Tom at Music Thing blogs:
I’ve never really felt strongly enough about the Red Hot Chilli Peppers to develop an opinion about them, but I enjoyed this piece in Guitar Player. After a lot of blah (“the force and the drive of Mars, the warrior, which is the planet of manifestation of what you feel is right from inside”), it gets into extreme geek detail about how he played guitar throug a Doepfer modular synth all over the last album. He’s using all the good stuff: Numerous Moogerfoogers, reel-to-reel tape phasing, EMT digital reverbs, the new-ish Electro-Harmonix POG, Deltalab delays. Towards the end is the wonderful line: “When we started rehearsing the songs for live performance it was a real bummer, because everything sounded so empty without the modular synth.”
(Yes, that’s his live setup in the picture. Yes, he’s got three Moogerfooger low pass filters.)
Two dozen pedals to rip off Tom Petty?! (Thanks Spence!)
You Might Also Like
 Red Hot Chili Peppers – “Look Around” Video |  GN’R, Beasties, RHCP Inducted Into Rock Hall Of Fame |  Red Hot Chili Peppers – “Monarchy Of Roses” Video |  Rock Hall 2012 Nominees: GN’R, Cure, RHCP, Beasties |
 |
 |
%s1 / %s2
“You can put me up there with no effects and a tiny combo amp and I would still feel great?as long as we have that feeling between us.?
Riiiiight. “But as long as we have a few mill to blow…”
Call me when they find a stompbox that makes Anthony Keidis sound good.
Yeah, I think Jennifer nailed it. Frusciante’s solo albums are where it’s at.
anyone who even kidds about “dani CA” ripping off TP’s “MJ’sLD” at this point is probably hiding their real feelings about it and has a poor ear for music and is probably a mediocre guitarist too who has never learned how to properly play the two songs – you would realize in no time that the main riffs/4chords SOUND similar but are not the same and are played at different positions on the guitar frets/neck…And the two songs take off in different directions after the main chords/riffs are played.
If that sounds mean, then so be it. That whole controversy got started because of an idiot in a radio station that had no ear for guitar playing, and it’s pathetic that so many people fell for that (nameless) radio station’s propaganda and that Tom Petty himself had to be asked about it – he didn’t even give a shit either way.
Of course Petty didn’t give a shit. He stole the damn thing from the Jayhawks himself.
Also, ummm … since when did a key change consitute originality? If that’s the case, Billy Joel just doubled his songwriting catalog.
If chord progressions were the basis for copying a song, then there would be no need for this banter, as by now, just about every chord progression (in just about every key, in absolute and relative pitches) is well withing the public domain, seeing as people have been using this kind of stuff since we learned that the human voice can make various frequencies.
Actually, the number of chord progression possibilities is probably not finite, but who cares. When you get this kind of analog synth equipment, it’s all unique.