“Can’t Stop”—The Red Hot Chili Peppers

Hi everyone, it's Amy Poehler and I'm launching a new podcast called Good Hang. In preparation for that, I asked some of my friends to send in some videos and give me some advice. Just be yourself and the guests will come. Don't be the celebrity that this is their sixth thing they're doing. I love chew crime and cooking podcasts. Is there any way you could combine the two? Well, everyone has an opinion and a podcast. So join me for Good Hang. It's rough out there. We're just trying to lighten it up a little. An engineer around the corner, whenever you need, British gas have over 6,000 on route at speed, fixing lights that won't light or have started to blink, a pipe with a leak, and that weird smell under the sink. If your boilers kaput and your blue fur needs a rinse, we've got your back to stop that cold water wince. You don't need to be a customer. We can help you too, taking care of things. It's what British gas do. T-Sensee supply, 6,000 engineers correct as of Jan 2026. It never even occurred to me that any of these guys would ever get old. I don't mean that ugly. I don't mean that morbidly. I didn't think we'd lose them all. I didn't think we'd lose anybody ever. I didn't think of it as, and I hope I die before I get old, situation to quote that old song by the who. The who. Wow. Now, see, these guys were crazy old. They say, do look awful. Don't hear about my generation. Don't buy a dime before I get old. Old. It is 1994, and I am 16. If you'd asked me to think of literally the oldest people on earth, I'd have thought about unfathomably ancient English rock band, the who. A band so archaic, they used to be called the hoomst. Oof. Ironically, that's my most egregious dad joke in forever. Do you have any idea how many times I deleted that joke and then retyped it? Several times. The who. Didn't these guys fight on the losing side in the American Revolutionary War? When Paul Revere yelled, the Brutus are coming. Wasn't he talking about one of the who's various farewell tours? The who all wrapped up like mummies and coughing crypt dust into each other's faces as they sleepwalk through their hilariously ancient 1965 smash hit My Generation. In 1994, My Generation by the who was a 29-year-old rock and roll song. And as a teenager, I just could not conceive of that age. You know it's a 29-year-old rock song right now? Bulls on parade. The who, the line I hope I die before I get old might as well have originally appeared in the Bible in the Old Testament. No disrespect to the who, of course. There are link with history. But sheesh. Literally all I knew about the who when I was 16 was that they were preposterously old. Like they might be giants. One of my all-time favorite bands. As a 16-year-old, one of my favorite, they might be giants songs was called I hope that I get old before I die. And I sincerely doubt I even got the reference. But we're doomed and we're drowned by this feeling we surround. So I hope that I get old before I die. Oh. No, I did not understand that this song from the self-titled 1986 debut album from my all-time favorite band, they might be giants. I did not understand that I hope that I get old before I die was just I hope I die before I get old reversed. I just really liked how John Flansberg and John Lanell from They Might Be Giants went ooooooooh before the chorus. Oh, it's a long, long rope that used to hang you soon, I hope. And I wonder why this hasn't happened, why, why, why? And I think about the dirt that I'll be wearing for a shirt. And I hope that I get old before I die. Hilarious, delightful, and there I was at 16, delighted and oblivious. In 1988, talking to the Boston Globe, John Lanell of They Might Be Giants explained that compared to the alternative, I hope that I get old before I die, quote, seemed the more correct point of view. A lot of our songs are really pretty negative, but they're put in a friendly, sounding way. In that case, I was thinking about how our society doesn't look up to its elderly and feeling like the old man I'll eventually become, end quote. I think John Lanell was 29 when he said that. And in 1994, it had not yet occurred to me that John would one day become an old man and that all the other rock stars I obliviously worshiped would become old men as well. But of course, several rock stars I obliviously worshiped never got the chance. It's corny to just play the Stark somber guitar intro, right? Yeah, it's super corny and melodramatic. But hey, guess what? That's what I was at 16. Corny and melodramatic and oblivious. This is a Pearl Jam song from 1994. It is called Immortality. Back then I thought Pearl Jam were immortal. And if you want the truth, I thought I was immortal as well. But like always, Stark and somber Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder tried his best to set me straight. So immediately the line cannot find the comfort in this world rattles 16 year old me. Quite a bit. I relate to that sentiment quite a bit, but I can't find the comfort in this world because I'm 16 and no girls will invite me to the sweetheart's dance or whatever. Whereas when Eddie Vedder sings, I cannot find the comfort in this world. I suspect he's talking about being a rock star. At this point, if I understand anything about Eddie Vedder, I understand that Eddie Vedder is a tortured rock star. He does not like it. He has been imprisoned. He has been exploited. He has been robbed of his privacy and his autonomy. How would Eddie put it? Eddie might say that he is a victim in demand for public show. Here they are now, entertain them. And at least subconsciously, I understand that I am personally feeding this victimizing demand for public show that as an oblivious 16 year old that worships Eddie Vedder, I am part of the problem. I am not a victim. I am a victim. I am a victim. I am a victim. I am a victim. I am a victim. I am a victim. I am a victim. I am a victim. I am a victim. I am part of the problem. I am part of that demanding mob. Eddie Vedder loves the who. By the way, every interview I read with a guy back then he would be gassing on about how great the who are. And meanwhile, I am sitting there in my orthodontist's office reading that and going, yeah, whatever. Even like Beethoven thought the who were old. Immortality is the last real song on Pearl Jam's third and best album. Released in 1994 and called Vitalogy. The last track on Vitalogy is Stupid Mop. That eight minute long weirdo sound collage that nobody liked. Stupid Mop doesn't count. Vitalogy is the CD that didn't come in a normal CD jewel case. It came in a thinner, taller, pretentious, old-timey, fancy cardboard type booklet that looked weird and annoying and too tall on the shelf with all your other CDs. Pearl Jam were never terribly subtle about their refusal to conform. But now Eddie's got even bigger problems. Vitalogy comes out in November 1994. And by then, every new song Eddie sings is being ruthlessly analyzed and often baselessly interpreted as a possible reference to him. By him, of course, I mean Nirvana frontman and victimized spokesman for a generation, Kurt Cobain. Holier than thou, how? Surrendered, executed anyhow. Scrawled, dissolved, cigar box on the floor. Kurt Cobain took his own life. His body was discovered on April 8, 1994. He was 27. And if you know, quite frankly, way more than any stranger ought to know about the physical circumstances of Kurt Cobain's death, you may know that a cigar box containing drugs and drug paraphernalia was discovered near his body. So Eddie Vedder is interviewed by the Los Angeles Times. He talks to famous LA Times rock critic Robert Hilburn in November 1994. And Robert Hilburn asks, flat out, is immortality about Kurt Cobain an Eddie Vedder size? And Eddie Vedder says that the cigar box in immortality refers to his own personal cigar box, Eddie's cigar box, where Eddie keeps his tapes. And Eddie Vedder says, quote, it's not about Kurt. Nothing on the album was written directly about Kurt. And I don't feel like talking about him because it might be seen as exploitation. But I think there might be some things in the lyrics that you could read into and maybe we'll answer some questions or help you understand the pressures on someone who is on a parallel train. End quote. Meanwhile, here's how absurdly hard I personally am listening to Eddie Vedder. When I was 16, I even thought this dude's random off-mic mumbling was hopelessly profound. Right at the end of the immortality guitar solo, great solo, by the way, this song's vibe is not conducive to air guitar. Air guitar in this circumstance would be inappropriate, but just know that I do always consider playing air guitar anyway. Right at the end