Two old bastards reassess the Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Blood Sugar Sex Magik"

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karlyy7x

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meh, I disagree. Album's a beast. Maybe it's just nostalgia... but 'Breaking the Girl', I can lucidly say without a hint of sarcasm is one of, if not the, best songs they ever wrote. It prefigures the whole Californication sound in a way, but doesn't. Sure it's stupid hippy monkey sex music but when I hear the album I can't say much against the music itself, and the production is immense.

OMG... you called 'righteous and the wicked' filler!? Lies make baby Jesus cry, Janszoon.
 
i'm still fighting off the flu but i'll what i can do this weekend. gonna try to burn out the sickness with some fireball tomorrow haha
 
RHCP-BSSM.jpg


Red Hot Chili Peppers—Blood Sugar Sex Magik (1991)

For some reason I have this recurring theme on MB where I keep finding myself in conversations about the album Blood Sugar Sex Magik by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I don't know why I do this exactly since I've never been a fan of this album. But anyway during the most recent one of these discussions I started thinking, you know I haven't listened to this album in at least fifteen years and don't really know it all that well, maybe I should give it another chance, after all my tastes have changed a hell of a lot since it came out. So last night that's what I did, I downloaded the album and listened to it straight through, trying to keep an open mind about it. I'll save you the suspense and let you know right now that it didn't win me over but it was a fun experiment and I did find some gems along the way. Everything between the first and last paragraphs of this review is basically just my reactions as I listened to the album, it's not intended very seriously but hopefully it's somewhat entertaining. Here's what I wrote as I listened, cleaned up just a bit to be more readable:

The album starts off strong. "Power of Equality" is a pretty good song that could have worked well on Mother's Milk. I'm digging it. Unfortunately after that things immediately get very disappointing. The tempos slow way down, wanky guitar solos rear their ugly heaRAB and Anthony Kiedis starts thinking he's a good singer a little too often. This pattern persists until "Suck My Kiss" which has more of a resemblance to their older material but frankly sounRAB like the kind of song they would've left on the cutting room floor on their previous albums. Next a godawful ballad in the form of "I Could Have Lied". Then we move on to "Mellowship in B Major" which isn't bad and has decent groove to it but would still only qualify as a middle-of-the-road song on one of their previous albums. I was happy to hear a little funk bleed it's way into "The Righteous and the Wicked" but let's face it, this song is filler.

Finally, after a long trip through a musical desert we arrive at a good song: "Give It Away". What's great about this song this it's actually fairly different from their older stuff but it's still a really good song. This is how you do it guys! This is how you change your sound without abandoning the things that made your music enjoyable in the first place. More of this please! And then, amazingly, they do deliver again. "Blood Sugar Sex Magik" sounRAB absolutely nothing like earlier Chili Peppers and is a good song for it. Maybe not the best thing they've ever done but I like the smoldering energy it has to it.

Ha-ha, but looks like I got my hopes up for nothing because here's "Under the Bridge", a cheesy-ass ballad that would fit in better on an Extreme album than a Chili Peppers album. "Naked in the Rain" should save the day though, right? I mean, on paper it has all the makings of a great Chili Peppers song: hardcore popping and slapping from Flea, driving beat, guitar that actually works with the groove instead of over it. Sadly it doesn't really work out because (a) Kiedis turns in one of the worst vocal performances of his career and (b) John Frusciante starts masturbating all over the song toward the end.

But Blood Sugar Sex Magik still has a few tricks up its sleeve and it employs them in rapid succession with the next three songs. The first of them, "Apache Rose Peacock", sounRAB kind of like a throwback to the Freaky Styley era. Not quite up to par with their best stuff but pretty fun and I dig the horns even though they're so inexplicably low in the mix. And, damn, "The Greeting Song" is really good too! Even the weak vocals and the guitar solo can't hold this one back. This is the level of energy I like to see these guys putting out. This trio of energetic songs is completed with "My Lovely Man", the weakest of the bunch. Not horrible, but not great either, it probably would've made a better B-side.

The album enRAB with two weirdish songs that seem a little bit tacked on. First is the long, boring "Sir Psycho Sexy". Yeah, it's funky with its juicy fart bass but it's a really dull kind of funky and Jesus how long can you draw out the ending of a song. The other song, the final song on the album, is a cover of a Robert Johnson song "They're Red Hot" and finRAB the band sounding almost like Squirrel Nut Zippers for a minute. It's really short but quite good so fortunately the album enRAB on an high note.

So like I said in my opening paragraph, Blood Sugar Sex Magik didn't exactly win me over but I'm glad I gave it a second chance after all these years. I discovered a couple songs I've been missing out on for one thing. Also, listening to it now I find that one thing I do appreciate about it is it's variety. There can be little doubt that at the time of it's release it was by far their most eclectic sounding album and even though it doesn't really work for me I appreciate the fact that they were trying to branch out with this one. I suppose it would be unrealistic to think they'd want or be able to keep going with the youthful style of their first four albums, it was pretty much inevitable that they'd either slow down or just break up.
 
