Red Hot Chili Peppers : Nobody Weird Like Me

Back before the Red Hot Chili Peppers lost their cojones under the bridge, they were a pretty fierce funk-punk alternative radio standard.  When Mother's Milk came out in 1989, it was still two years before Nirvana would shatter the Billboard charts (thanks to SoundScan) and bring hard rock back into vogue as a potential revenue stream.  At the time I was just discovering the college radio scene (having just gone to college and all) and was listening to Nothing's Shocking, Disintegration and Hunkpapa on heavy rotation.  (I didn't discover the Pixies until much later.)  Mother's Milk fell right into the mix.

"Nobody Weird Like Me" is a great example of the crosscutting of funk and punk the band was famous for.  It begins with a hyperactive funk bass line, hammered out by Flea in quadruple time.  It's quickly joined by jackhammer drums and a metal-ish rock riff.  The song careens along at full pace, highlighted by Anthony Kiedis' rock-rap vocals and intermittent vocoder exclamations, until it culminates in an explosion that peters out into a slow funk groove for the remaining minute or so of the song.  Blam.

"Nobody Weird Like Me" appears on the Red Hot Chili Pepper's 1989 release, Mother's Milk.

[You can listen to Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Nobody Weird Like Me" by navigating to the post "Song096" and clicking or right-clicking on the title or the link.]

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