admin @ Tue, 2006-09-26 11:00
The energy, the passion, the spontaneity. Jamming -- for a lack of a better term --rocks. It's this free-willed musical improvisation -- remember the jazz of old -- that led to what constitutes rock music today.
So when the Red Hot Chili Peppers and their openers, the way-out-there Indie prog-rockers Mars Volta, based a large portion of their Sept. 20 show in Winnipeg on the quintessential jam, the audience was treated to a bold, as well as a brilliant and satisfying move in modern concert etiquette.
Half the shows you see today have the band trying to please other people; the "fans" who have only listened to their greatest hits, the record execs hoping to make an extra buck off of the fans and various other people who aren't very important.
So who, or rather, what, is important? The musical freedom, obviously! A band needs to jam and develop, to share with the world everything that has been stewing in its muse-driven craniums. This does not include regurgitating a manufactured set-list of songs that get the most radio play. Rock music is an ever-evolving force and it needs the freedom to exist as such.
This is not to say the Chili Peppers didn't play some well-known stuff, there were definitely many pieces of nostalgia from albums including Blood Sugar Sex Magick, Californication, and By the Way, as well as the odd funk treat from the days before the birth of today's youth. A well-rounded show can't be produced based on old hits alone, which is precisely why Anthony and the boys alternated between older bits and tracks off their newest disc Stadium Arcadium.
Concert-goers who wanted a sing-along session were not disappointed as the music wound from the opener Can't Stop, a song about the practice of injecting ozone into the bloodstream; to one of the biggest radio hits this summer Dani California; to the rhythm-section-heavy Throw Away Your Television, and to the junkie ballad Scar Tissue.
Flea's multi-coloured bodysuit and the fact he resembles a convulsingly radical dinosaur when he plucks away on his bass only drew more attention to the fact that musically, he's likely one of most accomplished players on his instrument in all of modern rock.
The same can be said for guitarist John Frusciante, whose swells of orgasmic guitar solos along with his euphoric and delirious stage movements made more than a few faces scrunch up in total riff-driven ecstasy.
Not enough can be said for our lyricist, the ever-energetic Mr. Kiedis with his breakdance moves and white muscle-shirt which was stretched and torn about to all oblivion by the closing number.
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