of the immortality guitar solo, you can ever so faintly hear Eddie Vedder mumble something. He just goes, there's like one faintly audible, hard consonant, maybe. And you got to picture me in my teenage bedroom trying to cram my entire head into the little hole in the speakers on my CD player radio tape deck combo stereo in my attempt to decipher what Eddie is mumbling here. Squint your ears. I imagine that Eddie Vedder would justifiably find it quite intrusive and also annoying to have corny, oblivious, melodramatic, dipstick teenagers cycle analyzing his mumbles. The concluding lines of immortality, I had a little less trouble deciphering. Some die just to live. That line, that concept, I could vaguely grasp as the 90s rumbled on. And as I got older, definitely and smarter, maybe. And as we did, in fact, lose so many beloved 90s rock stars. Bradley Noel, Shannon Hoon, Jeff Buckley, Kristen Faff, Mark Sandman, Laine Staley, Elliott Smith, Scott Wylan, Shanae O'Connor, Dolores O'Rearden, Chris Cornell, Mimi Parker, Prince. That's not nearly all of them. And I learn slowly that loving their music and obsessing over their every utterance might trick me into thinking I actually know any of these people, but I don't. I'm hung up right now in another thing Eddie Vedder says in this 1994 LA Times interview. He's talking about the Pearl Jam, the vitality song, Quarter Roy, which I don't believe has ever been played on a podcast before. And Eddie says, quote, it's about a relationship, but not between two people. It's more one person's relationship with a million people. In fact, that song is almost a little too obvious for me. That's why instead of a lyric sheet, we put in an x-ray of my teeth from last January. And they are all in very bad shape, which was analogous to my head at the time, end quote. The Vitality book glue is pretty cool, but also very pretentious and annoyingly sized. And so then I go back and listen to Quarter Roy again, and I'm just now realizing today that Eddie Vedder sings, I don't want to hear from those who know. They can buy, but can't put on my clothes. They can buy, but can't put on my clothes. That's what Eddie Vedder sings there. Please don't ask me what I always thought Eddie was singing there. Naked by the can, put on my clothes. That's what I thought he was singing. Naked by the can, amazing. Never would have known of me before. I don't think I ever totally got that line either. How do you reasonably appropriately mourn a rock star you've never met? Starting on April 8th, 1994, when we learned that Kurt Cobain was gone, we all struggled with how to mourn somebody who already seemed to have been actively and perhaps fatally poisoned by all our attention and adulation. We all struggled. Okay, I personally may have struggled with how to think about how to remember, how to eulogize Kurt Cobain. Without further making him a victim in demand for public show. In my defense though, lots of the other rock stars I worship were struggling with how to mourn Kurt also. You ever go back to an album that you've listened to and talked about and written about like a billion times over the course like 30 years? But now suddenly you focus on one line and one song that you'd never really focused on in all that time and that one line knocks you flat on your ass for several hours? I'm dealing with that right now. With the line, I had a mind to try and stop you. Let me in, let me in. Off the song called Let Me In, off the September 1994 album called Monster, by the extravagantly deified by me and others, but most importantly me, rock band R.E.M. And Monster is the album where R.E.M. famously do the typical 90s alternative rock star thing that R.E.M. usually famously don't do. Here and only here, they drown many of their songs in righteous electric guitar distortion. Let's not even get into what percentage of my adolescence I spent trying to decipher R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe's gorgeously elliptical abstract poetry, but now as a bonus layer of abstraction, Michael Stipe is bathed in and muffled by waves of guitar god doodliness. And I've got tar on my feet and I can't see all the birds look down and laugh at me, clumsy, crawling out of my skin. Let Me In is about Kurt Cobain. The song is addressed in vain to Kurt Cobain. The song is written as a phone call to Kurt Cobain that Michael Stipe never made. Talking to the British station Radio X in 2019, Michael says, quote, There were a lot of phone calls before that imagined one. I was really trying to pull him out of a very, very dark place. We all knew it and we were doing everything we could to help, but it wasn't enough. I wrote the lyrics in five minutes and recorded it in as much time. It was our my plea to Kurt too bad. End quote. Too bad. Oof. After I got done dealing with the line, I had a mind to try and stop you. I was once again unprepared. I got knocked to my ass again by Michael's switch to falsetto in the chorus right here. Oof. Righteous snarling, muffling guitar distortion is a central component of many prominent, devastating Kurt Cobain tribute songs, including this one. Patty Smith, The Patty Smith, About a Boy Beyond It All. Oof. This song is from Patty Smith's 1996 album Gone Again. And by 1996, Patty had already endured myriad crushing personal losses. From her dear friend and famous photographer, superstar Robert Maplethorpe, to her husband and famous rock star Fred Sonic Smith. So this song could be about many different famous beloved people, or it could be about all of them. But this song is called About a Boy. So the other explicit Kurt reference in this song actually is when Patty admits that they'd never met. The Boy. I'm moving at. The Boy. And by this point in the song, the drummer's really going off. The drummer has taken it upon himself to kick some ass alongside all the stormy, raging, cathartic, doodly guitars. But it's the way Patty so reverently and furiously sings the line, Oh boy, I knew thee not. That really rattles me here because she didn't. And mostly we didn't. We can buy but can't put on Kurt's clothes. And for the vast majority of us, it would therefore be intrusive and frightening, and almost further victimizing, to sing the words, I embrace you to Kurt Cobain. But because she's Patty Smith, Patty Smith can sing these words furiously, but still make them feel like a legitimate comforting embrace. Oof. You want maximum oof? The high pitched too late, too soon backing vocals here are maximum oof. The Boy. Neil Young. The Neil Young sleeps with angels from 1994, August 1994, only three months or so after Kurt passed in April, only three months or so after Kurt in his widely publicized suicide note quoted Neil Young's old famous line, it's better to burn out than fade away. Oof, oof, oof. I have seized upon this rather glib and insufficient word oof, in a feeble attempt to describe crushing emotional resonance while also insulating myself from it. It's a defense mechanism. Excuse me. Thus far, these songs didn't get on alternative rock radio much, but somewhat unexpectedly, this one did. Here we have an alternative rock band from Gainesville, Florida called Four Squirrels, F-O-R, Four Squirrels for the benefit of squirrels. This song is called Mighty KC. This is a great, sad, strikingly tuneful, half grouchy and half classic R.E.M. Jangleys surprise hit with an awful backstory. Shortly before Mighty KC became a minor hit, two members of Four Squirrels, singer Jack Vigliottura and bassist Bill White, were killed in a tour van accident on September 8, 1995, along with their tour manager Tim Bender, which makes this song a cathartic eulogy for a super famous rock star that doubles as an eerie, self-delivered eulogy for the aspiring and ascending rock stars who wrote and played it. If there are other examples of this phenomenon in cathartic rock and roll eulogy history, I don't want to think about them right now. This is a song from 2003 by the phenomenal enigmatic singer-songwriter Sean Marshall, better known professionally as Cat Power. I don't feel like saying the song title yet. They said you were the best, but then they were only kids. She can't put it any planer than that. Wait, never mind. Turns out she can put it planer. Just because they knew your name doesn't mean they know from where you came. Just because they knew your name doesn't mean they know from where you came. Just because they bought your clothes doesn't mean they can wear your clothes. For almost a decade, Sean Marshall tried to avoid saying outright who this song was about, but in 2012 she told the Guardian it was about Kurt Cobain. Anyway, this song is called I Don't Blame You. Oof. Yeah, I got nothing. I got nothing other