Red Hot Chili Peppers present "Stadium Arcadium"

[RichB]

Initially, Stadium Arcadium, the Red Hot Chili Peppers' forthcoming ninth studio album, was going to be released in three separate parts. Frontman Anthony Kiedis was keen on the idea — and championed it — until he realized the third installment of the trilogy wouldn't surface for almost two years.

"That notion, I couldn't handle," he said. "In a year and a half, I know we'll be writing new music and then it will be time for that. In the end, [these songs] seemed like a body of music that needed to be heard as one body."

So Kiedis and the Chilis suffered through the "heart-wrenching" process of cutting down the 38 tracks they'd recorded with longtime friend and producer Rick Rubin to the 25 featured on the Stadium Arcadium double LP. "Slow Cheetah," "Storm in a Tea Cup," "Hard to Concentrate," "C'mon Girl," "Ready Made" and "Desecration Smile" are just a handful of the tracks that survived the process and will make the record's track list.

"I think we always [approach the songwriting process] with this mindset that this time, we're going to write the perfect 11 songs and just put out 11 songs like they used to do in the days of Buddy Holly and the Beatles," Kiedis said. "Those early records were so short and sweet, and had this kind of lasting profound impact on the world because they're very memorable and digestible and, I don't know, maybe it just takes less energy or effort to connect with smaller collections. But as has been the case with every single time we've tried to do that, we end up with 30 some-odd songs. The difference this time was we ended up liking all of those songs and finishing all of those songs and it actually became a very difficult process to even just whittle it down to 25. I think it's sort of the best thing that we've ever done, and I just want to get it out there on the airwaves and in the earholes of the world."

Stadium Arcadium's first single will be "Danni California." Kiedis said the band plans to shoot a video for the track soon with Tony Kaye, who directed "American History X." The performance-based clip will boast an underlying story about a character that's appeared on the band's previous two discs.

"The spirit of Danni was evoked in the song 'Californication,' and it talks about a pregnant teenager. And then she sort of comes to fruition in a song called 'By the Way,' where she is actually mentioned by name," he said. "This song's the final chapter of Danni." Kiedis wouldn't elaborate further on the video's treatment, but did say Danni's "an amalgamation of lots of things and people — she's not really based on one person but a collective of probably every girl I've ever met."

As for Stadium Arcadium's sound, Kiedis said the writing process was aided this time around by the fact that "everybody was in good moods. There was very little tension, very little anxiety, very little weirdness going on and every day we showed up to this funky room in the Valley where we write music, and everyone felt more comfortable than ever bringing in their ideas."

Every idea was used to create those 38 tracks. "There is a weird thread that connects back to our first three records," Kiedis added. "There's this weird kind of sublime, subliminal undercurrent that is suggestive, in a spirited way, of our earliest records. There's some retardedly painful funk on this record. There are a few songs that are just straight-up dirty funk, and beyond that, there's this ongoing progression of everything else that has been slowly happening between Californication and By the Way, with harmonies and textures. [Guitarist] John [Frusciante] has really fallen in love with the art of treating sounds. [The album's] layered, but not in a heavy-handed way. John's work is definitely of the masterpiece quality, as a guitar player and sound treatment-ist. He has certainly gone to some weird über-level of hearing some Beethoven-sized symphony sh-- in his head. He really shines on this record."

The 13 tracks that didn't make it onto the final product might wind up surfacing commercially, after all, because "I'd be crushed if they didn't get heard," Kiedis said. But it won't be cheap for the truest of the band's fans to get them all. The singer said the idea is to release different versions of the album through different retail outlets, each with a unique bonus track. So fans who download Stadium Arcadium using iTunes would get one bonus track — say "Especially in Michigan" — while those who picked up their copy at Target would get a different bonus song — like "Mercy, Mercy."

"We're going to try and do that with the independent record stores across America, and for all the monster chains," he explained. "We'll service everybody with a different bonus track, because we have them."

