Jupiter; Song 6: She’s Only 18

Before Stadium Arcadium was released, I remember looking forward to this track in particular, as Anthony Kiedis called it an early favourite in advance. With a title like “She’s Only 18” I was expecting a doo-wop ‘Beach Boys’ type song, perhaps in the style of a By The Way song. I was not expecting the sexiest Red Hot Chili Peppers song since “Blood Sugar Sex Magik”.

A major contributor to the gritty tone of the piece is the production. It sounds like the microphones for the guitar and drums are a lot further from the instruments then they normally are, giving the song a great live feel, which is appropriate given the “four guys jamming in a room” style of the verse. Then, the verse kicks off into an epic chorus that has such a wonderful 70’s vibe. Just listening to it through my earphones makes me feel like I’m lying on a bean-bag in a college dorm in 1977, like Homer during the moon-landing (yes I know that was in 1969, you get the point).

To me the dual stars of the piece are Flea and John. Its great to hear Flea’s bass back in the fore front, as it sets the groove and tone for the song and is a solid demonstration in how to create an interesting bottom end, with its expansive pull and flow. As for John, and more specifically his wah-wah pedal, what can I say “how I have missed thee”. His verse riffs are so thoroughly intertwined with Flea’s bass AND Anthony’s melodies, such that as in the best Chili Pepper songs, four individual voices come together as parts of a much bigger and more important whole. I should also mention his solo, which is one of the best on the album, a moment of such beautiful abandon of rhythm and organisation that so perfectly fits the song.

I will say that I get a kick out of the dirty imagery of the piece, even though the idea of a forty five year old man writing the lyrics can be a bit creepy. Nevertheless, Stadium Arcadium by its nature is an all-encompassing album, and I’m glad Kiedis has “got his fingers wet” with this particular theme (It’s SEX, in case you didn’t get the message).

Jupiter; Song 5: Hump de Bump

Fuck, I just realised I could "justify" my columns so everythings nice and straight instead of shitty shitty "align left". Why didn't any of you tell me?! Bastards.

Anyway. "Hump de Bump". I have no idea what this song is about, only the Chili Peppers could title a song “Hump de Bump” and have me thinking it’s absolutely nothing to do with sexual themes. A very funky party song, obvious superficial comparisons can be drawn to “Charlie”, although to me Charlie is a mixture of Blood Sugar Sex Magik and By The Way, whereas this track has a more primal feel and is pure Hillel Slovak-era Red Hot Chili Peppers. Starting off with a double stopped bass-line and staccato guitars, the bass’s complexity is transferred to the guitar in the chorus where some very dense chords are being played.

Two of the nicest surprises on the album are revealed within one minute in this song. First of all, in the second pre-chorus Flea’s trumpets come out of nowhere as it did so frequently in the Mother’s Milk days to accentuate the flavour of the piece, like a nice spice as it were. Thereafter, Chad comes out with a lovely percussion solo (MORE COWBELL!) that comes across like a Jackson 5 bridge. In fact it rivals my personal favourite Chad Smith recorded moment, the bridge in “Coffee Shop” on the One Hot Minute record. Its important to have moments of individual musical brilliance like these sprinkled throughout the album as to avoid it becoming the “John Frusciante” show

So on its own, there isn’t too much to say about this song, which is fine as its not a song to be analysed in depth, just a song that should be played loud. As mentioned before, one of the recurring musical themes of Stadium Arcadium to me is the fusion of all of the Chili Peppers styles in one collection of songs, so even though “Hump De Bump” is not a brilliant defining piece that pushes the Chili Peppers to new musical and emotional peaks, to me its one of the defining songs of the album and Stadium Arcadium would feel completely different without it.

Jupiter; Song 4: Stadium Arcadium

‘ "Stadium Arcadium"?!! More like "Stadium ArGAYdium" haha ’
Nitchingham 23/11/05, courtesty of Gmail

“Stadium Arcadium” will no doubt go down in history as one of the few songs in the Red Hot Chili Peppers catalogue to be born of a drum part. It is a very organic song with a simple, somewhat hypnotic guitar riff, and to its credit has one of the best bridge sections (I’d stay shy of calling it a guitar solo, due to its lack of melody) of the album.

This song is about the live experience of connecting with an audience, but to me its more than that. There is no such thing as an “arcadium”, but the chorus line “The stadium arcadium, a mirror to the moon” to me evokes an image of being at a gathering with friends at a 21st, or a group of strangers watching a soccer game at 4.30am in the morning, and feeling so enlightened and powerful that bystanders from afar would look and see a light beam directed at the heavens. Even though I think this song is lyrically more powerful than most songs in the album, I still confer to Anthony Kiedis a yellow card for partial re-using of the metaphor “a mirror for the sun”, as in “Road Tripping”.

The title track to Red Hot Chili Peppers’ albums have had a special place over the past few years. “Californication”, widely considered to be Kiedis’ most accomplished lyric, is well loved for its intimate interplay between Flea and John Frusicante, and in my opinion having one of the all-time best guitar solos in modern music. “By The Way”, the song that I had anticipated the most since my musical awakening, offered a hint of the depths of harmony and pop sensibility that the album would succumb to, as well as infamously being the song that Bucky and I would literally be crushed under when the Chilis came to Adelaide. So it would not have been unreasonable to assume this song would be a cracker prior to the release of the record. Sadly, as of the time of writing, it isn’t, although it is by no means a bad song. The above quote reflects my initial reaction to the name, as well as that legendary Nitchingham wit, and while I have been convinced that it works as an album name and a song idea, it fails to rise to the ranks of the previous songs and as a result of that alone I can’t think so highly of the song as a whole as of this moment.

