And while most two-disc sets would be better as a single record, Stadium Arcadium is never boring, thanks to group MVP, guitarist John Frusciante. The axeman proves as good as Steve Nash at making his bandmates better, with an array of styles from the Hendrixian psychedelia of “Dani” and the wah-wah funkadelia of “Hump de Bump” and “Warlocks” to the delicate acoustic Frippertronics of “Slow Cheetah,” the Cream-styled blues jam of “Torture Me” and the tuneful wall of sound on “Especially in Michigan,” which pinpoints him as the American version of The Edge. And that’s just the first disc.
Flea’s bass helps carve out the tunes like a latter-day Macca, while Anthony Kiedis, though his range is still lacking, nevertheless manages to underline the vocal hooks, etched in stone by Chad Smith’s array of tribal percussion. Almost too much to absorb in one sitting, the album firmly established the Chili Peppers as heirs to a Calipop tradition that stretches back to ‘60s groups like Gary Puckett and the Union Gap and the early surf bands. And while their days as groundbreaking iconoclasts are way behind them, the progenitors of SoCal hedonism are aging gracefully into their role as elder statesmen, as much a tribute to their savvy management team Q-Prime’s long-term strategy of building them as a global attraction as to their own impressive survival.
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
Based on the best seller by Fortune reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, who originally helped grease the Houston energy giant’s downfall by simply questioning the company’s numbers in terms of its explosive stock valuation, Alex Gibney’s documentary is an entertaining layman’s analysis of this country’s largest-scale bankruptcy ever, particularly timely given last week’s convictions of principals Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling. Describing the situation as a “house of cards” above a burning tank of gasoline, Gibney gleefully documents the demise with pop culture references to It’s a Wonderful Life and The Simpsons, capturing the hubris of Enron execs and traders alike, turning their swift collapse into a cathartic conclusion.
It’s not hard, in a Michael Moore-like way, to draw conspiracy conclusions from Lay’s strong ties to George Dubya and his father, while the film leaves open-ended the suggestion that the same book-cooking is probably going on at any number of major companies who manipulate Wall Street to their own ends. The real question is, how did our economy survive the massive effects of Enron’s duplicitous boondoggle without plunging into a depression itself?
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