03.05.15

On March 5th I listened to Red Hot Chili Peppers Mother’s Milk and Coldplay Ghost Stories. It was Red Hot’s current-former guitarist and mastermind John Frusciante’s birthday.

Released in the summer of 1989, the year I graduated high school, Mother’s Milk was the funkiest, most illest, fuck-shit-up record of the year! That is saying a lot because it came out just a few weeks after Paul’s Boutique!

The weird thing about my Alternative music leanings that were formed in the mid-80s by discovering the Repo Man soundtrack is that they quickly drifted across the pond. I moved from a fertile American underground scene to a mostly English fascination. Public Image Ltd., Depeche Mode, New Order, The Cure and my beloved The Smiths. I spent the latter half of the 80’s hitting play on all my English gloom and doomers. There was definitely a bigger mix of shit, but that time was the height of my Anglophile phase.

I rarely admit this but I spent the last half of the 80s listening to too many Smiths albums and ignoring some great music made right here in the good ol’ U.S. of A. Pixies, Replacements, Jane’s Addiction, Fishbone and oddly enough The Clash weren’t my priority back in those days. Although, a new day was dawning and my musical palate was about to explode. I was starting college.

It was tough to be into everything eons before the internet. It took time, dedication and some cash. You really had to live a lifestyle. I went to shows, I bought some cassettes, and I read some of the right shit, but my crew was mainly mainstream guys – content with Classic Rock. Even as a kid with nothing but time, there were only so many hours in the day to discover music and a lot of times you physically had to leave the house to go out and discover it! Or you had to sit through too much crap on the college radio station, or you stayed up late on Sunday nights and watched 120 Minutes. I watched 120 Minutes religiously!

I have no idea why we're holding CDs. Winter 1990?

You can imagine my surprise when Mark Bickerstaff (not pictured) pulled out Mother’s Milk. We were driving to the gym and it was completely out of left field… from him. I was friends with Mark for a couple years at this point and if you asked me what his favorite band was, I would have said, “I dunno… M.C. Hammer?” Mark liked playing hockey and being the funniest guy in the room, music wasn’t his thing.

“Ever hear of the Red Hot Chili Peppers?” he asked so proudly. I barely had heard of them. I vaguely remembered seeing a video, but they weren’t on my radar at all. I don’t know how or why Mark had the album, but on the drive to the gym it changed my life. He was all like, “they’re these guys from California who love Jimi Hendrix and the L.A. Lakers.” He then played “Higher Ground.” I guess I just assumed that it was a Jimi Hendrix song. “Who’s Stevie?” I asked. “He must be one of the guys in the band.” Right. I was a well-rounded 18-year-old, but I certainly didn’t know everything.

Regardless, I feel like we stopped on the way home from the gym and I bought the album on CD and I listened to Mother’s Milk once a day for the next two years… until they dropped their masterpiece.

This record is a fucking stunner and sadly mostly only remembered for “Higher Ground.” From the opening “Good Time Boys” through the freak-flag-flying “Nobody Weird Like Me,” to the tender “Knock Me Down,” and what should have been the Chili Peppers’ first bona fide hit “Taste The Pain,” Mother’s Milk is rarely at a loss. “Stone Cold Bush” is even a party buried in your pubes or it’s a song about a junkie prostitute or a statue prostitute in a fountain in San Francisco… I dunno, maybe?

I really hate to pee anywhere on this album, but “Magic Johnson” sucks. It’s not even fun as a novelty song. And at the time I was still really into basketball and LOVED Magic and the Lakers! I even bought multiple pairs of the Lakers’ colors Converse Weapons sneakers! I always skipped by this track.

SIDEBAR

This is just a weird thing I noticed. People who listened to Alt Rock early and then watched everyone in the world become an expert on the genre will appreciate this. Mother’s Milk came out in 1989 and there were songs from this record that were considered singles. Most of the radio stations across the country didn’t play those singles. College stations played the Red Hots and the handful of commercial Alternative Rock stations that existed played them too. (I was very lucky because in 1988 or 1989 I discovered a radio station out of Toronto called CFNY 102.1. A truly Modern Rock radio station that helped shape my musical tastes. Rush wrote a song about them.)

