The 1985 Listening Post - Red Hot Chili Peppers - Freaky Styley

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Freaky Styley

#298/933

August 16 1985

Red Hot Chili Peppers

Freaky Styley

Genre: Funk Rock

2 out of 5

Remember that story about the New Video manager who had seen RHCP and come to the store the next day in ecstasy and awe? 

I think it was this album that they were touring.

If they didn’t play naked with just socks on would anyone have given a shit about them after these first two records? I don’t know. It’s ugly and not fun. I sat through “Brothers Cup” (an interpolation of “We’ve Got the Funk”) so you didn’t have to. 

But here’s the question I have now: 

U2, while putting out their first album in 1980, were rehearsing and playing in the late 70s. Is there ANY other band that came out of the 80s that is still around today? I mean, they just put out a record a couple years ago. Who else has that track record? One that suggests relevance, that could headline Coachella tomorrow and sell out? Anyone?

I ask this because I think of RHCP as a 90s breakthru band but they were putting out rekkids in the mid-80s. I think they are the only one.

Says something, I think

https://music.apple.com/us/album/freaky-styley/1440873689

The 1984 Listening Post - Red Hot Chili Peppers - Red Hot Chili Peppers

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Red Hot Chili Peppers

#211

August 10 1984

Red Hot Chili Peppers

Red Hot Chili Peppers

1.75 out of 5

When I was working at the video store in the West Village the bosses hired a manager. I have nothing of interest to say about her save that she came in one day and was talking a LOT about this band she had seen the night before. The Red Hot Chili Peppers. She could not stop talking about how amazing they were. 

And then they were tucked away in my brain until a few years later when they broke big. And, of course I had one or two of their big releases. But I never went all the way back to where the beginnings of 90s alternative sprang. 

Some of it is here with the quasi-funk/proto-post punk/near metal/wanna be rap of this album. 

I appreciate what Flea and Martinez (1st drummer) re doing on the opening track but I want to chew my arm off when the rap starts in “Baby Appeal”, (and the equally shitty “Green Heaven”) which makes Marky Ramone’s venture seem almost admirable. 

And it just gets worse from there. 

Omg, RHCP have been recording for 35 years. 1949 was 35 years prior to that. 

Here’s a true thing: Anthony Kiedis is the worst thing about this band. 

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/red-hot-chili-peppers/635001065