Out in L.A The Red Hot Chili Peppers 1983

The Red Hot Chili Peppers' scrappy, shirtless, and occasionally pantsless early days in Los Angeles are commemorated in this obsessive history. Duncan, editor of the band's live archive website, tracks the Peppers from their first show in December of 1982 to their breakthrough a year later when bassist Flea and front man Anthony Kiedis signed with a label (and guitarist Hillel Slovak and drummer Jack Irons quit). It's a typical rock and roll saga of high school chums with boundless energy; a fresh if tuneless style blending punk, funk, and rap; and a verve for outrageous behavior (at one show the bandmates doffed everything except genital socks, a provocation that Duncan considers "a genius move"). Intertwined are colorful backstories of the clubs they played and of other bands, including Roid Rogers and the Whirling Butt Cherries. Though it bogs down in the minutiae of gigs, even dredging up weather reports to confirm a show date, Duncan's narrative paints a vivid portrait of the band--a minuscule crowd at a nightclub show "didn't stop Anthony from diving into the crowd, spinning like a top and spraying the crowd with his beer"--and of the fizzy SoCal music scene. Casual readers may find the excessive detail and adulation of these callow young rockers excessive, but hardcore Peppers fans will lap it up. Photos. (Jan.)

A fan's notes on the noted funk-rock band's emergence. "In August 2003, the Red Hot Chili Peppers were on top of the world," writes Australian archivist Duncan. "Arguably, they were the biggest band in the world at the time," so famous that they could have quit at just about any time and still be legends today. Twenty years earlier, the outlook was murkier. The nascent band, an outgrowth of the LA punk scene, had shed members, and frontman Anthony Kiedis and bassist Flea were on the brink of calling it quits. Flea wandered into the punk band Fear before rejoining Kiedis in a new enterprise: a band that, though not entirely familiar with the genre, would veer deep into funk under the original name Flow, soon to become the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Though Duncan considers him the least musical member of the group, Kiedis proved a funny and effective lead, given to dissing other acts such as Wham! and Duran Duran, while Flea essentially stole lead duties from guitarist Hillel Slovak with this funk-slap bass playing. "Slap would treat Flea well," writes the author, "and he would return to the technique on virtually every original Chili Peppers track over the next few years." As Duncan's title suggests, 1983 was the band's chrysalis year, and they performed a legendary show on Melrose Avenue on April 13. Not long after, they made waves with an anarchic appearance on Thicke of the Night, which, though pale against its mighty competitor The Tonight Show, gave the Peppers national exposure courtesy of bemused host Alan Thicke. Duncan digs deep into the band's back pages, recounting a perhaps unlikely alliance with German pop artist Nina Hagen and writing openly of the band's problems with drugs--Slovak died of a heroin overdose in 1988, and Kiedis abused drugs for decades--while appreciating their musical achievements. A worthwhile portrait of a band breaking through to the other side. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.