Stadium Arcadium is due May 9, according to the band's management.

http://www.vh1.com/news/articles/152...headlines=true

[Crazydavy]

Thanks for the article I love the peppers and am glad to her news about the new album. I heard 21st century the other day, which is a song off of stadium arcadium that they played live in England last year. The song has a nice sound to it, so I cant wait to hear the rest of the album.

[phillyspurslover]

if it's half as good as the last one, i'll be happy.

[DunkinDan89]

I am very excited about the new album as well.

Duel disks are always supposed to be really well done, and knowing the history of RHCP, that won't be a problem

[RichB]

The Red Hot Chili Peppers will unleash a double album, "Stadium Arcadium," May 9 via Warner Bros. The group recorded 38 songs for the project, and at one point even considered releasing three separate records, but ultimately whittled the material down to a 25-track, two-disc set. Mixing on the Rick Rubin-produced effort is now halfway complete, according to frontman Anthony Kiedis.

"We got together and our initial writing task was to write a short record: an old school, hit 'em and quit 'em, straight to the point record," he tells Billboard.com. "A record with only 11 or 12 songs instead of 17 songs, just for a change. Three months later, we had 38 songs, all of which were meaningful and worth recording and mixing."

At first, the idea of an album trilogy seemed "inspiring and appealing. But the more we thought about it, the more we realized it would be a nightmare," Kiedis admits. "Even if you only release them six months apart, you're waiting two years until the final installment. Nobody had that kind of patience. By that time, we want to be writing new music and making another record. The best we could come up with is squeezing our favorite 25 onto one body."

Kiedis cites "Snow" as one of his favorite tunes from the new album, due to its "really crazy sounding guitar part. It's very busy but rhythmically desirable at the same time. That has grown into one of the epic, kind of great-feeling jams on this record." Another tune, "Wet Sand," goes in a new structural direction. "It isn't so much verse/chorus/verse/chorus with a bridge," Kiedis says. "It has a beginning, a middle and an end, which I like as a change of pace."

Fans are sure to be thrilled by the playing of guitarist John Frusciante, who here eschews the more minimalist approach of the Peppers' past two albums. Says Kiedis, "On this record, he was kind of like, 'Okay, it's time for me to lay it all on the table and really shine as a guitar player.' He's a lot more balls-out. It's very solo intensive -- there's some incredible guitar solos. I guess there's still a little bit of early Beach Boys and early Electric Light Orchestra and intense vocal harmonies. They make themselves known."

Kiedis attributes the creative burst to the fact that "the chemistry when it comes to writing is better than ever. Always in the past, there was a little bit of struggle between Flea, John or myself as contributing writers -- a struggle to dominate. But we are now confident enough in who we are, so everybody feels more comfortably contributing more and more valuable, quality stuff."

The Peppers will "start rocking in May," according to Kiedis, with the itinerary set to visit Europe first. A North American tour will then run from August through November. "Instead of playing outdoor shows, we'll play indoor shows so we can bring a little bit of theatrical love into the arena space," the artist says.

"Stadium Arcadium" is the follow-up to 2002's "By the Way," which debuted at No. 2 on The Billboard 200 and has sold 1.9 million copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

http://billboard.com/bbcom/news/arti..._id=1001881276

[The Notorious MI21]

Good, I can't wait.

[RichB]

On their website, the Red Hot Chili Peppers are presenting a sneak peak at the first single "Dani California".

Stadium Arcadium hits stores May 9th.

http://redhotchilipeppers.com/news/news.php?uid=141

[Big Empty]

Oh that sounds so refreshing and nice! thanx for the link!

[Crazydavy]

This album is gonna Rock.... I cant wait dammit.

[RichB]

Red Hot Chili Peppers have unveiled more details of their eagerly awaited new album 'Stadium Arcadium'.

The 28-track, two-disc epic is out on May 9, trimmed down from the original plan of a 38-song trilogy. The discs are entitled 'Jupiter' and 'Mars' respectively.

