THE CHILI PEPPERS SUCKED THEN AND STILL SUCK TODAY

I was at a wedding last week when I struck up a conversation with William, my 20something cousin by marriage. William's been in several Bay Area bands of the hardcore variety and also has a keen knowledge of musical history. Anyway, he mentioned that he's the only one among his friends who likes the Grateful Dead. Whatever they came to represent, he said, he believed their first album from 1967 was actually pretty amazing. He compared the early Dead to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, whom, he figured, must have been really cool before pro-tools and John Frusciante showed up with traditional and maudlin songwriting chops.

Au contraire, I responded. I remember when the Chili Peppers were new back in 1983 and how the weekly rags when ga-ga over their "funk punk" thing. They were already hyped to death when I saw them at the Bla Bla Cafe on Ventura Boulevard. They were the opening act on a bill that featured the Minutemen and Blood On the Saddle, whom I'd wanted to see because I had a huge crush on Annette Zalinskas from her days in the Bangles. I wasn't impressed with the Chilis then -- just a lot of chest thumping and funky gimmickry -- and I despise them now.

However, the conversation did provoke a pouring through of my Minutemen records and a viewing of the poignant documentary We Jam Econo. It was a great reminder of just how intimate and intense everything was back then. The Minutemen were true revolutionaries who were just getting warmed up at the time of D. Boon's tragic 1985 death. Check it out if you haven't seen it.