than oof, man. The tenderness and the empathy of this song, the furious embrace, the terrible understanding she gets it. That's why I Don't Blame You works. That's why I Don't Blame You hurts. I am fairly certain Sean Marshall didn't personally know Kurt Cobain either. And what does hit me so hard about all these songs is the substantial physical and spiritual and personal distance between all these famous singers and the famous rock star they're all eulogizing. But I suppose I should briefly note that all these songs are shattering and cathartic and great, but nothing compares to really anything on this topic written and sung by her. And by her, I mean whole mastermind, Courtney Love, who was married to Kurt. This song, Boys on the Radio, is maybe not the most explicitly Kurt centric song on the phenomenal 1996 whole album, Celebrity Skin, but it is my favorite ever whole song. And I think that counts for something. It's the substantial physical and spiritual and personal distance between Courtney Love and all the crashing and burning boys on the radio that does it for me here. How close to someone you feel hearing them on the radio, despite how impossibly far apart you are, even if you know them, even if you're married to one of them. The extra snarly guitar that kicks in right here does it for me as well. And here is the terrible, shattering flip side to Patty Smith singing, Oh boy, I knew the knot, I embrace you. Boys on the radio is an embrace from very arguably the single human who knew Kurt Cobain best. If this song didn't kick so much ass, I'd find it unbearable. You could say that this song's beauty blinds. That's what the song says about him. Oh, And this beauty, his beauty brings us to the most recent Kurt Cobain tributes on that I stumbled Or rather, it's a song I've known for like 30 years and just now realized was a Kurt Cobain tribute song. I don't feel too bad for taking so long to get this one, though. This song is called Tear Jerker, one word, Tear Jerker. It is brought to us by Los Angeles rock band, the Red Hot Chili Peppers. And can you blame me really for assuming for the better part of three decades that Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Ketus was tenderly singing these words to a young lady? How many Red Hot Chili Peppers songs across this band's brace yourself 40 plus year career are NC17 serenades to a perfect mess of a young lady sitting backstage in a dress? I was listening to this whole record one hot minute from 1995, my first Red Hot Chili Peppers CD, and you never forget your first. I was taking my dorky little notes on this record and this song, Tear Jerker came up and I wrote something snotty like, another song about a young lady. And I was just tremendously impressed with myself and my powers of song comprehension. I also wrote down, is that how you pronounce the word requite? You never knew this, but I wanted badly for you to requit my love. And look, maybe you know me and maybe you don't, but if you know one thing about me, you should know that I maybe ought to not criticize anybody else for mispronouncing shit I might have known. I might have figured out who Tear Jerker is about a decade or two before I did, but can you blame me really for just assuming that I like your whiskers with some freaky NC17 sex type thing? No, no, no, no, you pervert. Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Ketus is talking about. He's singing to his morning. He is eulogizing Kurt Cobain, he of the whiskers and the pale blue eyes and the dimple in his chin. In his 2004 memoir called Scar Tissue, Anthony writes about meeting Kurt for the first time, quote, he looked torn up like he had just come off a hard bender. He was wearing a ripped dress and his skin was bad and he looked like he hadn't slept for a few days, but he was just so beautiful in a different way. I was blown away by his presence and his aura, end quote. And then one day Anthony found out that Kurt was gone. And look, maybe you know Anthony Ketus and maybe you don't. You know him or you know of him. It's unlikely you know him personally. But if you know one thing about this guy, it's that Anthony Ketus is, let's say, a C plus singer and an A plus plus plus plus frontman. Pitchiness is not a relevant concept with regards to this person. Maybe he hits the notes, you know, musicologically, or maybe he doesn't. Did I pronounce that right? I don't care. But 100% guaranteed he will nail the vibe. And so it goes when Anthony Ketus pitchily sings those words left on the floor, leaving your body. In his memoir, Scar tissue, talking about Kurt Cobain's death, Anthony writes, quote, it was an emotional blow and we all felt it. I don't know why everyone on earth felt so close to that guy. He was beloved and endearing and inoffensive in some weird way for all of his screaming and all of his darkness, he was just lovable. So his death hit us hard and it changed our whole experience out there. It did wake up a thing inside of me that wanted to express my love for him in a particular way without having it be an obvious ode to end quote. See, he didn't want this song to be obviously about Kurt Cobain. I feel way better about not getting it now. Or at least I feel better until Anthony Ketus with C plus musical notes and a plus plus plus plus vibes, croons of the words, guess now you know, I love you so. And now I'm depressed again. Oof. What does Anthony Ketus mean exactly when he writes, so his death hit us hard and it changed our whole experience out there? What does our whole experience out there mean? Does it mean Anthony and all his friends living in the regular world? Or does it mean Anthony Ketus and all his fellow rock stars living in the rock star world? Did Kurt Cobain's death dramatically affect the way all rock stars felt about rock stardom? Did it dramatically affect the way all rock stars felt about their music? I am struck by something Neil Young said in his 2002 biography, shaky about Kurt Cobain. Neil says quote, what that suicide has done is returned me to my roots makes me go back and investigate where I started, where I came from. Why am I here and why is he not here? Does my music suffer because I survived? End quote. And suddenly I'm not back on my ass. Does my music suffer because I survived? Survivors Guild is a terrible punishing undercurrent of any great eulogy song, whether it's sung by Neil Young or Michael Stipe or Patty Smith, or the four squirrel singer who was already gone by the time most of America heard his voice. Does my music suffer because I survived? Is just another more songwriter-centric way to rephrase the question, is it better to burn out than fade away? Does the answer to that question change if you're talking about an artist versus a regular person? Is it better for an artist to burn out versus a regular person? Is it better for the art long term if the artist burns out instead of fading away? Because so many of the rock stars I obliviously worshipped as a 90s teenager burned out and left us abruptly and never got to play music for us again, which triggers this endless colossal wave of public grief that never breaks and can never be fully separated from the music itself. So many of these dudes never got to be old men. But on the other hand, quite a few of them did. It's corny to just play the righteous funky guitar intro, right? Sure it is. But hey, guess what? That's what I am now at 47. Corny, righteous, and funky. My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 22nd episode of 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, Colen, the 2000s. And this week we are discussing Can't Stop by the Red Hot Chili Peppers from their 2002 album, By the Way, because they're still addicted to the shindig and so am I. You know what I can't stop doing specifically? Waiting too long to do the ad break. Excuse me for a second. They're growing up. Won't be long before the thought of a family holiday is just. But with Hilton's staycations all over the UK, we don't need to go far to feel close. And with connecting rooms confirmed when we book, we'll have plenty of space to make the most of every moment. Everyone in the photo. When time away means time together, it matters where you stay. Book now at hilton.com. Hilton for this day. Oof. A lot of grief, a lot of heaviness thus far. We gotta liven it up around here. I'll think of something. The Red Hot Chili Peppers formed in Los Angeles in 1983. For the past, brace yourselves again, 40 plus years, the Red Hot Chili Peppers have devoted themselves to the core principles of, let's see here, what are the core principles of the Red Hot Chili Peppers? Wanton funkiness, sexual and non-sexual, but mostly sexual ecstasy. The core principle