The unsequenced tracklisting is:

'Dani California'
'Charlie'
'Snow (Hey Oh)'
'Stadium Arcadium'
'Ghost Dance'
'She's Only 18'
'Slow Cheetah'
'Torture Me'
'Animal Bar'
'Especially In Michigan'
'Warlocks'
'C'mon Girl'
'Storm In A Teacup'
'Hey'
'Desecration Smile'
'Tell Me Baby'
'Hard To Concentrate'
'Wet Sand'
'21st Century'
'She Looks To Me'
'Readymade'
'If*'
'Make You Feel Better'
'Early Eighties'
'So Much I'
'We Believe'
'Turn It Again'
'Death Of A Martian'

When the Red Hot Chili Peppers convened in September 2004 to begin work on their new album,the idea was "to make an old-fashioned Meet the Beatles-like record," says singer Anthony Kiedis. "We set out to write thirteen songs, make them good and record them -- to have a small, digestible piece of art where people could go, 'Yeah, that's a nice, rocking jam.'" Kiedis pauses. "It went haywire from there."

Kiedis, bassist Flea, guitarist John Frusciante and drummer Chad Smith actually wrote thirty-eight new songs and recorded them all with producer Rick Rubin in the same house, in the Hollywood Hills, where they cut 1991's Blood Sugar Sex Magik. The Chili Peppers were so fired up they wanted to put out the whole racket as a trilogy -- three separate discs, issued in installments. In the end, Stadium Arcadium, coming out May 9th on Warner Bros., will be an album of more common sense and size: a double CD of twenty-five tracks.

Maybe. By mid-February, the band was still mixing and agonizing over which outtakes could be squeezed back onto the album. "A lot of them," says Frusciante, "I could easily give the argument 'This won't make the album any worse. It'll make it better.'" One song Kiedis believes will "insist to get a place on the record" is "Early 80s," which he says is "like Carole King if she wrote a song with Crazy Horse in 1971."

That mad variety and verve sum up the entire album, which Flea bluntly calls "by far the best thing we've ever done. We each have things we do best, and it all got in there." In "C'mon Girl," a Flea-Smith heartbeat-disco rhythm blows up into Kiedis' warrior-metal vocal chorus, then veers into a torrent of Frusciante feedback and harmonics, his homage to Jimi Hendrix's waterfall-guitar drama on Electric Ladyland. "Storm in a Teacup" is power-rock hip-hop with what sounds like Little Richard running wild on piano but is, in fact, Frusciante's pedal-treated guitar. However, that is the real Billy Preston hammering Seventies-funk clavinet on "Warlocks." Preston has been ill in recent years, but when the band sent him a tape of the track, "he got out of bed," Flea says, awestruck, "played and got back in bed."

Stadium Arcadium also reprises the hard-pop and ballad strengths of the Chili Peppers' 1999 and 2002 albums Californication and By the Way, in songs like "Dani California" and "Slow Cheetah," the latter built on a bed of acoustic strum and laced with Frusciante's singing-wire electric guitar. "John is the movement in the music," says Smith. "Something new gets introduced in every chorus or verse, whether it's a backing vocal or a guitar part."

Kiedis seconds the compliment: "In the past, John has taken a less-is-more approach, like the jazz guy who is so good that he can play a couple of notes and it's perfect. But I think he got tired of that. He's heavy, strong and prominent in all of these songs."

Flea, in turn, cites the dramatic turnaround in Kiedis' singing, a concentrated power and tonal focus that Flea admits was not there when he and Kiedis co-founded the Chili Peppers in 1983: "Anthony rapped and yelled and had a unique aesthetic of how lyrics go, but he couldn't sing. When he did a melodic song live, he would tense up. It was difficult for him in a scene where so many guys are great natural singers." But in recent years and especially on Stadium Arcadium, Flea says proudly, "Anthony is bending notes, being flexible with melody, rather than holding on to it for dear life. He's expressing his emotions."

