Peppers keep up hot pace

Geoff Carter

Thursday, Sept. 14, 2000 | 10:15 a.m.

The last time I saw the Red Hot Chili Peppers play live, Ronald Reagan was still president.

I saw them in Orange County, Calif., in 1986, on a triple-threat bill with the Untouchables and Fishbone. I remember bassist Flea and vocalist Anthony Kiedis wearing American Indian buckskins and jumping around as if standing on a buttered hot plate. The band had but one minor hit to its name then -- the frenetic "True Men Don't Kill Coyotes" -- but that hardly mattered; once they hit stride, every last body in the house was in motion, including mine.

It was nice to revisit that sensation last night, as the Peppers played to a Thomas & Mack crowd easily 10 times the size of the 1986 crowd. Today the band has several major hits -- "Under The Bridge," "Scar Tissue," "Give it Away," -- but as far as the band's concerned, it's business as usual: much jumping, much howling, and a beat sturdy enough to Tear Down That Wall.

Ducking and diving across a stage backed by five large screens looping pastoral scenes and kinky Japanese animation, the Peppers were every bit as energetic as they were 14 years ago, while more firmly in control of their instruments. Kiedis, in particular, was in exceptional voice -- he handled the falsetto-to-a-shout choruses of "If You Have to Ask" and the plaintive crooning of "Under the Bridge" with equal skill.

Flea continues to be one of the best pure funk bassists in the world, and coupled with hard-hitting drummer Chad Smith, he remains just this side of lethal. And guitarist John Frusciante continues, in his subtle manner, to reinvent what is primarily a hard funk band with his loopy psychedelia; during some of the ballads, "Californication" in particular, I closed my eyes to imagine the Peppers as a Mohawked Grateful Dead.

If the Peppers performed to expectations, opening act Stone Temple Pilots exceeded them. I've never thought much of the band (and their songs still leave me flat), but there was no denying the wallop the comeback kids packed Wednesday night.

Vocalist Scott Weiland may have spent more time in rehab (and behind bars) than out of it these past few years, but you wouldn't know it to look at him. He was every bit the rock icon, bleating out "Sex Type Thing" as if he'd written it yesterday and worked the stage as furiously as a bottled arachnid. Weiland vamped his way through STP's catalogue in a way that made me forget that I don't like many of the band's songs; that's the mark of a good entertainer in my book.

Between Weiland's acrobatics and the Peppers' pure, smooth menace, Wednesday's show was the best alternative rock performances of this admittedly unremarkable concert-going year. It's a credit to both bands' showmanship that I'll probably remember the show as such 14 years from now.