Red Hot Chili Peppers – “Nobody Weird Like Us”.
Red Hot Chili Peppers live in Tokyo for Weekend Brunch – recorded on January 26, 1990 at the Club Citta Kawasaki.
It occurred to me that in the twelve years Past Daily has been around, we’ve never run a RHCP concert – at all – anywhere.
No reason, other than the fact they are so well known a site like this, where we strive to make the overlooked and forgotten a priority, didn’t need to run anything by them since everybody knows who they are and this concert in particular has made the rounds numerous times in various formats.
But it is a holiday weekend and I’ve given myself permission to run all over the place, running the familiar as well as the unfamiliar all in one place.
The significant thing about this concert is that it was a first tour of Japan for Red Hot Chili Peppers – they hadn’t done Japan before and the audiences had only vaguely heard of them.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers were formed in Los Angeles by Anthony Kiedis, Flea, the guitarist Hillel Slovak, and the drummer Jack Irons. Due to commitments to other bands, Slovak and Irons did not play on their 1984 self-titled debut album, which instead featured the guitarist Jack Sherman and the drummer Cliff Martinez. Slovak rejoined for their second album, Freaky Styley (1985), and Irons for their third, The Uplift Mofo Party Plan (1987). Irons left after Slovak died of a drug overdose in June 1988.
With Frusciante and Smith, the Red Hot Chili Peppers recorded Mother’s Milk (1989) and their first major commercial success, Blood Sugar Sex Magik (1991). Frusciante was uncomfortable with their newfound popularity and left abruptly on tour in 1992. After a series of temporary guitarists, he was replaced by Dave Navarro. Their next album, One Hot Minute (1995), failed to match the success of Blood Sugar Sex Magik. Frusciante and Kiedis struggled with drug addiction throughout the 1990s.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ mix of hard rock, funk and hip hop has influenced genres such as funk metal, rap metal, rap rock, and nu metal. According to AllMusic, in 1992, “oodles of (mostly horribly bad) funk-metal acts were following in Faith No More and the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ footsteps”. Bands who have cited the Red Hot Chili Peppers as an influence include Incubus, Mr. Bungle, Primus, Rage Against the Machine, System of a Down, Papa Roach, 311, Sugar Ray and Korn.
Kiedis said the Red Hot Chili Peppers were early to combine “hardcore funk and hip-hop-style vocals”, and suggested that they had influenced Limp Bizkit, Kid Rock and Linkin Park. Smith said, “Certainly Anthony’s singing style and voice lends itself to being unique, and nobody sounds like him. The cool thing about it is we can play any style of music whether it’s hard and fast, or loud or quiet, slow or medium, whatever it is; rock or funk, and it still sounds like us. I’m proud of that because sometimes bands don’t have that strong personality where you go, ‘Oh, that’s boom, right away.'”
In 2004, the Australian songwriter Nick Cave said: “I’m forever near a stereo saying, ‘What the fuck is this garbage?’ And the answer is always the Red Hot Chili Peppers.” The line is widely quoted in criticism of the band; Flea, a fan of Cave, wrote that it had hurt him. In 2025, Cave wrote an apology on his website, saying it was “an offhand and somewhat uncharitable remark” with “no malice intended”, and announced that he and Flea had recently collaborated.
Okay – dive in.