that drugs are the cause of and solution to all of life's problems, to paraphrase Homer Simpson once again. The core principle of astounding technical excellence, that's mostly Flea, the bass player, and equally astounding vibes-based excellence, that's mostly Anthony Ketus, the frontman. And finally, let's not forget the core principle of male nudity, or to use a more concise phrase, dudity. They can't buy your clothes and try to put on your clothes if you're not wearing clothes. That's just logic. The Red Hot Chili Peppers blew up with their fifth album, released in 1991 and produced by Rick Rubin and called Blood Sugar Sex Magic, and including the smash hits under the bridge and give it away, but also breaking the girl and I could have lied and suck my kiss, etc. Indeed, way back in 2021, pretty early on when this program was still devoted entirely to the 90s, we devoted an episode to Under the Bridge, and that episode began with my proprietary list of the top 20 worst Red Hot Chili Peppers song titles in ascending order of badness, not worst songs. Some of the songs themselves are excellent. Worst song titles. The Red Hot Chili Peppers excel at terrible song titles, but nobody wants to hear that list again. Go listen to the Under the Bridge episode sometime if you want, but there's no earthly reason to rehash. Look out! Top 20 worst Red Hot Chili Peppers song titles in ascending order of badness, 2.0. These fellas put out two new full-length albums in 2022, so we got some updates. We got some exciting new entries on the countdown. I moved shit around arbitrarily, just like last time. The songs might be good, but the song titles ain't. Here we go. Number 20, Funky Crime. Number 19, Even You, Brutus? That's Even You, Brutus? Question mark. Number 18, Get On Top. Number 17, Sir Psycho Sexy. I had forgotten that our first Red Hot Chili Peppers episode, the Under the Bridge episode, it ends with me, reciting several pornographic lyrical couplets from the NC17 Red Hot Chili Peppers song, Sir Psycho Sexy. I don't even play this song. I just read the lyrics. I recited several mortifying lyrical passages. I read the lyrics to the verse where Anthony Kitas gets pulled over by a lady cop. I swatted her like no SWAT team can. Turned a cherry pie right into jam. Why did I do that? Does anyone know why I did that? Number 16, Shallow Be Thy Game. Number 15, Lovin' and Touchin'. Number 14, Tipa Mai Tong. That's new. Tipa is spelled T-I-P-P-A. Tipa Mai Tong. That one's extra bad because it's from 2022 and they're old men now and they should know better. Number 13, No Chump Love Sucker. Number 12, Grand Pappy Du Plenty. That's secretly my favorite. Number 11, Ethiopia. Okay, Ethiopia is higher this time on this list of the worst Red Hot Chili Peppers song titles, which implies that this song title has gotten worse. But I do have a better understanding now of why this song exists. This song is from 2011 and it's about a then recent life-changing musical field trip to Ethiopia taken by iconic Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Michael Balsary, better known as Flea. In 2019, Flea published a memoir called Acid for the Children. It's primarily about his childhood. This book ends basically with the first Red Hot Chili Peppers show in 1983. Old, but he begins with a quick flash forward. So I would like to read for you now the first paragraph of Flea's memoir. You ready? Okay. Quote, Ethiopia, I yearn for you. I aspire to you to feel you again reminding me of who I am and what I am for. Your common sense reducing me to a sobbing wreck, tears of relief, a river of caring flowing down my tired cheeks, the smell of Ethiopia, of cot leaves, dust and coffee, filled me up as soon as I arrived, satiating and reviving me, making me full of emotion and clear of vision to see the most beautiful people I'd ever seen. Their houses breathe fire, their food heals you from the inside out, and their music, the thing that brought me there, makes one little flea lurch out of his chair and vibrates like a hummingbird. Descending into ancient churches carved out of a subterranean stone, then boarding a bus with a group of fellow musicians, riding through the open hilly countryside, laid out on the roof of that bus, eyes full of sky rushing by, hills growing to and fro, and women with buckets on their heads sashaying to the rhythm of their lives. Ethiopia embraced me, kept me safe, danced with me, and gave me coffee and cake. End quote. All right, number 10, skinny, sweaty man. Number nine, aquatic mouth dance. That's also from 2022. I'm not listening to that one. Number eight, she's only 18. As we noted last time, this song came out in 2006 when the Red Hot Chili Peppers were already roughly in their mid 40s. And I confess that every time I see this song title, I think about all the photos I've seen on the internet of Anthony Ketus now and his girlfriend now, his girlfriend who appears to be one third his age. And that in turn makes me think of the jokes everyone on the internet makes about Leonardo DiCaprio and all his girlfriends who are one third his age. Specifically, the seemingly objective fact that Leonardo DiCaprio won't date anyone over 25, which led somebody to order a cake that I once saw on the internet with Leonardo DiCaprio's face. And then the words, no, don't turn 25. You're so sexy. Aha. Anyway, that's what I think about when I see the Red Hot Chili Peppers song title. She's only 18. Number seven, Catholic school girls rule. Number six, the title of this one. Number six is that. All right. Last time I said that song title, but I don't know why I did that either. And I certainly don't feel like saying it again. At least that one's from 1987. All right. Top five worst Red Hot Chili Peppers song titles. Let's get this done. Number five, sex rap. Number four, stone cold bush. Number three, sexy Mexican maid. Number two, I don't feel like saying number two again either. Fela Cootie is involved. Forget it. I'm not saying that again. And finally, at number one, the undisputed, the incandescent, the indomitable, the immortal, the all time worst Red Hot Chili Peppers song title. Hump de bump. Oh my God. Hump de bump sounds like you just walked in on Anthony Ketus and your mom conceiving Maroon five. That is the worst description of anything that I have ever written in my life. However, it is also accurate. Sometimes I like that song, but right now I do not. Okay. All right. Everybody's settled down. Now it's too lively in here. Grief, morning, survivor's guilt, carrying on in the face of crushing personal and societal loss. These are also core principles of the Red Hot Chili Peppers experience. Can I tell you my favorite song on blood sugar, sex magic right now? Incredible record. You don't need me to tell you that, but apparently I still need me to tell me that this record came out in 1991. And therefore it is years old. And every time I start this record, I forgotten how much I love it. And every time when I'm finished, I love this record even more. And I have a new favorite song. Right now, my favorite song on blood sugar, sex magic is called My Lovely Man. The baseline to My Lovely Man is so incredible that I didn't immediately register that Anthony Ketus is singing, Oh, well, I'm crying. Oh, my lovely man. Incredible baseline. Man, I feel about Flea the way Flea feels about Ethiopia. But yeah, Anthony is singing these words. Oh, well, I'm crying. Oh, my lovely man. Specifically to his dear friend and founding Red Hot Chili Peppers guitar player Hillel Slovak, who died of a drug overdose on June 25, 1988. He was 26. The Red Hot Chili Peppers as a rock band and as individual super vibey off naked human beings, these fellas had already endured crushing personal and societal loss long before they got truly famous. They were survivors long before they were celebrities. And so many of this band's colossal, anthemic hit songs are about survival. They're about the guilt and the internal conflict and the grudging acceptance of being alive and being a rock star, while so many of your rock star and non rock star friends are gone. One Hot Minute from 1995 is maybe nobody's favorite Red Hot Chili Peppers album, but it was my first CD of theirs. And my friends might have been the first song of theirs I truly loved. And I'm just now today realizing that in the bridge to that song, Anthony Kitas sings Imagine Me, Taught by Tragedy. Okay, so he sings Imagine Me. Yeah, so Anthony does not sing these words. He doesn't sing most words with technical beauty, pure say, but he sings pretty much any words with a singular, shattering emotional beauty. Yes, put it like this, he sings the word peace like he truly means it and desires it. You feel