Song of the Day 6/10: Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Californication”

In what I assume is a dry run for November, Republicans throughout the land are squawking that the mayoral primary in Los Angeles – along with all other elections in California – was rigged. Their proof? Reality TV non-entity Spencer Pratt, a Trump-adjacent Republican, didn’t get enough votes to make the run-off election. This in a city where 49.7% of registered voters are Democrats, 16.7% Republicans.

The professionals circulating this bunkum know it’s bullshit, a product of the state’s slow process for counting mail-in ballots, but evidence-free claims of cheating are central to the MAGA project of stealing any election they lose.

Anthony Kiedas listed a lot of things he considered Californication on the title track of the Chili Peppers’ 1999 comeback album. I would suggest he add “trying to fuck the state’s elections” to his list.

As a single, “Californication” reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock and Modern Rock charts. Rolling Stone considers it the band’s best song. The video, a faithful imitation of then-current video games featuring animated avatars of the band members, also was wildly popular. Inevitably, somebody made a real video game to match, so you, too, can traverse the state as Flea.

In its initial form the song was much slower and had a reggae/rocksteady feel. It was leaked to the internet in 2014 along with the rest of the so-called Teatro sessions, a 90-minute tape recorded at Daniel Lanois’ Oxnard, Calif., studio in 1998.