Tag Archives: blood sugar sex magik

#1304: Red Hot Chili Peppers – Suck My Kiss

Been a long, long time since I’ve covered a song from Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Blood Sugar Sex Magik album. I wouldn’t say it’s a personal Desert Island pick of mine. I’m rarely ever in the mood to want to listen to it the whole way through. But the couple times I have, it’s usually been a good time. I’m rambling on about my experiences with that particular record, just because it’s the one where you can find the subject of today’s post. Really, back in 2005 or something, my sister was loaned the Chili Peppers’ 2003 Greatest Hits compilation by a friend of hers. ‘Suck My Kiss’ was on there. But I don’t think I was into the band’s funkier tracks back then, compared to the sing-songier ones that were usually played on TV too. But I grew up a few years, revisited the song through BSSM and immediately saw it as one of the best songs on there.

It’s all about the bass line. Honestly, I’ve sung along to that more times than reciting Anthony Kiedis’s words when I’ve listened to the song. Flea on bass, along with John Frusciante on guitar, play this mainly two-note riff during the verses in unison, with Flea’s bass more forward in the mix. The groove is tighter than anything and infectious as anything. Gets stuck in the head very easily. Chad Smith on drums brings it all together. You can sort of tell this must of been the result of some sort of jam between the three instrumentalists. Have you ever noticed how those bass-guitar stabs after the “Is she talking dirty” / “Is she gonna curtsy” lines are played three times in the first chorus, two times in the second, and then for once only in the the last one? Once I did, I thought it was very clever stuff. The type of move that I can only assume a group of musicians really in tune with each other would come to think of.

But if I have to do some kind of analysis of Anthony Kiedis’s lyrics, I don’t think it would go any more in-depth than what you reading this would think about them. Typically of that era of the band, he’s rap-singing, delivering words which may not align with one another or have any narrative structure, but are more to fit with the music surrounding him. And fair play to him, it’s a formula that hasn’t let him down. Especially on Blood Sugar…, a lot of the lyrics concern Kiedis’s desire to seek out a beautiful woman and have a good time with them. To put it lightly. And that’s what ‘Suck My Kiss’ boils down to, funnily enough. There’s lyrics like “Little Bo Peep coming for my stun gun”, “Do me like a banshee”, “Do me now, do me here, I do allow”. These are the words of a very horny man. Nothing wrong with that, I don’t think.

My iPod #131: Red Hot Chili Peppers – Breaking the Girl

 

I’m very happy. Today marks the first time I make a blog from my new laptop.

No more will I have to suffer with the forever slow and freezing mess that is the family desktop. If you guys want a laptop, ASUS is the way to go. Forget Dell. My sister has a Dell laptop that’s basically falling apart. Whether that’s due to the manufacturer or if my sister abused it I’m not sure. I know that I’m not messing this mine up though.

Now with that intro out of the way, is this my first Red Hot Chili Peppers post? Because I’m pretty sure I haven’t touched upon one song of theirs. They probably don’t have a lot of songs beginning with the letter ‘A’ that I know of. Except for “Aeroplane” of course.

So… Red Hot Chili Peppers….. Ah! “Fight Like a Brave”. That was the first song I’d ever heard by them, thanks to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3. When they released “By the Way” in 2002, I had no idea that it was the band who wrote that song until I actually looked at the in-game menu.

In 2002, I wasn’t really into music. Being six/seven at the time, I was either incessantly up at early hours in the morning to watch Cartoon Network or Thomas the Tank Engine videos. 2006 was the year that I can actually remember the build up towards a Red Hot Chili Peppers album, which we all know is the double album “Stadium Arcadium”.

I can remember it now, the video for “Dani California” premiered at midnight on Channel 4. It was then played every hour on MTV2 the next day. My sister and I liked it. She had a friend who liked the band, who then gave her the “Greatest Hits” album. This is where “Breaking the Girl”comes in.

The song became a favourite of my sister’s. I recall not liking the song as much as the others though. I thin it was the fact that amongst the others on the compilation, this was a tune that I had actually never heard before. Even when I did listen to it, I found it… boring.

However when I downloaded “Blood Sugar Sex Magik” a few months ago, I found myself wailing along to the chorus and air drumming to the trash-can percussion in the instrumental break. I loved it. “Breaking the Girl” isn’t boring at all. The eleven-year old me was a silly child. If you are going to write a song about a meaningful relationship that went wrong and you feel as if you are to blame, you probably wouldn’t want to make it a funky jam as the Peppers normally did around that time. Something more melodic will do. This is that song you want to write. Yes.

Well, until tomorrow you guys.

Jamie.