me? No, you don't feel me? That's fine, but you'll feel him. And perhaps he'll feel you as well. Is my friends just a diminishing returns rewrite of Under the Bridge? Perhaps. I'm not going to argue with that. But a diminishing returns rewrite of Under the Bridge still kicks a whole lot of ass. The One Hot Minute record produced once again by Rick Rubin ends with a song called Transcending, which features yet another incredible Flea baseline. And that baseline may in turn distract you from the fact that this song is a tender and lacerating ode to the actor River Phoenix, who died of a drug overdose on October 31, 1993. He was 23. I am just now grasping that Anthony Kitas sings the words, friends near death, you gave respect, sympathetic intellect, choices are for one and all, all we are is leaves that fall. Oof. No, as an oblivious teenager, I just thought it was funny the way Anthony Kitas flippantly goes, that's all. Like he's in a Looney Tunes cartoon. The other part of this song, Transcending that I really immediately liked was the loud, slow, screaming part at the end, where Anthony Kitas screams, fuck the magazines, etc. Because this is also a song about celebrity exploitation. Not that I wasn't obsessively reading those magazines, mind you, but still, you know, fuck them. Oh, fuck the green machine. Stay like you're away in that living stream. Specifically, he sings, fuck the magazines, fuck the green machine, see the human being in the loving stream. So in the loving stream, because we're talking about River Phoenix, and see the human being because we don't often see the human being in the celebrity who's in all the magazines and unwittingly fueling the green machine. Great rad doodly guitar on that song, Transcending as well. Courtesy of guitar god and Jane's addiction luminary Dave Navarro, he of the tattoos and the multiple piercings and the shirtlessness and the live moss mentality. The Red Hot Chili Peppers have employed and often fired and occasionally rehired a great many guitar players. Founding guitarist Hillel Slovak played on their first three records, and after his passing for their fourth album, released in 1988 and called Mother's Milk, the band brought on guitarist John Frashante, completing the band's most famous and also current lineup of Anthony Kitas on vocals, Flea on bass, John Frashante on guitar, and Chad Smith on drums. This is the lineup that next makes blood sugar sex magic and gets super famous. And in fact, they get so super famous that John Frashante quits the band not for the last time. In 1999, John told the website nyrock.com, quote, it was too high, too far, too soon, end quote. For the record, John Frashante quitting the Red Hot Chili Peppers because they're too famous is the most pearl jam ask thing about the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Thusly, one hot minute from 1995 is very much a transitional Red Hot Chili Peppers album, in part because it's Dave Navarro's only album with the band. He gets fired in 1998 and John Frashante comes back and John seems chiller now. More serene, more content. He's vibier. Or perhaps it's simply that he's older. But aren't we all? In 1999, the Red Hot Chili Peppers released their seventh album, produced yet again by Rick Rubin and called California Cation. This song is called Scar Tissue and it's the vocal harmonies here, right? The sweet, yelpy, laid back, endearing, backing vocals courtesy of both Flea and John Frashante. These guys are emphatically not the Beach Boys, in terms of their musical or personal philosophies, but there are parallels. Yes, they are boys on the beach. Yes, you can smell the Pacific Ocean in each and every Red Hot Chili Peppers song, amidst various other smells. Meanwhile, guitar solo wise, John Frashante doesn't usually play a whole ton of notes, but he rings the maximum amount of pathos and ecstasy out of each note. Yes? And with apologies to Dave Livmas Navarro and that Josh Klingoffer guy who joined up in 2007 and stuck around until 2019, with apologies to every other Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist, for that matter, this is the moment. The climactic Scar Tissue guitar solo is the definitive 40-second argument for why John Frashante was put on this earth to play guitar in this band. John Frashante can simultaneously embody absolute chaos and absolute oceanic calm. The Red Hot Chili Peppers are not quite old men in 1999, but as they mosey further down the path to old manhood, this band's oceanic calm will slowly overpower the absolute chaos, but the oceanic calm will result in some of the most alarmingly beautiful music you've ever heard in your life. And again, it's the alarmingly beautiful and the shockingly forlorn vocal harmonies here on other side. Easily my favorite song on Californication and one of my favorite things this band's ever done. Other side is about drug addiction. It's about the line between drug addiction and recovery, but it's also unavoidably about the line between life and death. The line between surviving and not surviving. The line between burning out and fading away. The line between the rock star being eulogized and the rock star doing the eulogizing. But yeah, okay, mostly this song on other side is about drugs. I just always assumed that right here, Anthony Ketus was singing something more complicated and profound than I don't believe it's bad. But no, he's literally singing I don't believe it's bad. And furthermore, he's literally singing I don't believe it's bad about drug addiction. Talking about this song in his 2004 memoir, Scar Tissue, Anthony Ketus writes, I don't believe that drug addiction is inherently bad. It's a really dark and heavy and destructive experience. But what I trade my experience for that of a normal person. Hell no, it was ugly. And there is nothing I know that hurts as bad, but I wouldn't trade it for a minute. It's that appreciation of every emotion in the spectrum that I live for. And that's quite a provocative idea. And what makes this song so effective for me is that with just a few simple words and a few simple notes, both Anthony Ketus's lyrics and John Frashante's guitar solo get the full force of that provocation across. It's not that John can't shred in the classic super fancy notes, guitar, God sense. But what makes him truly elite is his ability to shred with like five notes, right? It's emotional shredding. It's metaphysical shredding. And then of course, there is Californication, the song in which our old friend, Mighty Casey briefly, but memorably appears. I didn't know Anthony Ketus was going to bring up Alderaan, the planet, the Death Star blows up in Star Wars. This is the second straight episode of the show to mention Alderaan. I embrace these sorts of cosmic coincidences, but really, I just wanted to play you that verse for Cobain, can you hear the spheres singing songs off station to station? Shout out David Bowie and shout out Darth Vader. California Cation, the album sells 16 million copies worldwide. It's bigger than even blood sugar sex magic. The world, it would appear, prefers the red hot chili peppers more as older, thoughtful men than as younger, wily rap scallions. Granted, there are only eight years between blood sugar sex magic in 1991 and California Cation in 1999. But based solely on the super gnarly drug related content in Anthony Ketus's memoir, it's the longest eight years in recorded history. Actually, that book has a legitimately great description of the divide between the younger and the older iterations of the red hot chili peppers. It's a longer passage, but it's worth it. Anthony is describing how bizarre and uncomfortable it felt to suddenly get huge around 1991. And he says, quote, another time I was riding my mountain bike by my house and a random car drove by and I heard under the bridge blaring out the window. I realized that our music was now in the public domain and no longer some underground phenomenon, which made me a bit more shy and reclusive. Ironically, Flea and I spent most of our lives craving attention and trying to create a spectacle, doing outlandish things to be seen and heard and felt. One time back at Fairfax High, we found out the corner of Westwood and Wilshire Boulevard was the busiest intersection in the world. So we drank a bit and split a quailude and went down to that corner, shimmied up a pole, and climbed onto an enormous billboard that looked down on that busy intersection. We stripped naked and danced around, swinging our dicks for every passerby to see. It felt like the whole world was watching and that felt good. A memorable moment when we could be exhibitionists and performers and daredevils and junior lawbreakers all at the same time. Now