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| ZURÜCK ZU NEU! PRESSE |
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Hamburg's show of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers
saw them team up with NEU! guitarist Michael
Rother.
Accompanied by 'Omar' the former 'At the drive
in' and present 'Mars Volta' guitarist , they
collectively jammed on stage for 20 minutes.
Kiedis and Smith took a backseat for a duration
of the session allowing Frusciante, Flea, Volta
and Rother to lose themselves in their amazing
sonic capabilities. The audience in Hamburg were
left in complete awe, accepting that they experienced
a moment of true genius.
JOHN FRUSCIANTE met up
with NEU! guitarist Michael Rother whom he
quotes one of his main musical influences for
a talk for German music mag "Musikexpress".
RHCP musical
mastermind of such records as Blood Sugar Sex
Magic or Californication invited Rother on stage
for a 20 minute session much to the delight of
the 15'000 fans! Relaxed, racy, ironic, chaotic,
brilliant! The otherwise predictable Red Hot
Chili Peppers surprised their audience in the
Color Line Arena with adorable improvisations.
by Stefan Krulle. |
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By the end
of it, we were crying tears of happiness. And one
colleague speculated that he might well wake up next
morning and wonder what had really happened the night
before. The simple answer "a concert
by the Red Hot Chili Peppers" is hardly an adequate
response. The band has always been good, but at the
same time, always predictable: 20 hits in 75 minutes
and goodbye. Even in Hamburg's Color Line Arena, it
was only the support act which initially hinted at
this being a special evening; the Texan group Mars
Volta brought back sunny memories among the more senior
members of the audience of the good old Krautrock days;
of ten-minute numbers, wah-wah guitars and perhaps
a few soft drugs. A good support act, not one of the
usual advertising campaigns for some untalented newcomers. |
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Then came the entrance of messrs Kiedis, Frusciante,
Flea and Smith; they lined up in front of a snow-white
scaffold and later in front of large-format screens
with giant-size projections of their pictures,
and played an inspired set of their repertoire.
Albeit not the band's entire musical history,
since history - even one's own - is something
the Peppers do in original American manner: they
unfailingly ignore anything that would make them
seem too old, and that's why there were no songs
from the first four albums in the programme.
As things seemed to be moving towards the finale,
while fetching beer from the lobby, we came
across a couple of German studio musicians
who were having a good old moan. Too little
in the middle sound range, and not enough from
the nether regions either. Just blah-blah,
we thought to ourselves, from people who understand
too little because they know too much. Who
at this rock concert is going to worry about
little |
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| things like a minor sound
imbalance? A little down in the mouth we went back
towards the arena, where the Peppers were giving
encores starting with an old song by the Stooges.
It was after that that things really started to take
off; little by little, if you can say it this way,
we were transfixed. |
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At ten to eleven, in the ninetieth minute of what
had anyway been a fantastic concert, the Red Hot Chili
Peppers began playing a number which was to end at
twenty to twelve. A beacon to all that is good and
great in rock 'n' roll, a hysterical, relaxed, racy,
ironic, chaotic, brilliant, noisy, delicate, exhilarating
and intoxicating whirlwind back to such forgotten sources
as the jam session. |
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When Kiedis felt he couldn't sing any more and
the drumming became too much for Smith, they both
sat on the loudspeakers, while the other two band
members got together with Mars Volta guitarist Omar
and later even with Michael Rother from Krautrock
legend Neu!, who had surely been sent from heaven,
and sat on the floor playing divine music, the like
of which we had never before heard from the Peppers
and may well never do again. This made the whole
evening into a priceless gift. Frusciante, the magician,
played for us from another world, Flea combined brilliant
playing with wonderful bass lines, and at some point,
when all the rest were well out of breath, Chad Smith
began to drum again. It was unbelievable. What rock
millionaires can come up with in front of 15,000
people in a concrete bowl of a building. And the
fact that even today, you can fall in love with music
all over again. Will there be concerts after this
Saturday? There must be!
Article printed on March 24, 2003 |
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