I think you will find that the Red Hot Chili Peppers didn't get better with time: they started out great, and since then have tinkered with their musical style, all the while keeping their unmistakable Funky spirits in full force. Yes, The Red Hots still have "Baby Appeal!"

This record is great considering that it was (orginally) released (almost) 20 years before today when the radio waves are cursed by these ultra corporate/unoriginal rap/metal bands (my local alt/hard rock station actually played songs from this bands original four albums, now all they play is junk like "P.O.D.(posers obviously darnit)".
But this little underatted gem is 95% excelent(I'm not too hot with the simplistic"Police helicopter"). The top tracks in my mind would be "Green Heaven", with the best bass/guitar riff I've ever heard. The fast paced "Out In L.A." The chilling instrumental "Grand pappy du plenty." "Baby appeal" which could have easily made it on Freaky Styley, and "Buckle down", which I like for no reason That I can currently think of.
If that was not enough, if you buy the remaster(which you probably will end up with anyway, since it's easier to find) you get 5 demos added as Bonus tracks. Which range from the "Get up and jump" demo which is so off it's hilarious. To the "Green heaven" demo, which I think is better, with the exception of the scratchy beggining( But it's cool, and somewhat eerie how the bass line slowly fades in at the end of it). It also includes the demo for "What it is" from Out In L.A.(the album, not the song) Which consists of lyrical bits from songs like "Green Heaven", And "The Brothers Cup"(off Freaky Styley). The remaster also has better sound quality (obviously).
So to wrap things up, I would have to say that although it is not thier best, it is by far not thier worst ( it is still better than One Hot Minute, and it is much better than thier last release. So buy it, and enjoy.
HOP OUT!

When I heard this album I was'nt suprised at all that the Chili Peppers started out so good and still remain the funkiest rock around. Songs like "Get up and Jump" will just want to make you...well, get up and jump. I certainly recomend it to a Red Hot Chili Peppers fan--

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.

Honestly this is really a good album. I think it just gets fewer stars when compared to their other albums. Truth be known I like their 80's material alot more than their 90's stuff, but of the first four albums, this is the weakest. Despite that, still some typical and killer tracks. "True Men Don't Kill Coyotes" is classic. "Get Up And Jump" is also aggressive and fun, as is "Green Heaven". The slower, maybe groovier moments come with "Why Don't You Love Me" and "Mommy Where's Daddy", both easy to like. The demos are decent, but the remastering is the bigger plus. Overall it's no "Uplift Mofo Party Plan", but it's a start.

I don't mind this album, I don't hate it, I mean it's weird to hear how the Chili Peppers started. I wish that they had Jack Irons and Hillel with them during recording, that would've added a hard intensity, but oh well, we still have some solid tracks, all funky, all punk, it's really good pump up music but I wouldn't reccomend it to people who are just getting into the Peppers with "One hot minute" and "By the way" I started with Mother's milk so going back to the original punk rock lineup was easy for me, I was used to it. I give this album 3 stars, but the remaster gets 4 stars due to the bonus tracks featuring the original lineup, you can see how much tighter and more full of energy than the lineup on the actual album, not a bad debut, but the Chili peppers got their "funky" sound with "Freaky Styley" definately. Like I said, think before you buy, overall I'm not too disappointed.

Yea, this album didn't sell as good as the later releases, but really its no surprise. After all, the Red Hot Chili Peppers are the pioneers of funk in the modern world. were and always will be. People should buy this album (its a good one, by the way) just to recognize the new music stylings that were created by 4 guys true to their style, who didn't and will not (still don't and won't)sell out to the masses of the 1980's. This is unique and could only bring recognition to the chili's.

I find it interesting that many of the negative reviews of this album come from listeners under 20 or so. They're comparing it to the last 2-3 albums put out (Hot Minute, Califormication,and whatever the New Bland Album is called). I suppose it's hard for them to appreciate the album in the context of the music that was being made at the time. Remember, this was released in 1984, not 1994. Or 2002.
RHCP were a fairly unique band at that time. Now, almost 20 years later, the radio is overwhelmed with "alternative" rap/metal/ska/pseudo-punk bands like Blinktown. Or Crazy-182. Gee, how cutting edge. Kindof like tatoos and piercings - when every idiot out there is doing it, it's not exactly 'rebelious' anymore.

Anyway, while this isn't the RedHot's best, I would put it far above the last 3 put out. Basically, I think they hit their pinnicle when BSSM came out in 1991. I remember going to a couple of shows that year and and seeing the same idiots in the audience that used to wear Slayer and Poison t-shirts. I thought, well, it's gone mainstream. It's over. And it was, for me.

Well the 80's were reaching their middle and both the R&B and rock world were kind of all over the place. Over production of all sorts were permeating just about everything over the concept of good quality production,which is very different and harder than over doing it. Some people wanted to sound like everybody else and it's gotton even more ridiculous over the years to the point where all creativity seems to have been sucked out of the process of music making. Well either way you look at it the Red Hot Chili Peppers emmerged in 1984 seemingly out of nowhere with a sound and a personality that would at first shock and several albums later grab the attention of the pop music world. But in terms of their sound their was absolutely no doubt where the music came from at all.

Somewhere roughly in the vein of what Talking Heads,Frank Zappa,later Clash and Gang Of Four were doing at the time the Chili Peppers were clearly off and running as a funk-rock band but one of the ones more heavily rooted in funk. As another reviewer pointed out this music probably does merrit it's own seperate genre,much as Miles Davis' On the Corner but the band definately had a concept in mind. The music is something that understands the technical complication involved in funk itself-everything from the rhythm guitars and Flea's playful,bouncy basslines on tunes such as "True Men Don't Kill Coyotes","Baby Appeal","Buckle Down",'Get Up And Jump" and "Out In LA"....well the entire album really:it's very consistant I'll give it that,all have their basis in emphasizing the rhythm and showing an understanding of the use of guitar and horn accents in funk in a way few in rock had since the days of Funkadelic. So it was truely wonderful to see a band showing great respect to funk in terms of it revitalizing rock and roll at the time.

Two of the finest tunes here are the very psychedelic funk groove of "Green Heaven",kind of an imaginary tale of a retro counter culture fantasy about living communally with a school of dolphins and the strutting,blacksploitation styled "Mommy Where's Daddy",an obviously P-Funk inspired number that probably helped attract the attention of George Clinton who'd produce their next album. The bonus tracks are all demos which,except for "What It Is" are all featured in different versions on the album but are very illustrative in terms of the bands musical process. You hear how valuable and actually very slick the production on the early albums were,as well as what wonderful musicians they are even when the production is elminated. This is as great and highly funky a debut as just about anyone could ask and also one of the most individual. Highly recommended to anyone who thinks music since the 80's has lost all it's energy,joy and enthusiasm.

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.