The emotions are real. Several songs on Stadium Arcadium specifically refer to commitment; in "Hard to Concentrate," Kiedis paraphrases the marriage vows ("Do you agree to take this man/Into your world?"). "During the writing," he explains, "everybody in the band had fallen in love. It's probably the first time we had all fallen in love within the same few months of each other. I was just tapping into that energy, particularly watching Flea get deeper into a commitment with his girlfriend." They recently had a baby daughter, while Smith and his wife have an eleven-month-old son. Kiedis, ironically, is in limbo: "My relationship at the moment is not where I dreamed it would be. But I have discovered that I have a capacity for commitment beyond anything I've had in the past."

In the meantime, Kiedis is anxious to take the new songs on tour. "We wrote 'em, we've listened to them," he says, "but we haven't given them a life onstage. We're going to do that for the next year" -- once they finish the mixing.

"My son was born the weekend we started recording," says Smith, laughing. "And he's almost walking. Anthony's like, 'Yeah, he'll be tour-managing us by the time this thing comes out.'"

Red Hot Chili Peppers along with Matisyahu, Manu Chao, Jack White's the Raconteurs, the Flaming Lips, and locals Kanye West, Common and Wilco are among the more than 130 artists slated to perform at this year's Lollapalooza Festival in Chicago, August 4th through 6th.

Ryan Adams, Umphrey's McGee, Iron and Wine, Nickel Creek and Blues Traveler also make the bill, as well as Canadian talents the New Pornographers, Broken Social Scene, Of Montreal, Stars and Feist.

Additional performers at the expanded three-day festival include indie pop favorites Death Cab for Cutie and the Shins, as well as rockers Queens of the Stone Age, Ween, Sonic Youth and Sleater-Kinney. Newer buzz bands making appearances are the Secret Machines, She Wants Revenge, the Hold Steady, the Go! Team, the Subways and Panic! at the Disco.

http://www.nme.com/news/22514

http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/...d_lollapalooza

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/sto...ets_of_stadium

[RichB]

Red Hot Chili Peppers To Release Double Album & DVD

Stadium Arcadium, the Red Hot Chili Peppers new album, has gone through several stages.

Originally it was going to be a 3 disc masterpiece with every song recorded on it. Then, it was going to be a dual-disc piece with 25 tracks and 3 bonus songs changing depending on where you bought it from. Currently, its slated to be a 28 track piece of work that Flea thinks you'd all like very much.

However, now there is something truly special on its release.

A special edition CD-DVD will be released when Arcadium comes out. The DVD will include the Dani California (the first single from the upcoming album) music video, track by track interviews with the band, and the making of Dani California, reports MTV.com.

A brief, 2 minute and 30 second clip of the making of Dani California can be previewed online at their official site, www.redhotchilipeppers.com.

In other news, the Red Hot Chili Peppers have released their catalogue for download, for the first time ever. The band's entire catalog is now available at iTunes and your favorite digital retailers worldwide.

The band went into the vaults and pulled out some songs you might not have heard before. Blood Sugar Sex Magik, One Hot Minute, Californication, and By The Way each have two or three bonus tracks. These deluxe versions are available at iTunes exclusively in the U.S., and at major digital retailers around the world.

Anthony told Rolling Stone, "As we're going back through old leftovers, we're discovering some of the things we left off Californication are as strong as anything on the album."

http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/...lbum__dvd.html

[Big Empty]

Quixoticlixer: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=MYN0KYNX

here is one of the bonus tracks from the past albums. pretty cool.

[andrea js]

cool, double album

cant wait

[Big Empty]

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm...D=66789435&a=1


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUYuN...m%20flea%20new


what an awesome song Dani California is!

[Crazydavy]

Right on im already addicted

[andrea js]

thx for the links Big, me likes

[SoupIsGood]

I'm not impressed with Dani California.

[RichB]

Originally Posted by SoupIsGood

I'm not impressed with Dani California.

I think it's a good, catchy song - but nothing groundbreaking or earth shattering.

I'm curious to hear the whole record though.

[TD21MVP02]

Originally Posted by RichB

I think it's a good, catchy song - but nothing groundbreaking or earth shattering.

I'm curious to hear the whole record though.

I agree, their last 3 cd's have been great, hopefully this is another great cd.

[partsatan]

this is great, i have been waiting for new tunes from them for a while>