Red Hot Chili Peppers and Gnarles Barkley concert review

It’s quite nice to have very kind friends. One of these such friends called me around 5:30pm on Wednesday and asked if I wanted to join him for a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert that night in Nashville. I had plans already but they were with friends who know me well enough and would understand I’d likely back out of just about anything to see the Chili Peppers. After all, I’d never seen them before, I own pretty much all of their releases, and I’ve been a fan for around 15 years now. (Wow! That makes me feel old.) This friend even said he would pay for my ticket. So this was a no-brainer.

Before I say anything about the show let me just say that buying tickets from scalpers can be very, very risky. Enough said.

The opening act was Gnarles Barkley. Gnarles has been made famous by one song called Crazy. It’s a decent song with a great vibe to it. I figured if that’s his sound I’ll like his show. The seats we had for Gnarles were pretty awful and so was the audio quality for his whole set. It was too bad. I think in a smaller setting I would have enjoyed him and his band. My favorite part of his set was when he introduced his hit song Crazy. He said, “This next song is the reason I am here tonight and the reason I am now so rich and famous.” If you’re a one hit act you might as well make light of it!!

They cleared the stage of the string section, the drums, keyboards, bass and guitar amps, and background vocalists. All that was left was a nice clean stage with a bass amp on stage right, drums in the middle and guitar amp on stage left. Much simpler than Gnarles and much simpler than most bands I see anywhere. We moved to better seats and by chance ended up behind my friend Brock. We were ready to rock!

The show started with the three instrumentalists, Flea (bass), Chad (drums), John (guitar) just jamming. This really set the tone for how the rest of the night would be. This was a show that was more about music and less about entertainment. They didn’t even play a few of their biggest hits, including Under The Bridge. It was interesting that for a band who at one time was all about shock value, did nothing shocking. They came out, hardly said more than 10 words and just played their songs. I guess some people would consider not playing any hits shocking. The crowd definitely missed those songs I noticed as I listened to what people were saying as they were leaving.

I didn’t miss them at all. I like the hits, they are some of their best songs and I can listen to them anytime, but what I can’t hear anytime is Flea, John and Chad improvising on the spot. And they did lots of that. And they did it well! I have a new appreciation of the musicianship of these guys now. I always respected them as musicians and hearing them live brings that to a whole new level.

The sound was WAY better for RHCP and their lights/video production was pretty cool too. I felt like it suited them well. The picture gives an idea of what things looked like. It was taken on my camera phone though so quality is a little weak. So all in all I had a great time and would love to go and see them again anytime we happen to be in the same city on the same night. Thanks for the show Josh!!

Glenn