In 1991 there were less than ten commercial Alternative radio stations in the U.S.A and CFNY (A Canuck station) was considered one of them. In 1993 there were 179. I think that’s right, but I might be wrong by a year or two or a station or two. In other words, Modern Rock or Alternative Rock had broken through and were now getting their due. It was very generational and urgent.

So, let’s say a new Alt Rock station signs on in 1992 in Your Town, U.S.A. They came out of the gate with all the NEW stuff from all the heavy hitters of the time... RHCP, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, STP, Radiohead, Tool and whatever else. But, they needed a library. They needed to play songs that were “hits” in the genre…

UGH! I just realized this is a total radio geek thing... I'm almost done.

So, if a new Alt Rock Station signed on in your town in the middle of the 90’s they would play songs like “How Soon Is Now,” “Blue Monday,” “Jane Says,” and “Higher Ground” as if to say, “well, if this Alternative Rock radio station was around when these songs came out we would have played them.” All of a sudden all my stuff that got voted down on car trips with friends, was now getting played on the radio!

It’s tough to explain how important Radio once was to somebody that doesn’t remember its power. If the radio played a song it became validated, if radio didn’t play a great song… it became very special.  

Does that make sense? It’s like when somebody you know starts watching Breaking Bad on Netflix, while you sweated it out for years waiting impatiently for every new episode. And now this doofus is just getting it handed to him.

The absolute worst was when one of your buddies, who was listening to Queensryche while you were discovering Jane’s Addiction, would now be spouting off factoids like, “Did you know Perry Ferrell started Lollapalooza?”

John Frusciante

I mentioned that March 2nd is John Frusciante’s birthday and Mother’s Milk was his first recorded effort with the band. Shit happens for a reason and Frusciante was close to getting a gig with Frank “Mother Fucking” Zappa but wanted to be in the Red Hots. I know everybody knows who Frank is, but, in 1988, turning down a gig with Frank “Mother Fucking” Zappa for RHCP was like saying no to piloting the space shuttle and taking a gig as a bus driver. The Peppers could have easily become just a footnote in the Rock history books. Frusciante was a classically trained musician who loved pussy and chasing a buzz. Zappa wanted the musician, but none of the baggage. The Red Hots needed a guy who looked good with a sock on his cock. Thank God for pussy!

Throw metalhead Chad Smith behind the drum kit and in a short time the Red Hot Chili Peppers became the band that lit the fuse on the Alternative explosion of the early 90’s! Oh yeah, and those Anthony Kiedis and Flea guys helped too!

Coincidentally, Blood Sugar Sex Magic and Nirvana’s Nevermind were released on the same day – September 24, 1991. It was the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ popularity that helped launch the careers of Nirvana, Pearl Jam and The Smashing Pumpkins. They had the goods to back it up, but RHCP gave them all a hand up.

Taking a look at the Red Hot’s discography, Mother’s Milk is the album that I went all in for with this band. (I dug up their older stuff afterwards but this was my entry point into them.) Subsequently, it was 2002’s By The Way that made me pull up from their table.

I tried to some this all up in a tweet, “Happy Birthday John Frusciante! I'm old enough to remember when liking the Red Hots meant something. Now it's like listening to Aerosmith.”

That’s kind of unfair to say especially when I'm listening to their older stuff and being reminded of how important they were to me... way back when.

This is a classic example of a band phoning it in. Listen to Parachutes or A Rush Of Blood To The Head and then listen to Ghost Stories. This record definitely sounds like Coldplay. They didn’t switch up the sound, they just forgot their inspiration. By far their weakest effort.

I feel like Gwyneth Paltrow could site this album as one of the reasons for her conscious uncoupling from Chris Marin. And this picture.... WTF?

Look, ma! I'm phoning it in!

Tomorrow I listen to The Who and The Decemberists.