"We play bone-crunching mayhem-funk. We play it hard, and our motto is always play like you have a big dick."
With these words, in August 1984, a shirt-less Michael Balzary, aka Flea, introduced viewers of MTV's The Cutting Edge show to his band The Red Hot Chili Peppers, as the Los Angeles quartet were then known.
The group's appearance on the one MTV programme dedicated to showcasing "adventurous" new artists operating outside the mainstream, was timed to coincide with the release of their self-titled debut album, produced by Gang Of Four guitarist Andy Gill, which emerged on August 10 via EMI America/Enigma Records. And footage of the quartet - vocalist Antony Kiedis, guitarist Jack Sherman, bassist Flea and drummer Cliff Martinez - playing Get Up And Jump in their rehearsal space, illustrated that the young musicians already had impressive chops ("You can take any kind of music and make it punk, energy-wise," noted Sherman, "but funk is something you've gotta know how to play") and the confidence swagger of a band who knew they were good, and destined for better things. The interview segments of the feature, however, suggested that these were not men you'd want to be trapped with in a broken lift/elevator for very long.
If you a 12-year-old proto Beavis or Butthead living in the suburbs of Nowheresville, America, the shrieking, gurning and self-satisfied smart-ass 'wit' displayed by Kiedis and Flea doubtless made the duo seem like rad, gnarly bad-asses, or whatever words Thrasher magazine was using in 1984 to hail youth culture's latest anti-heroes. Viewed four decades later, however, the pair's relentless 'wackiness' doesn't half grate. One of Flea's early contributions to the piece finds him simply screaming into the camera three times, while Kiedis raps the lyrics to Out In L.A. in a manner that doubtless gave a young Vanilla Ice hope that his dreams of becoming a hip-hop superstar were not impossible.
"The chemistry of Flea and I being best friends for so long just turns into pure, crazed energy," Kiedis suggests at one point, adding that one of the band's greatest assets is their ability to perform "with their juices flowing", which at least makes sense of the 'socks-on-cocks' schtick that lay ahead.
"We always play as bad as we can, and we try not to give a show at all, and we never try to entertain everybody, and we always try to be really lame, and put no energy to it," adds a deadpan Flea. "We don't believe in what we do at all, we have no faith in it, we have no integrity whatsoever, and we hope we don't make any money. And don't buy our record, whatever you do."
The Melbourne, Australia-born musician's sarcasm might have gone over the heads of MTV's audience here, for despite the enviable promotional; platform provided by the band's appearance on the channel, America's record buyers seemed to take him at his word, for The Red Hot Chili Peppers didn't penetrate the Billboard 200 allbum chart, peaking at number 201. But as the music industry propelled a new batch of superstars - Van Halen, Madonna, Prince and Bruce Springsteen among them - into living rooms and teenage bedrooms across America, the Chili Peppers now at least had a foot in the door.
Their time would come.
