For years, the Chili Peppers’ funk-monkey shtick camouflaged serious musical deficiencies–namely, the first two albums contain not a single memorable song despite the production assistance of Gang of Four’s Andy Gill (The Red Hot Chili Peppers) and George Clinton (Freaky Styley). 

 For years, the Chili Peppers’ funk-monkey shtick camouflaged serious musical deficiencies–namely, the first two albums contain not a single memorable song despite the production assistance of Gang of Four’s Andy Gill (The Red Hot Chili Peppers) and George Clinton (Freaky Styley). 

 The California quartet brings a modicum of structure to The Uplift Mofo Party Plan, but their humor–as their famous “party on your pussy” chorus demonstrates–wouldn’t merit an audience in a high-school locker room. 

 The death of guitarist Hillel Slovak, due to a drug overdose, prompted a retooling on Mother’s Milk, which yielded their first hit–a cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Higher Ground” that jumps on the back of Flea’s mind-melting bass and never lets go.  

 Things get better when the band recruits guitar wunderkind John Frusciante as Slovak’s replacement. With Blood Sugar Sex Magik, producer Rick Rubin focuses on the quartet’s songwriting and sets the elastic bass lines, syncopated drumming, and Frusciante’s scratchy, punk-Hendrix guitars in u... 

 The era is summed up on What Hits!? and Out in L.A., which gather early-Eighties demos that are essentially an homage to Flea’s bass playing and little else. 

 The era is summed up on What Hits!? and Out in L.A., which gather early-Eighties demos that are essentially an homage to Flea’s bass playing and little else. 

 One Hot Minute, made with guitarist Dave Navarro, marks the mainstreaming of the Peppers, with the ratio of throwaways to keepers leveling off. An unexpected lightness surfaces on “Aeroplane,” and a social consciousness permeates “Shallow Be Thy Game” and “Pea.” (The band has since di... 

 An outright pop sensibility, unimaginable a decade before, pervades Californication. The return of prodigal guitarist John Frusciante gives the band a second strong instrumental voice to complement Flea’s, while Kiedis focuses on increasingly vibrant vocal melodies. Almost all vestiges of the b... 

 Something is missing, though, which becomes apparent on By the Way. Even though the disc boasts a bevy of multihued pop tunes, it forgets to rock. Flea’s hyper bass lines take a holiday, but Frusciante’s myriad guitar voicings nearly compensate: choppy funk accents (“By the Way”), trickle... 

 The first proper Peppers concert album is Live in Hyde Park, put to tape in London over three June nights in 2004. The set list was clearly geared toward newer fans, as Californication and By the Way material dominated, and the only vintage songs were from Blood Sugar Sex Magik. And if you ever n... 

 The Peppers wrote nearly 40 songs in the next couple of years, and at one point considered releasing them across three distinct albums. Instead, they picked their favorite 28 for the two-CD, Rubin-producd Stadium Arcadium and then apparently divided them at random into “Jupiter” and “Mars�...