A review of the Vancouver show.
This one is from The Province.
In the rock ‘n’ roll game, longevity equals inter-generational audiences. So a sold-out Red Hot Chili Peppers concert means everyone from brand-new fans to their grandparents and even John Frusciante’s cousin, Mari Haworth. The registered massage therapist and her buddy Becky Chamberlain drove up from from La Conner, Wash. They were picking up their guest-list passes at the Will-Call. “John is about the best guitarist out there right now,” says Haworth. “This is the third time I’ve seen the band, but I’ve never actually met my cousin. He gets me guest-list tickets, but he’s really shy and retiring off-stage.”
On-stage it’s something entirely different, where Flea prowls, Frusciante flips right out. From the moment he, Flea and drummer Chad Smith arrived on stage for the first of many funky jams, the guitarist was a whirlwind of in-your-face axe-slinging. Add in singer Anthony Kiedis and you’ve got one of the most animated rock bands around.
While it’s great that the old guard can still hound-slap their homies, the set-list, drawn heavily from the sprawling new Stadium Arcadium double-disc package, left much to be desired. A fantastic and complicated light show with exceedingly cool moving screens and constantly shifting images could distract you for a while, but even die-hard lovers of the group must have felt that too many of the songs sounded exactly the same. For every catchy hit the Peppers have produced they have always padded their records with variations of those hits so when a song as old “Me and My Friends” turned up, it snapped you out of mid-tempo ballad doldrums.
None of which seemed to stop the full house from having a great time singing along to everything from the new single “Dani California” to other hits from By the Way and
Californication. I could’ve handled a bigger mix of old and new.
Opening act The Mars Volta remains one of the most interesting modern-rock units. But the eight-piece group can have a terrible time getting a decent mix for its orchestral, prog, art-punk sound. It would be fair to say that last night’s set came of re-volta-ing compared to the unbelievable impact of its opening-set for Queens of the Stone Age last year. It was like watching an entirely different band. Few if any moments rose above the noisy din.