we were on those billboards instead of dancing naked in front of them. So I didn't feel the compulsion to fight for attention or brag about how amazing our music was anymore. And so, as the Red Hot Chili Peppers transition from the 90s to the 2000s, from the 20th century to the 21st, a transition plenty of other famous alternative rock bands didn't survive, our heroes are now at least partially clothed on billboards, not swinging their dicks whilst prancing around in front of those billboards. But sometimes they can still sound like they're both. The first Red Hot Chili Peppers album of the 21st century comes out in 2002 and is called By the Way. Rick Rubin, Emperor of Naps, famed master of vibes over technical ability, telepathic horizontal Yogi Rick Rubin is still behind the boards, or perhaps he is snoozing beneath the boards. Thoughtful melancholy is increasingly the dominant lyrical and musical mode. Survival is still the goal, the gift, the curse, the glorious honorable burden, and can't stop is where it all peaks. Nothing Anthony Kittis says on this song is quite as important as how he says it. The ardor, the stridency of his quasi-rapping, the simple hypnotic loop of this verse over the hypnotic simplicity of this gently ass-kicking John Frisciante guitar riff. And yet again, it's the vocal harmonies that really push this song over the top, the prettiness, the eeriness, the frailty almost. The background vocals are where I hear the loss, where the soul of this band increasingly resides. These wacky, self-destructive, seemingly immortal, old man-ass knuckleheads. It's when they sing together that I most strongly feel their presence. And when I can feel them mourning all the sudden permanent absences they've already endured. No, I'm not 100% certain what I'm talking about, but I'm way less certain about what Anthony Kittis is talking about. Those backing vocals, man. This song does have a chorus, but the chorus doesn't really matter. The verses of Can't Stop are way, way catchier than the chorus. That's always a neat trick. White heat screaming in the jungle, Ask the Dust, 50 belly dancers. Lyrically, we're just vibing here. Don't overthink it, but don't underthink it either. Can't Stop is a song about how this band can't stop, or any way they won't stop. And neither should you. It's a song about survival, about forward motion that justifies itself. What you say is nowhere near as important as the simple, beautiful, miraculous fact that you're around to keep saying it. Look out, the stone cold bush guy is about to sing the line, I'll get you into penetration. Yeah, you will. And he eventually rhymes it with worth your weight, the gold of meditation. Stupendous. No other band in world history would do this shit because no other band in history can. But what's my absolute favorite part of this song? You guessed it, pal. Please baseline during John Foschante's guitar solo is much busier than the guitar solo itself. That also is a neat trick. The elder statesman on the billboards can show just as much vitality as the young naked doofuses dancing around in front of the billboards. That perhaps is the greatest trick of all. That and staying alive amid so much terrible, pointless, inevitable death. Real quick, the last song in this album, by the way, is called Venice Queen, and I like it a whole lot. G-L-O-R-I-A is Gloria Scott, a drug consular and mentor and close friend of Anthony Kitas, who died of lung cancer. Another crushing absence, another alarmingly beautiful eulogy. This is still 2002. The red-eyed chili peppers aren't old men yet. They haven't even written songs, she's only 18 and a hump-dee-bump yet. But even now, they understand that the longer they live, the more friends they outlive. It's that simple. Big finish now. This is gonna hurt. We got more beautiful backing vocals and rad minimalist guitar to help us get through it. The waves you made will always be. That's such a perfectly Californian way to put it. Some die just to live, and some keep on living just to make sure we never forget it. We are so thrilled and honored to be joined today by the Ting-Tings, the duo of Katie White and Jules D. Martino. Their first album, 2008, we started nothing in Coup de la Hits. That's not my name, and shut up and let me go. They've put out four albums since then, including their latest album, which is out right now and is called Home. Katie and Jules, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having us. Thank you. I was so honored and so excited to talk to you, and I sent you this giant, arduous list of 2000 songs and artists, and I would have talked to you about any of them, but you picked the red-hot chili peppers, and I am extra thrilled about that. What is it about these dudes that really speaks to you? Well, we got, I think, for two of us for different reasons. Katie got into them at a different time or a different record than I did, so you can stop. I mean, for me, it was, I probably missed their first couple of albums, and then what kind of pulled me into them was, by the way, really, and then I kind of worked backwards from there. And it's weird, like me and Jules met in London when I was about 19, and my flatmate, who was also Jules's mate, was just, he was a bass player and he was just obsessed with Flea and just kept slapping his bass like all day. So, whether I wanted to or not, I had a crash course in Chili Peppers and then obviously fell in love. Sure. That's a worst-case scenario for a roommate. I have to say, honestly, a slap-bass player. That does not sound like a good scene, honestly. I think it was a drug dealer as well, to be honest. Oh, good. Well, that's almost better than playing slap-bass, honestly. Yeah, mine was slightly different. I was signed to a publisher, and they opened a little record label called Ghetto Records in London, and before I moved to Manchester, and the MD came in one day. I mean, I wasn't part of the label, but because the publisher and the record label was in the same room, basically, this guy comes in and says, they're going to be the biggest band in the world. And I can't remember whether I'd heard of the Chili Peppers. In my mind, I'm saying I had. Okay. But I know when this guy walked in and brought in the album, I know that Blood Sugar Sex Magic album, and I know when he played, I figured you were going to say that. Yeah, he played Give It Away, and I remember my entire band changed their style immediately. We kind of went funk rock. Oh, dear. Yeah. We were trying to dress like them. Was that a successful transition? No, actually. Oh, my goodness. Hopefully not with the socks, but okay. Yeah, we did do it. But you know what was interesting? We didn't have Flea in our band, and that's the funk in the band, right? That's that funk. So what happens is, I think a lot of bands did what we did, which was migrate, start at Chili's, and then ended up somewhere like Pearl Jam. I love Pearl Jam, but they're a little more attainable, especially as a bass playing exactly. There's only one Flea. I was going to ask you if Flea specifically is like inspiring for a musician or super intimidating for a musician. Do you hear him and want to get better, or do you hear him and want to quit trying to play music yourself? John, you go first, because I wouldn't sound the best guitarist in the world, but I'm at peace with that. I can write a good song on an out of tune D chord, so I'm happy. Okay. Well, interestingly, I think Flea was quite intimidating, and I think he's now changing quite a lot if you look at his posts, and I think he's at peace with that too. You know what? Once we were in an elevator in Tokyo, and Antony Kiedis got in the lift, and I can look at him. I just thought, I love you in my head. And that was it. Just didn't even eye contact, nothing. Yeah. Do you think he recognized you? It's very possible he recognized you, and he was equally intimidated. I don't know. I didn't look at him. I just death stared the floor. I see. I think my wife would do the same thing. My wife tells me the story about going over to sleepovers when she was a teenager and watching the under the bridge video on VHS and watching when he was running in slow motion, shirtless, and they would just stare at it for hours. And so I think my wife would understand where you were coming from there. I do this weird thing where there's somebody like I really like. I just can't look at them or speak to them. I remember if we ever crossed paths with someone like Morrissey out the Smith, I'd actively run off. The case he was rude and would ruin the Smiths. So I just run. He probably would be rude. I think that was a good idea on your part. Yeah. Anthony would probably have been pretty nice, but