Jupiter; Song 3: Charlie

Alright, back to work. This track is the first song on Stadium Arcadium to have strong funk elements, and in fact the Chili Peppers haven’t been THIS funky (in the traditional sense, if we’re talking about bass being in the forefront and tight, syncopated guitar rhythms etc) since "Right on Time" on Californication all the way back in 1999. Lyrically a tribute to the imagination, “Charlie” is made up of three main parts, a verse, chorus and a bridge. The verse and chorus are nice counter-sections in that they explore different aspects of funk, the verse coming from a dark place whereas the chorus is somewhat sunny and joyful. I guess another way to put it is the verse is to rhythm as the chorus is to melody, and as such this song best encapsulates the far and recent pasts of Red Hot Chili Peppers, which to me is one of the major themes of the album.

In guitar magazines, much has been said of the influence of Brandy (the American RMB singer slash star of “Moesha”) on John Frusicante’s song-writing, with regards to rhythm styles and rhythmic interactions with melody, and this can be heard in this song, particularly in the verse where the guitar can be heard filling the spaces left by the vocal melody.

Also of note are the back up vocals, which wisely have been wrestled from being a purely John domain as they were in By The Way. I myself like John Frusciante’s trademark falsetto harmonies but Anthony’s rhythmic blasts, particularly in this piece and “Storm in a Teacup” (coming up in a few months) make for a more diverse vocal soundscape, and I imagine will let Flea go nuts with back up vocals when the Chili Peppers play live.

So that’s Charlie. I should probably comment on the new Red Hot Chili Peppers video clip for Tell Me Baby, which according to Flea is "the best video of our career" (http://www.redhotchilipeppers.com/news/journal.php?uid=241). The clip for “Tell Me Baby” is once again directed by Jonathon Dayton and Valerie Faris who have a long association with Red Hot Chili Peppers, and is one of the few clips to have any direct association with the lyrical content of the piece (for example "Californication", also by Dayton & Faris), as we see in the intro several young Americans voicing their hopes and dreams to “make it” in Los Angeles, like the girl in the song “giving up all the innocence you left behind.” When you take this into account, as well as the fact that it’s a party song and the cast of the clip are clearly having fun, I feel that the video is a good visual interpretation of what makes the song special. And shit, I’d do anything to have partied with the band in the last shot of the clip.

"Promiscuous" by Nelly Furtado

The title says it all really. A blatant appeal to an older demographic than “I’m Like A Bird” (Nelly Furtado’s first hit in late 2000), Promiscuous is the first single released from Nelly Furtado’s new album Loose. Musically it is in the “hip-pop” genre as led by such pioneers as the Neptunes and Timbaland, and funnily enough the latter co-produced and does guest vocals on the track.

And now you want to know why I’m writing a 300 word piece on this song when I should be writing about Charlie (Jupiter: Song 3 from Red Hot Chili Peppers’ new disc Stadium Aracdium). The long answer is that I’m just a sucker for good pop duets between guys and girls, and to that end this is a solid fun spin. Furtado and Timbaland trade lines playfully like a modern day Sandy and Danny, or more recently Kylie Minogue and Robbie Williams. Also of note is the synth hook in the chorus which is sweet on its own, but is even better when you listen to how it interacts rhytmically with the vocals. The short answer is GET YOUR OWN FUCKING BLOG!! NAAHH!

Promiscuous is now (rightly) Furtado's most successful single in the United States, proving to be as relevant to these times as “Bird” was in the dying stages of Britney and N’Sync’s “ultra pop” era of 1998-2002, possibly indicating that the end is nigh for the souless beat driven music that has over-ridden the need for a good melody on the airwaves for the past 4 years (come on white people, lift your game!). But I digress, Promiscuous is a cool fun track as far as hip hop goes, and is destined to have a healthy shelf-life on Australian radio, especially when people go through their dictionaries to find out what the title actually means (I know I did).

Jupiter; Song 2: Snow (Hey Oh)

This mid-tempo song initially comes off like a track left off from the “By The Way” recording sessions. A piece that tends to provoke feeling of pleasantness, it’s destined for success as a mainstream single. In fact, even though it is essentially an album track with no airplay yet, it has climbed to number 53 in the United Kingdom’s iTunes Top 100. No doubt this is to do with the fact that the United Kingdom, more than any other country, warmed up to the mellow style of “By The Way,” which performed far better in that country than any of Red Hot Chili Peppers’ previous albums.

Instrument-wise the band pulls of some neat tricks, such John’s use of pedals to mimic keyboard sounds with his guitar, and the band’s ability to pull of a nice groove from John’s initial riff, which is quite stiff and adamant. To me the song only really lifts into something special when the bridge comes in and Chad goes heavy on the ride cymbal (another “By The Way” hallmark), and John uses distortion beautifully to contribute to the soundscape of the outro. Not one of my absolute favourites, but I feel it does have a historical relevance on the album, appealing to the part of me that did like By The Way. I’m just glad I don’t have to listen to an album of it.