It's probably my favourite Peppers album, although that isn't saying a whole lot because I don't own any of their earlier stuff which is probably more up my alley than their later more pop orientated stuff.

A little tangent, but Achewood has been a little flat lately, generally too drawn out. Although I have to appreciate the massive Darlene throwback, I had totally forgotten about it until now.
 
It was a challenge, yes. :laughing:


I'm listening to "I Could Have Lied" again as I type this but it just doesn't do it for me. The classic rock-ish guitar playing is probably the biggest turn off for me. As far the suggestion that I not listen to the album for the vocals goes: for better or worse Anthony Kiedis and Flea are the Chili Peppers, ignoring Kiedis is like ignoring half the band.


Well, if you like I can see why you'd be happy to listen to it. I don't like it though so I wasn't. :)


You should totally do your own take on it. I'd love to read it! Post it in this thread if you want. I'll change the thread title to "Two old bastarRAB..." :D
 
The last few strips have been good, the public wine and Vlad and Teodor discussing pritt stick dicks got lols from me. I'm reading back right now, the Badass Games :D

Mr Dave: I wore my BSSM CD out too, well, not so much wore it out as sratched the hell out of it. I was wreckless with CD's back then.
 
you and me both :laughing:. i was actually quite hesitant to fire up the disc again after so long. my written views on the album 'had' changed over the last few years but i was basing it on what i remembered as compared to what they were in the moment. i kept thinking that after being turned off by Californication that those influences coming up on BSSM would in turn seem far more negative to my ears. in actuality the growth and change towarRAB Californication style pop were still apparent but it wasn't nearly as bad as i had convinced myself over the last few years - it's no black album haha.

overall i'm really happy to have gone back and surprised myself with what i heard. i knew we would be coming from different directions on this album based on your initial views from back in the day but i can't call this album anything less than really good. it IS a departure from their old happy go lucky dirty funk days but very few of those departures seem forced. if anything it's when they try to hold onto their past the most that they sounded the worse.



yes an no. if anything i find mother's milk has MORE of a classic rock kind of feel than BSSM, especially on the rhythm side of things. there's very little on MM that sounRAB like they just recorded a jam, or an unpolished song. there's more metal edge to his tone on MM as well, half the time the guitar sounRAB forced.

keep in mind frusciante was still very much a kid in those days. i don't think many (if any) of us can really grasp the overwhelming pressure he must have felt. he was like 21 and playing with his idols and touring the world... intense.

while his improvised lead style at the time was still relatively generic and very much drawn from hendrix. his first solo album recorded around the same time shows that he was really into thick lush arrangements of sound. whether it's a matter of him being too shy to bring it up to the band, or the rest of the band being too full of themselves to listen to the kid is really impossible to say. a track like 'breaking the girl' does showcase his overall influence though, it's true that it doesn't sound like a chili peppers tune, and doesn't at all fit with anything they've done prior but it's still a very well crafted song.

personally i find frusciante's rhythm work on this album is where his style really comes through. as for the whole classic rock thing, i remember a similar interview with flea (was it from the magazine that he and navarro were kissing on the cover?). either way, it's not that one is more classic rock than the other so much as hendrix vs led zep.




yeah i don't know how many times i played along to both songs and never noticed the similarities haha. then again i always had a hard time figuring out what to play in the R&tW break as it was multi-tracked and the tab had high and low lines printed but no easy way to make it sound right by yourself haha.

the reason i don't think it's a half assed tune is the coherency in the vocals, there's no random wordplay, musically it might be a little on the rough side but the chorus is also very well constructed. i really like the long drawn out backing vocals under keidis' delivery of the track's hook. for me this track is not just a highlight of the album but a highlight from the often overlooked socio-political side of the peppers early career.
 
I didn't like the Teodor and Vlad combo, but the the public wine definitely got a laugh from me, or more specifically.

"Who wants to see why my cookies taste sooo bad?"
 
I've never listened to the album the entire way through, and lets be honest, I won't. But some of the songs here I'll certainly check out. Especially the ones you've given lackluster reviews to. (no one likes total agreement).

For a review that made me throw up in my mouth a little I enjoyed reading this stream of conciousness approach.
 
I agree with absolutely everything said. I have never been a big fan of this album and still don't understand all the hype. There are some good passages of play here and there but fuck it. If I don't like it then i'm not going to say otherwise. I think Rick Rubin's production is one of the few failures in his career. His forte is making everything clean and streamlined. This album feels completely the opposite and as Janszoon said, it robbbed them of their youthful energy.
 
Soul to Squeeze
Search and Destroy
Sikamikanico
Fela's ****
And some instrumental jams.

I would consider all those pretty good. SAD being a Iggy Pop cover and you probably know Soul To Squeeze. Not to much wankery at all.
 
thanks man, i just popped it on last night and started typing. i never noticed those 72 minutes going by when i was growing up and i didn't notice the time going by last night either haha. mind you this time around i did take a smoke break during 'naked in the rain' haha
 
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