Balarama Music

Balarama Revealed!

Aug 21

Doug2000s balarama, john frusciante, red hot chili peppers 2 Comments

Before I delve into this, I invite you to check out some of the sections of the website that were added recently. The Reviews section has Album Reviews (which will start with the Wilco album), Best Of 2009 lists, and Concert Reviews (which has a Carbon Leaf show reviewed). The FAQ is up for those curious about the site and contains my contact information. The Tools section is not up at this time, but will be by the end of the week and will contain places to grab music and where to learn and what-not. All in all, just make sure to keep looking as the site keeps adding content! Let’s get to what you came to read though.

Oh, the best day of the week for Balarama Music: Frusciante Friday! Since the site is now official at balaramamusic.com, I figured I would explain where I got the name from and the story behind the song to me.

The lyric I got the name from comes from “Wet Sand” which is near the end of the first disc of Red Hot Chili Pepper’s 2006 album Stadium Arcadium. It’s a good time to talk about this seeing as how there is news & rumors (check out Invisible Movement for the best RHCP/Frusciante news!) galore of RHCP back in the studios this fall for their follow-up album, especially after people thought they were done as a band, so let’s look at their last work.

I love Stadium Arcadium. I would rank it up there as probably one of their best albums, falling definitely short of Blood Sex Sugar Magik, Californication, & By The Way. Depending on my mood, I might rank some of their albums from the 80s ahead of it, but most of the time, it ranks consistently above those. I have to say that as much as I love the album though, I adore what it could have been. As the band recorded thirty-eight songs in the studio, the original plan seemed to be to release three separate albums three to six months apart as System Of A Down did in 2005. Pressure from who I’m sure was the record company made them cut out ten songs and make it just a double-album released at once. While both had positives and negatives, ultimately, the triple album idea would have been the best in my mind.

While they touted out that they brought the funk back, what really happened was a mesh of styles on the album. Funk had its good share of numbers, but so did the straight-up rock tunes & the slower sound found on their last album. They easily could have released three albums all of different styles: a funk album, a slower alt-rock album, and a hybrid of the two. Being the obsessive fan that I am, I lunged at singles as they were released for their B-Sides and while there’s still one song of the remaining ten missing, the B-Sides themselves are up there amazingly with the quality of the songs on the album. Any of them easily could have been traded out for a majority of songs. Songs like “I’ll Be Your Domino, Funny Face,” & “Save This Lady” could have found space on the funk, alt, and hybrid albums respectively and listening to those songs, you can see the picture I’m trying to paint here.

Sadly, we never got Sandinista! from the Peppers nor did we get three albums in 2006, but there was still a hell of an album to be found here. While it wasn’t as concise as the other albums and definitely very scattered-brained at times, the album contains some of the best work the band has done & continued the trend of the Chili Pepper’s great albums. Since re-forming their best line-up in ’98, the band really did coin the phrase “musical chemistry” and it seems like each album they made, the chemistry rose higher & higher. It certainly added to the fire that Frusciante’s presence in the studio definitely increased around this time as well. And while I love By The Way more, this album definitely seems to be a better effort from all four members, rather than one or two like on 2002′s release. I’m just rambling so we’ll move on to the actual song…

“Wet Sand” is it. Just it. In my opinion, it is the best Chili Peppers songs and one of the greatest rock tracks ever made. It takes you on an ethereal roller coaster of emotion where you experience the full gamut of rock sentiments. You get the cherub sounding verses linked together by befuddled bridges that seem to resolve themselves a few times only to end up in a whirlwind climax of anger, acceptance, and passion. The lyrics themselves match the music’s intensity as well. Describing a complicated, dysfunctional relationship, Kiedis paints a picture of an on-and-off again union that ends with the sudden realization that this person is not the one in one of rock’s great epiphany moments. What’s interesting here is the line Wet Sand was the first lyric to the song and Kiedis worked backwards from it. While rehearsing the music to the song during pre-production, Frusciante hummed along a vocal melody in the song’s climax and began muttering “gibberish” as they called it on the DVD in the box set of the album. Frusciante has always been reported to be very gung-ho that his solo work and his work with the Chili Peppers stay separate. At times, Kiedis has asked for certain lyrics or to cover certain songs from Frusciante’s solo work or notebook only to be answered with a steadfast, “Never!” Whatever sparked Frusciante (who claimed he had lyrics to the song written) to allow Kiedis the vocal melody and the basic lyric…well, we’ll never know but it was obviously meant to be. Kiedis then framed the whole song based on the idea of “forming in the wet sand” and crafted an amazing monument of a song fit with memorable lines. One of those just so happens to be the namesake of this very website too: “balarama beauty going toe-to-toe.” The music and lyrics meshed together to create an unbelievable song that really has everything one would want in a song. From the beginning where you can almost drift away to the end where you’re screaming at the top of your lungs, this song can not simply be overlooked. Oh and I forgot the best part: the guitar solo. Everything, and I do mean everything, seems to build to the final guitar solo which is definitely one of the best of all time. It follows the lyrical epiphany and keeps that tone going of a man still in love with this woman yet knowing she’s not the one for him. The solo does so much with such a few amount of notes and really exemplifies the musical idea of “less is more” better than anything I can think of. And as the guitar solo winds down and you come off the adrenaline high from the roller coaster, just like any good ride, you can’t wait to do it again.

This, my friends, is what you need to be listening to right now.

Song: Wet Sand
Artist: Red Hot Chili Peppers
Album: Stadium Arcadium
Year: 2006

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