I don't know about Morrissey. Katie, I'm interested you starting much later with the chili peppers. By the way, it's sort of a midpoint now, but when you went back to blood sugar, sex, magic, when you went back even further, there's like four or five albums before that, like, did they sound like a different band? Like, what was your take on the evolution, sort of listening to it backward? Yeah, definitely. They sound much like very raw, very naive, very... I just said it. We just did an interview recently and I said the same thing. I heard this quote that said, to understand fashion, you need to understand punk because you can wear a nice dress and like, it's not fashion. It's when you kind of mess things up, fuck it up. It's not good. It's kind of shit sometimes and it's like raw. And yeah, I feel like they were definitely like that in the early days. And I remember once we stopped touring our first album and we were sat in Spain and I read Antique Edis's Autobiography. And I know from that Autobiography, I know some of their references from their first albums. And it's similar references to what we had with ours really, because it was all talking heads, Ramones. Like the time just Blondie was just before them and it was like that post-punk new wave thing. Yeah. I mean, like that's probably their huge references for a lot of bands, but especially for us on our first album, it's why I started shouting. That's cool. Were Red Hot Chili Peppers an influence on you at all? You know, even either through, you know, the Blondie, the talking heads or like, do you get ideas from listening to any part of their catalog? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, especially with vocal delivery on our first two albums, really. There was like a point where I remember being like 20 and I could sing quite well. And I remember thinking, I just want to sing and I was getting into, like, say Ramones talking heads, like the Tigra, like, and I remember thinking I want to do some shouting and grew up listening to the spy skills and then got obsessed with like feminist punk bands and ended up sounding somewhere in the middle. But yeah, it's kind of, again, like we love, I think, you know, a lot of people love artists that aren't the best singles in the world almost because those things that restrict them make them kind of expressive. So David Byrne or even like Mark Knopfler, like we was listening to like Dire Straits, the album, the other day, Brothers in Arms and yeah, literally he's vocal. He doesn't do like, he's not like a big crooner. No, it's got so much like character in it. And I think that, you know, Antiochus is probably not like the biggest, the biggest, best crooner in the world. But then you get expression and performance. And I feel like, yeah, we definitely got influenced by that. I agree with you. I've always thought of him, you know, as, you know, a B plus singer, but an A plus frontman, right? You know, it's about his flamboyance on stage and just his stage presence and just his aura, I guess, you know, do you get that too? That, you know, the best singers aren't necessarily the best frontmen and vice versa. Yeah, I think, I think we both feel that now. Yeah, totally. And if you see the performances of the chilies and you look at them on any of that kind of stuff online and that I don't think, you know, I don't think Antony can sit there or stand there and crew with a microphone and go, give it away, give it away, give it away now. Give it away, give it away, give it away now. It's just not going to have the same impact. So he's got a strut, he's got a march, he's got a flex, you know, he's got to wear that clove. He's a fashion icon in his own riot. It's a bit like Mick Jagger, you know, they go out there and they dig deep. And I think that's all encompassing, you know, when you see an artist in the lyric, it's, you know, I guess when he's writing with the band and they're in a rehearsal studio, I don't think they, I think they're like, I'm out of where, I gotta get this right, man. I think they're in it, you know, in it to win it. And I think that's the great, the great thing about those performances. So in effect, they're the best vocals in the world. I think it's timeless as well, because it's not in fashion or out of fashion, it's completely in its own name. And he, like, he could be like 95, like shriveled up, like older than Iggy Pop. And he would still be able to perform those songs. Yeah, yeah. You did a really fantastic version of Give It Away Just Now, Jules. I just, I do want to say, like that was really, I didn't think that I wanted to hear that song, song like that, until you did it. I think you've really hit on something major. It's been a many years rehearsal. It's easier to sound like him than it is to play bass like Flea, I guess, is the way that works. Yeah, yeah. Did they, I guess this is more for Katie, but like, did they seem to you like old guys or older guys? Like these, you know, by the way, it's something like their eighth, ninth album, you know, did they seem like veteran rock stars or did they still have sort of this youthful vibrance to them even then? They don't seem like old guys to me now, to be honest. Like I say, they're timeless. And that is quite rare to be able to be like, be a band like that. Yeah, you don't even know it's age with them. They're badass. They're amazing. Is there something about this song, by the way, specifically that speaks to you? You know, that one always sort of struck me, you know, as sort of mellower, right? Like I got into them through blood sugar, sex magic, and I knew them as these wild guys, but this song is like scar tissue, you know, by the way, like California Cation, like, did you, did you sort of get into the mellower, the slower, you know, the more contemplative stuff? Yes, absolutely. And yeah, melodic, and it shows that not only was it like attitude, they could write beautiful melodies as well, which again, just just testament to songwriting. We were obsessed with them writing kind of mellow melodies at the moment, we're very influenced by the carpenters and like yacht rock and soft rock. And even I'd say those songs probably resonate more with us now than back then. Yeah. Because your new album, Home, you've sort of said it's influenced kind of like 70s California, like you were saying, you know, Fleetwood Mac, The Eagles, stuff like that. Is that California, a different California than the Red Hot Chili Peppers vision, or is it all sort of one continuum for you? I mean, that's an interesting one, isn't it? Because like, when you're a dark clock back and you go to sort of, let's say early Peppers and West Coast, Laurel Canyon, and then vans and shorts, skateboards and primary colors and funk rock punk and shouty and da da da. And there we are as little kids or whatever trying to sort of copy them and work it out. And then fast forward to our latest record. And we're still on the West Coast, it's just that we dialed it back to the 70s, where everything was even more different to the Peppers. The Peppers had this engine, we're going back into sort of Eagles that had a different type of energy, but still on the West Coast. So maybe we're just stuck in the sunshine somewhere. You know, we're kind of like, we need to want to guide us out of there. Yeah. I am curious, you know, coming from England, what ideas the Red Hot Chili Peppers give you about California? Like how do you picture their vision of California? Like a song like Under the Bridge or a song like California Cation? Like when you finally made it to California, did it feel the way the Red Hot Chili Peppers made it feel? Actually, when we arrived in LA, I can't give you the year, I'd have to just look at it. 2008. 