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Atrona Scar tissue and begins a litany that will not end. Red Hot Chili Peppers arrive in Spain with everything sold out, with added dates, to reclaim a space that has been theirs since 1991. Theirs is the music of debauchery, of beach parties, of American-style chaos.
From the beginning they announce that they are one thing and they don't come to sell the opposite. Punchy basses, funk hodgepodge, Californian leave. There are groups that change their style and clothing with each tour -Coldplay, the fetish of the new politics and Pep Guardiola would be the most obvious example-, but Red Hot Chili Peppers remain the same, perhaps revisited, if we take into account that revisiting the nineties it's the same without the cheap clothes and without the dirt. Now on pinterest they call it soft grunge.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers soft grunge would be like themselves now with better cut hair, and a little cleaner. If we take into account that they do not include John Frusciante, who got off the bandwagon due to his heroin addiction back in the third album, we find a group that consumes protein shakes and matcha tea. Grunge was not from California, it was from Seattle, where it rained 320 days a year and everyone worked in a lumberyard. The Red Hot Chili Peppers -after all, they are called that because of a chili-, drank from the winds of George Clinton, and it shows in what they are, twenty years after their flagship album, Blood Sugar Sex Magik.
That this is a concert of greatest hits is already announced at the beginning by Scar tissue, which also lets us see that Flea is its captain, with basses that rumble your sternum. The play of colored lights and screens heralds a first part dedicated to the band and revelry of an intergenerational audience that is chanting the same thing for you by a Californication that asks you for some popcorn. There are several children under the age of ten who accompany their parents and dance to the rhythm.
Singer Anthony Kiedis makes attempts to thank the Madrid public “for Picasso and Goya”, while Frusciante's counterpart, Josh Klinghoffer, is dedicated to doing his thing. Regardless of the hints of Spanishness (“Mucho gusto, mucho amor”, Kiedis sings again while nobody wants to listen to him), people are full of songs. And it is that the Red Hot Chili Peppers have hits to give and give away: they happen one after another, while it is verified that the band works as a quartet. He's got muscle and he responds to stadium rock.
Speaking of muscle: Kiedis begins If you have to ask already shirtless, between guitar solos. This announces that we are in the second part of the concert. That and the new psychedelic images of tanks in the snow and eyes drawn on the screens. Kiedis' torso is the Holy Grail of the '90s alongside Kurt Cobain's striped sweater, Bjork's frizzes, and Eddie Vedde's greasy mane of Pearl Jam. And twenty-five years after his christening, Kiedis' torso holds up.
It's the turn of the heavy artillery: By the way, Suck my kiss, and, of course, Give it away. People chant them with the feeling of a surfer summer, a love of beer that is not understood but who cares (when did a Red Hot Chili Peppers lyric make sense?). When Kiedis and drummer Chad Smith talk about love again while head banging -Kiedis not moving too much, the jumps and sweat of yesteryear are, precisely, of yesteryear- and it's clear that the Red Hot Chili Peppers are like the stoner friend you you want despite being repetitive: it never cheats on you and it will never let you down.
Oh, and for some reason, Flea does a handstand and walks on her hands before she leaves. Surfer stuff, man.
