Wednesday
Aug312011
Review: The Red Hot Chili Peppers "I'm With You" live movie
Wednesday, August 31, 2011 at 8:19AM 
Having been a Red Hot Chili Peppers fan for almost 20 years i decided last night to go see the "live" movie, where they performed their new album "I'm With You" in it's entirety via a delayed satellite feed. It's a little unclear how live it actually was, i'm guessing it was delayed a couple hours because the show seemed to be filmed in a small club in Europe (doubtful they started playing at midnight local time) and there was an asterisk beside "Live". This was a strange, strange show. First of all the mix was horrendous. I'm not sure if it was just our theater, or if this was a problem at the source but the low frequencies were cranked so loudly that you couldn't hear any of Flea's basslines or Chad's tom work aside from an annoying rumble/distortion. The guy doing percussion was great but do we really need that much tambourine in the mix? Have i mentioned the mix was horrible?
There was a strange vulnerability about the show too, Anthony Kiedis & Flea seemed visibly uncomfortable at times. Kiedis forgot lyrics (he seemed to be reading lyrics too), screwed up song structures and tripped on odd time signatures (i.e "Ethiopia"). Flea had his share of troubles too, he had a hand cramp bring the show to a halt for like 2 mins and many of his usually hilarious comments in between songs were really awkward and weird. One of the songs "Did I Let You Know" had to be performed twice because "the truck wasn't rolling" - if you know what the means please let me know in the comments. They didn't even keep the promise of playing the entire album as they missed a great track "Even You Brutus?" and there was no encore as the show seemed to be cut short. By the time they got to the older material they seemed like they couldn't wait to get out of there.
Chad's drumming was definitely the highlight, and Klinghoffer held his own pretty well but i missed Frusciante's killer backup vocals and guitar ideas. The jam with Flea seemed a bit weak & awkward, and I missed the chemistry Flea & Frusciante had.
So yeah, It was basically a shit show all round. Having said that, the new album really is fantastic and you should go buy it. Lets just hope they can figure out how to make it translate live before the tour brings them to North America.
Reader Comments (5)
It was shown at ~8pm in the UK and 9pm in Germany, so I'm guessing that was the live time (probably delayed, but not by much) and it was delay for the North American broadcast.
The mix was pretty poor awful here as well. Almost no low frequencies to begin with, then cranked up so far that it was just distorted. Not bad enough to ruin the show (I could make out the bass-lines OK), but worse than I would have expected.I do wonder if whoever was doing the mixing was just basing it on the sound in the room, and not doing a second mix for the broadcast.
It wasn't as good as their previous live shows, but I still enjoyed it. To be honest, I expected it to be below standard, as they are playing the a new album in full for the first time, introducing a new member of the band, _and_ broadcasting live around the world.
If it's ever released on DVD with an improved mix, I'd say it's worth a watch. Far from their best work, but it's nice to hear most of an album played live.
I think the best reason to watch it was to see that one of the biggest rock bands in the world fucks up too, and that they too are human. On that level it was very entertaining!
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Also, half the band wore their pyjamas to the gig.
You pretty much said what i could not effectively communicate. +1
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