With Honest Sounds I'll Paint Your Brain: Red Hot Chili Peppers - Mother's Milk @ 30

 

A pivotal album for the Red Hot Chili Peppers...if anyone doubted the pulsating power that leapt from the blistering opener, 'Good Time Boys', it took only a few bars of the Red Hot Chili Peppers' outrageous, and brilliant, interpretation of the Stevie Wonder classic 'Higher Ground' to prove that this new lineup was onto something special. Wrapping up with the aptly titled and truly punked-out 'Punk Rock Classic' and the band's own punched-up tribute to 'Magic Johnson', Mother's Milk was everything the band had hoped for, and a little more besides.

~Amy Hanson - All Music 

Rebounding from the death of founding guitarist Hilel Slovak, Mother's Milk turned the soul searching Red Hot Chili Peppers into a phoenix, rising into music charts and MTV videos. They found themselves without a guitarist and their drummer, Jack Irons, had left, leaving bassist Flea and lead man Anthony Kiedis searching for their sound. 

After a few false starts between albums two and three, the Chili's found 18 year old John Frusciante and power house drummer Chad Smith and set forth to create the sound that would catapult them into the band we know today. The tracks were an amalgam of songs written by old members and from jam sessions. It was these sessions that built the foundation since Smith and Frusciante were so new to the band. John's addition to the band is notable in the increased melody and complexity he brings to both the guitar and lyrics.

Mother's Milk hits you hard and then tries to help you up again with the funk. The album kicks off with Good Time Boys, a funk, rap, rock welcome to the new Chili Peppers. Songs like Knock Me Down, Pretty Little Ditty, and Sexy Mexican Maid, demonstrate their new complex sound. But, it would be the covers of Jimi Hendrix's Fire and Stevie Wonder's Higher Ground that would put the Red Hot Chili Peppers into heavy rotation. 

 While the band has not had the easiest of times, this album proved the basketball and funk-loving musicians had serious potential to become mainstream rock pioneers. Just around the corner for them is superstardom with their next album, Blood Sugar Sex Magik.

Good Time Boys

Higher Ground

Subway to Venus

Magic Johnson

Nobody Weird Like Me

Knock Me Down

Taste the Pain

Stone Cold Bush

Fire

Pretty Little Ditty

Punk Rock Classic

Sexy Mexican Maid

Johnny Kick a Hole in the Sky

I'm a radio Joe of the biz called show
I'm a rockin' popstar with a get up and go
Rubbin' elbows with the big wigs at my sold out shows
I've been on every cover even rolling stone

Put us on MTV
All we really need
Begging on our knees
Please, please, please, please, please

Conforming to the norm straight out of the mold
Compromising each and every ounce of soul
I'm a doin' anything for the records of gold
I only want what I can hold 

-Punk Rock Classic-