Smile From The Streets You Hold

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[/left_side] [right_side] The one most people do not dare to give a chance to.

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An old proverb says that when one’s far down, they can only go back up. On the other side, depending on a person, one’s highest highs and lowest lows are pretty much relative. In John’s case, however, it is pretty easy to find the lowest low. As he stated in many interviews, 1997 was the worst year of his life and, somehow, his age at that point was matching the age when many other musicians died, the cursed age of 1997. Luckily, he did not die and 11 years after, he’s still walking under the same sun as we all do, creating beautiful music. At the same time, his former life left a will, just in case. That will is called Smile From The Streets You Hold, after five words randomly picked from its title song (curiously, John named a couple of other songs using similar “technique” on his newer albums). That will consists of seventeen raw and sincere chapters of one man’s personal hell. But that man, luckily, ended up being sea-cucumber-like. He threw out half of himself and then it all grew again, more stable and stronger. This album also compiles all of the stages of a life left behind: A Fall Thru The Ground was supposedly written in 1987, many other songs were written in 1991 and 1992, together with the ones from previous album. Only three or four songs were recorded prior to Smile‘s release, through a mere tape recorder. From Enter A Uh to Estress, this is a rare-to-find and hard to get into debris of a crashed human. However, once you realise its importance and remember what happened afterwards, you might even grow to love it. (© 2004)

NOTE: All the songs’ lyrics on the album were written by John Frusciante and are [probably] © 1997 Niandra LaDes Music/BMI. However, there was no official lyrics provided, so the transcriptions are provided as-they-are. The lyrics for some songs aren’t available at the moment as it is rather hard to decypher them, so help is more than welcome.

Trivia

The most of the album was actually recorded prior to John’s departure from RHCP. Only four songs were recorded in the coming period.

On one of album’s versions, the title track is split into two.

Before the song For Air starts, one can hear John inhaling from the water pipe. In one of the album’s versions, this part is edited.

Supposedly, numerous copies of this album are sitting in a warehouse somewhere.

This is the only album John designed the cover for himself.

Before album’s release, Estress (originally titled Estrus) was released as a limited 7″ single through the internet, and the single’s B-side is Outside Space, the song which begins the same way Mascara ends.

Some of these songs were meant to appear on Niandra, but because of an album’s length and River Phoenix death, they were ommited from it.

Credits

Release date: 26th August 1997
Released: Worldwide
Publisher: Birdman in USA, D.C. in Australia, Musical Tragedies in Europe, Sony in Japan
Duration: 1 hour, 21 seconds
John plays: All instruments
There are no other credits or liner notes.

Album Artwork

http://birdmanrecords.com/about.html

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