2008, somewhere around that time. When we first got to, we had to done South by, I think, that year as well, but I can't remember. Anyway, when we first got to LA for the first time, we'd never either us been in LA or on the West Coast, California. And we were playing a show on the strip called Up on the Roxy. Roxy Theatre? Roxy Theatre, something like that. It's like literally on Sunset Stairs. It sounds right. I'm in Ohio, but I'll take your word for it. Yeah, right. Okay. So Rick Rubin came down to see us and we were having, we were breaking out, right? We were breaking out. And we played this gig and it was really off the cuff. It was wild, man. It was cool. And we're like, God, we're here and we're on the West Coast kind of. And then our manager said, we've got another show straight after this. It's a party somewhere. We drove us to a place at, I don't know what time at night. And we walked in carrying, obviously, the drums above our heads and our sound guy was carrying a guitar and Kate was carrying whatever. And that sun's really flying. And so anyway, we walked into this party and it felt like, it felt like an eighties party going on and wild clothes. And I remember thinking, we've got this punk attitude and that's not my name. We've got this DIY mentality. Kate is screaming and shouting and she's like jumping around like she's trying to kill a wasp. And I felt like, yeah, we're on the cusp of it. We are the new, we are the new Pimientos, which... Yeah, you've made it. Yeah, I think we made it. And I thought, we're going to give the chili peppers a proper run for their money. They had other ideas, obviously. I was going to ask when we started Nothing came out in 2008, like who you were listening to, who you were modeling yourselves after, like who is your competition? And were the red-eyed chili peppers a part of that at all, or did they feel like from earlier generations? They just felt huge at the time. So yeah, I don't think we was punching that high. We'd kind of made and written and recorded our album in our bedroom or like our living room in Manchester. We was living in an artist community in an old factory. And honestly, we didn't expect it to go that big. We just lost a record deal and then we wrote, that's not my name. And I don't know, it was a song written in frustration and the whole album was like, you know, very DIY and a little bit angry. And then it shocked us how it took off. Like, we literally lived on airplanes for like three years. It went from like very underground and I remember we was doing lots of enemy tour for the enemy magazine. And then suddenly two-year-olds and grandmas were singing it and everyone in between. And you almost couldn't contain it. It just flew. Yeah. I think we didn't see Chili Peppers as competition. No, we kind of came up with like a lot of like the indie rock new wave. But again, we were kind of in our own weird little lane. We didn't fully fit into that crowd. I remember that enemy were like, the ting-tings are the coolest band in the world. And then like two months later, when grandmas were singing it as well, they were like, no, they're not. It was just a bit like, okay, it felt like, you know, people were trying to figure out where to put us. But in one way, we're really happy about that now because a lot of those bands from that time, their music doesn't get used. Whereas our music from our first album, it's just constantly used. It's constantly like going viral on TikTok. It's in a big Starbucks commercial at the minute. It's like on a number one Netflix film that was like number one, like a month ago. So we feel like those songs have now, because they didn't fully fit in, they've kind of had more longevity. So no, we didn't see Chili Peppers as competition. They were huge and were like this mega band at the time. I was going to ask you what it's like. You know, I saw that that's not my name when viral at least once. One of the times was like about 2022. And how weird a feeling that is to have like, you know, another group of people, like a new generation get into your song that at that point, it's like 15 years old. Like, does that, is that a different feeling than when the song blows up the first time? Does that feel like a completely different group of people? Or just, what is that experience like to have a song rediscovered, you know, on social media so many years later? If I'm going to be honest with you, it felt completely different, mostly because the viral thing you're talking about in TikTok, we just had a baby. And we were like, yeah. Just fat sat on the sofa. Yeah, exactly. Right. So anybody that's got children, they know game changer. So our record was blowing up on TikTok and we had calls from all over the world. Our agent was saying the whole American network want to put you on. Yeah, it's like ABC network or something. Like if you come over, you can go on all our TV shows and then our agent, yeah, our agent was like, you need to be on tour. And I was like, no, I look fat. And I've not done my hair for like six months and like we have a screaming child and not bringing a newborn. Have you seen us lately? But it's been amazing because now we're firing up again on TikTok with our new record. And we found TikTok really fascinating because it's one of the few places where we're really kind of quite fiercely independent now, the way we put our records out. We sat on a major for two albums and it was amazing and stressful. And I don't think we massively fit that criteria. We spend four years making an album and we write and record it all ourselves. It doesn't naturally like fit into a major label model. But we find like TikTok really interesting because we've got our old fans and then we've got all these people that know the song from TikTok and then we've got people that are liking our new music on TikTok. And it's the one place that's not like owned by major labels yet. So you kind of have a throw of the dice. You can upload a video and you don't have to pay your way through yet. And it's not like, you know, with, I don't know, things like Spotify and you know, it's all very major labels are very much in there now and it's hard to get a look in. So I think that virality on TikTok's done as well because there's an audience there that our old audience, a new audience and the ones that found us through, that's not my name going viral. Yeah. Thinking about Spotify, one thing that interests me about it is that different songs become popular over time. Like right now on the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Can't Stop is the third most streamed Red Hot Chili Pepper song, which is not what I would have guessed. I would have said, give it away under the bridge, you know, California Cation. I would have guessed probably 10 songs before Can't Stop. Is that a song that has any personal resonance for you or do you have any idea why the youth have possibly seized on that one? I know, yeah, it's a cheer. I know that, you know, with them being such a big band, I know when Can't Stop came back, they claimed that they're thrown again. There's no doubt about it. We heard that track. I know every word of that song. We just went nuts, didn't we? We were like, Chili's got a new track out and then we were like, oh, cool, this is going to be interesting because, you know, the thing is about them, they're a proper band, you know, they're a rock band. I mean, punk rock, whatever you want to call it. And they play, they play. And then it's always whenever they've got a track coming out, a band like that, you want to hear it because you just, it's just played. You want to hear the tension in the record, you want to hear the guitar work, you want to hear the vocal line. And then when that track came out, it wasn't just good. It was like, oh, shit, they've done it again. There they are just walking up on that bloody high rise. It's like, wow, what a tune. The video was like, pop, it was just amazing. So, I mean, I just don't think, the only thing that I see that the Chili's are going to change with is like, if again, looking at Flea's post, he seems to have got a peace with himself, all the intimidation, all the angst, all the anger, I mean, just the way he places guitar, you know, the bass, he's just like, on it. I mean, dude, you need to have a cup of tea and watch a little bit of Antiques Roadshow or something to calm down. There you go. He's going and you keep thinking, he is right. Yeah, right. And you think, how long can this last? I mean, how long can you deliver that amount of energy? You know what I mean? I mean, the guys that sponsor his strings must be running out of the metal. We are dealing with a uranium shortage here in America. And this thing is going on and then all of a sudden he's posting, you know, people saying that, wow, he's doing all this charity stuff and he's jazz and he's introducing all this new music that I'm following, you know, and it's just beautiful. And someone's just coming to say hello. Who's this? Oh, hello. Hello. You were the reason they didn't tour in 2022 when they went viral on TikTok, but it was worth it. That's proof. Proof. There's proof. We weren't lying. This has been fantastic. I so appreciate you taking the time. I'm a big fan and we're really honored to have talked to you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks very much to our guests this week, the Tingtings. Check out their new album called Home out now. Thanks very much to our producers, Justin Sales, Christopher Sutton, and Olivia Creary. And thanks very much to you for listening. And now let's all go listen to Can't Stop by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. We'll see you next week.