REVIEW: Red Hot Chili Peppers bring down the house at Toyota Center

If you haven’t already seen videos online of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ show this past Saturday, let me tell you now that they don’t hold up to the real thing.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers returned to Houston on Jan. 7, at the Toyota Center, as part of The Getaway World Tour that began in Sept. 2016. The tour promoted the band’s 11^th album in over 30 years of music. The album, “The Getaway,” was produced by Danger Mouse and is the first album since 1989 not produced by Rick Rubin. The album has met with commercial success and made its way in the top ten in over 20 countries.

All this culminates in the events of Saturday night at the Toyota Center. The crowd was a jovial mix of twenty-somethings, children and long-time fans in well-worn tour shirts. The show began with a jam session between bassist Flea, guitarist Josh Kinghoffer and drummer Chad Smith as the fans roared and settled in. As vocalist Anthony Kiedis came onstage, the stadium erupted in a sonic hurricane of cheers.

As I scanned the crowd, fans were screaming from the rafters to the floor. To say this show wasn’t packed with 30 years of excitement would be an understatement. The band opened with “Around the World,” the top single from the 1999 album “Californication.” The entire show was like this, bouncing around the band’s entire discography, treating the audience of young and old to new and classic hits.

Following “Soul to Squeeze,” Flea thanked Houston and imparted a special bit of wisdom to the audience, particularly to the youngest in the crowd. “For some of you, this might be your first concert. If you like the music, make your own. Pick up an instrument. Paint something, write something… stand up for what’s good in the world, shine a light, it’s your job. Come on you little rascals!”

The show was interspersed with messages and jam sessions, breaking up the tidal wave of bombastic funk rock and allowing the audience to use the restroom or grab another beer. All the while, the band was backed by large moving LED screens displaying clips of music videos, stellar animations, and live footage of the band filtered like a ‘90s music video. But this was not where the stage design ended.

Before the show, I hadn’t done much research on what the set was going to look like for this tour. As I took my seat, my eyes naturally drifted around the stadium before falling on what seemed like hundreds of paper-towel rolls. My first thought was, “Man, that’s either gonna be a lot of confetti, or the audience is going to get really wet.” Both assumptions were wrong. As the band began “Around the World,” the air above them erupted with light, and the designs from the screens behind them moved up and into the air.

As the band approached the breakdown, the entire piece began to shift and sway with the music. At times during the show, I didn’t know whether to watch the band or the rapidly descending and ascending light show. This design would roll in waves to Flea’s bass, pitch and churn with Smith’s drum rolls, and swell with Kiedis’ croons. The light show was, it turns out, the largest automated kinetic light installation in the history of concert tours. It provided a show for everyone in the stadium, from the rafters to the front row, a three-dimensional experience that will not soon be forgotten or surpassed.

For all the incredible gifts the Red Hot Chili Peppers brought to Houston, it seems they had to leave a few hits back home. As one fan pointed out to me after the show, songs such as “Under the Bridge,” “Dani California,” “Otherside” and “Parallel Universe” did not make it into the show, much to their dismay. But they relented, suggesting it would take hours to fit every great song of theirs into a single show. The experience was, ultimately, life-changing. The band’s new tracks were slamming and fun, their old tracks were nostalgic and the lyrics quickly returned to memory. As I watched the crowd, I could see security and fans alike singing along to the show, not to mention drummer Smith tossing at least a dozen drumsticks into the crowd.

The show “closed” with “By the Way,” bringing a tear to more than a few eyes in the crowd. As the band left the stage, the audience roared beyond comprehension. This reaction was normal for any show; an encore was guaranteed. But what took me aback was the sensation suddenly of the house lights coming on. “Wait,” I said to myself, “is there not an encore?” I looked around and noticed that the house lights weren’t coming on. One by one the audience was lighting up their cellphone flashlights, a 21^st century night sky shimmering to the cheers of hundreds. By the time guitarist Josh Kinghoffer returned to the stage, it was almost as bright as daylight. The lights stayed on as he strummed and sang through a cover of Glen Campbell’s “Galveston,” slowly rejoined by the band as they played into “Goodbye Angels” and finally ended with “Give It Away.”

This show was beyond expectations. 2016 was not a good year for a lot of people, and for some of us 2017 started off just as horribly. But in the midst of life, there comes a surreal experience like seeing Red Hot Chili Peppers destroy reality and leave behind hope and happiness. Get a credit card, take out a loan, go on a road trip and see this show. You’ve earned it.

SET LIST
Intro/Jam Session
Around the World
Snow (Hey Oh)
Scar Tissue
Dark Necessities
The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie
Me & My Friends
Go Robot
Californication
What Is Soul? (Funkadelic cover)
Sick Love
Higher Ground (Stevie Wonder cover)
Dreams of a Samurai
Aeroplane
Soul to Squeeze
By the Way

ENCORE
Galveston (Glen Campbell cover)
Goodbye Angels
Give It Away

In memory of Bruce Bjerkeli.