Red Hot Chili Peppers – Californication (1999)

I mostly feel warm nostalgia towards the bands I used to listen to in the 90's. Red Hot Chili Peppers is something of an exception. I don't really listen to them at all anymore and I'm having some difficulties even enjoying them when I hear them on the radio or playing in a pub or something. Part of the reason is that I've started paying more attention to sounds and production of the music I listen to. Californication, especially, is very overproduced. As a result, it sounds very plastic and not very authentic. Another reason is that this album was way too successful which meant that it was playing everywhere all the time. It's difficult to fully enjoy music that has been force fed to you for years and years. I know that record companies have the exact opposite goal in doing this, but I guess it only works for people who are not actively looking for different kinds of music.



I've mentioned at least more than once in this blog that as a teenager, I wasn't too experimental in what sort of music I listened to. It had to be melodic above all else, and that's probably why I liked this album more than the previous RHCP albums when it came out. Now, looking back, I feel like this album is way worse than One Hot Minute or Blood, Sugar Sex, Magic. At least they had some attitude, whereas Californication sounds like a sell-out product.

The other reason I really liked RHCP back in my teenage years was the fact that it was one of the few bands that had a noticeable bass player. Everyone seemed to be excited about the guitar-players and vocalists in bands, and no-one was really interested in bass players, but as a young starting-out bass player it was difficult to accept that people don't generally listen to the bass player at all. Therefore, Flea was a hero of mine with his acclaimed bass playing. I still think he's very talented with a bass, but some choices he makes in the songs are a bit over the top and don't really serve the interest of the music as a whole. These kinds of icons made me also want to use bass as an overly melodic instrument, while it actually is more of a rhythm instrument giving structure to melodic and rhythmic changes.

The album starts with the iconic overdriven bass line in the song Around the World. The funky bits sound a lot like Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magic, which was the first RHCP album I ever listened to, which was a good thing. The chorus, however, is some kind of commercial soft rock that I can't stand. Parallel Universe was very different from anything else RHCP had made until this album. It kind of sounds more like Muse or some other late 90's indie rock bands. Scar Tissue was a massive hit back in the day and I think I like this song the most on this album today. The lazy groove is not quite as pretentious as some of the other songs. The title-track Californication, on the other hand, was my favourite song back in the day when this album came out. I understand the appeal in the melodic approach and slightly melancholic mood. Then again, the song is very simple and gets easily stuck in your head as an earworm. I still think it's one of the best songs on the album though. Like many other commercial albums, Californication also has all of its hits in the beginning and the other half of the album is filled with more or less boring songs.

I remember the music video for Californication really well. It was made in the style of Playstation games of the time when this album came out. I remember playing quite a lot of Playstation with my friends back in the day and watching this video is quite nostalgic. Especially, the snowboarding sequences and crazy tricks over the Golden Gate Bridge remind me of Tony Hawk's skateboarding game that me and my friends would play all the time around the release of this album.

I even saw RHCP live around the time this album was released at a huge ice hockey arena in Helsinki. It was one of the biggest gigs I've ever seen, but I remember being a bit disappointed with it, because we were sat so far away from the stage that the band members looked tiny and even the music was pretty quiet to where we were sitting.

This album is one of the few albums that I have that I would never really consider listening to anymore if it wasn't for this blog. They have had some significance to my life, but now they are just history to me. Nevertheless, I think it's nice to own that piece of history in physical form showing the onlookers of my record collection how my musical tastes have developed over years.

Listen to the album on Spotify.