Why the Chillis are not for me

Our kid is teaching himself to play the guitar.  He seems to think that most good music is at least 20 years old, so there’s steady stream of Beatles, Dire Straits,  AC-DC and Zepplin coming out of his room.  It therefore did not come as a surprise to me when a “guess the riff Dad” session included the Red Hot Chilli Peppers classics Scar Tissue and Under the Bridge.      

Unless music taste is genetically transmitted, he didn’t get it from me.  Flea and Chad Smith are the best rhythm section in the history of rock and roll.   I still don’t think I have heard the same combination of rhythmical solidity, addictive funk-rock groove and raw energy anywhere else.  But I don’t own a Chillis album so the kids have never heard me playing them at home.

Unlike the kids, I can’t work with music on.  I love songs.  I listen to the words.  When I listen to music and lyrics I hear meaning.  Even as a fairly young Christian, listening to Blood Sugar Sex Magik, I could tell that this was messed up stuff.   I didn’t want to be messed up. I didn’t want messed up thoughts or messed up relationships.  Mess observation in my own soul, in 20 years of  Christian ministry and in reading the bible a few times has convinced me that humans are already >50% messed up on the inside.  You can either feed and water the mess, or you can let it wither and invest in better stuff.  

A quick flick through Antony Kiedis’ biography on holiday confirmed what I knew instinctively from the songs.  The RHCP are energetically invested in a roller-coaster life of hedonistic highs and depressive dives.  Their brilliant bangers are about free sex, chemical highs and wild living and their beautiful ballads are about the scars and brokenness of this Californication.  They invested in the mess and it paid dividends.  

I know a lot of good folks who love the Chilli’s music and don’t seem to be influenced by the message, so I am not up for a puritanical RHCP ban.  But I can’t switch my brain off when I listen to music and I won’t fill my head with stuff which will rot my heart.  Proverbs says guard your heart above all things.  Jesus says the eye is the window of the soul.  What I fill my heart, my vision and my ears with changes how I think and how I live in the end.  

So the Chillis are not for me.  I do reserve the right to bounce along the landing in time with the Can’t Stop riff though.