Life in California is full of vexing music questions. Does Warren Beatty visit his old pal Suge Knight in prison? Does Bob Dylan enlist Stevie Wonder when he has to write a birthday card? How can we eradicate invasive Go-Go’s from our public fountains?
Alta Journal has enlisted two experts—and music-heads—to answer all of your questions: onetime Viper Room Employee of the Month Stacey Grenrock Woods and Gershwin rhapsodist Gustavo Arellano, both of whom bring decades of hard-won knowledge and laser-sharp insights into the Golden State.
Have a question of your own? Ask a Californian!
Why do people like the Red Hot Chili Peppers? Is it a California thing?
—Blood Sugar Sex Garbage
Stacey: Don’t you mean a Californication thing? (Of course you don’t, and neither do I. We don’t use that kind of language around here.)
I’ve been asking myself why people like the Red Hot Chili Peppers since I was old enough to carry a rape whistle, and I’m still totally stumped. Is it the way they fuse rock, hip-hop, and funk into something that significantly degrades each? The way they put rap in their funky rock songs and funk in their rocky rap songs as only the band with what musicians call “the whitest feel in the world” can? Or maybe it’s how it all comes together as a tuneless, busy, vocally jarring, and lyrically stultifying mofo party plan that gets everyone going. I don’t know, but if you show me a line about giving it to your daughter before doing a little dance and drinking a little water, I’ll show you a guy who must’ve left his rhyming dictionary under the bridge.
Here’s what I do know: It’s not a California thing. The Californian feels no obligation to claim the Chili Peppers as their own the way, say, the New Jerseyan does Bruce Springsteen or the Canadian does Anne Murray. Most people I know are Californians who don’t like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, including some of the band members themselves. It’s true. Many years ago, through little fault of my own, I numbered myself within their inner circle [holds for gasps], and without going too far into it, I can reveal some things: Anthony Kiedis knows he can’t sing. Or rap. And he eats sushi with his hands.
I suppose as long as there are frat boys and the women who love them, the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ tube sock will forever runneth over. But never forget that by disliking them, you, Blood Sugar, are on the right side of history and in good company. David Bowie and Brian Eno each declined to produce them (Eno more than once), and both you and Nick Cave have described their music as “garbage.” So, the next time you see an arena of shirtless over-40s jumping around to a band that’s been jumping around shirtless for over 40, know that, lonely as you are, together we cry.
Gustavo: Hey, over 120 million albums sold worldwide (per Wikipedia, which never lies), based on a catalog that’s one giant, overdistorted thrash-funk caterwaul, don’t lie. So, what is it? What are you, a Faith No More fan? I can’t speak for the rest of the world, or even all of my fellow Californians, but the Chili Peppers are to SoCal what Journey is to the Bay Area: our nationally loathed hometown heroes. In the case of the Peppers, they are L.A. Not one of the canonical members—Anthony Kiedis, Flea, Chad Smith, John Frusciante, and the late Hillel Slovak—was born here, and Flea and Slovak were immigrants. The group struggled through club gigs but never gave up on their California dream. Most of them still live in Southern California full-time, unlike my hometown traitor, Anaheim’s Gwen Stefani. Angelenos know Flea better as the do-gooder who cofounded the Silverlake Conservatory of Music, a nonprofit that gives free (or affordable) music classes to kids who live in and around the neighborhood he helped to gentrify—that takes heart (and balls), you know?
All parts of California have their backyard-bands-gone-big that locals will defend forever, even if their sound isn’t the best. Orange County has Social Distortion; Long Beach has Sublime; San Diego has Blink-182; Bakersfield has Korn. So you don’t have to like the music of the Chili Peppers—and even fans will admit that the only tracks that truly thump are “Under the Bridge,” “Californication,” covers of “Love Rollercoaster” and “They’re Red Hot,” and their performance during Krusty the Clown’s comeback special—but leave the guys alone! Hating the Chili Peppers is like hating Comic Sans: I get it, but there are better things to hate. Like Journey!
What should be the California anthem?
—Please Don’t Say “Hotel California”
Stacey: Of course I’d never say that. I live in a world where the Eagles don’t rate. Plus, every time someone points out that it’s just Eagles, not the Eagles, an angel gets its wings. (And if the person who points it out is Don Henley, two angels.)
First, Hotel, I need you to apologize to Francis Beatty Silverwood, Abraham Franklin Frankenstein, and Mary Garden—the composers and original performer of California’s actual anthem, “I Love You, California,” from 1913. It’s a snappy little tune that starts out, “I love you California, you’re the greatest state of all / I love you in the winter, summer, spring and in the fall,” but just go ahead and tell them their song isn’t good enough for you.
Sadly, no one’s written a song about all of California that’s as good as Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.” I’d be willing to approach him about changing the title to “I Love CA” and swapping out some of the street names (except Sixth Street—that stays), but until then, we have a few other choices. The best option is probably “California Dreamin’” by the Mamas and the Papas, which is a hauntingly beautiful song with only the faintest whiff of incest hanging around it. Joni Mitchell’s “California” is also great, and I’d be willing to throw my support behind it, though I expect we’d get a lot of pushback from the anti-folk lobby. “Going to California” by Led Zeppelin is good but a bit mopey for an anthem. When I think California anthem (as in, one that’s not our actual anthem, which is as beloved and fresh as it ever was), I think Lucy and Ricky driving west with Fred and Ethel in the back and singing “California, Here I Come.” I’m not, in the words of a true Californian, totally loving it, but it feels a little more appropriate than most other California songs and has the added benefit of not being by Phantom Planet.
Gustavo: When I first heard “I Love You, California” on a Jeep Grand Cherokee commercial a decade ago, I thought I was hearing a weak-salsa parody of an old-timey song. When I realized I was hearing a weak-salsa old-timey song, I vowed to go with a Range Rover if I ever needed an off-road vehicle. All of Stacey’s choices are great, but she doesn’t see enough commercials, because she would’ve picked my anthem: the late Marlena Shaw’s version of “California Soul,” which I first found out about after hearing it on a 2014 Dodge Ram commercial (featuring voice-over from Sam Elliott). Soaring, funky, evocative, beautiful—it’s everything that encapsulates us. And the Red Hot Chili Peppers have nothing to do with it.
Why does California inspire so many pop songs, from the Beach Boys to Joni Mitchell, Dr. Dre to Katy Perry? I can’t think of any other state that comes close.
—What Even Rhymes with California?
Stacey: Just like early man drawing bison on the cave walls and like the Parisian ape that supposedly produced a painting that captured the bars of its cage (which Nabokov claims inspired him to write Lolita), we tend to write about what we see. (The exception that springs to mind is James Joyce, who had to leave Dublin to write Ulysses, because he didn’t want to get too Dublin-ed out. Can you blame him?)
The people you mentioned, Rhymes, wrote songs about the place where they lived—California. If, like Brian Wilson, that ape had lived in Hawthorne, it might’ve created “Surfin’ U.S.A.” But it didn’t. It lived in Paris, where Joyce finished Ulysses. So a better question might be, Why do so many songwriters live in California? Because, like the song says, You’re the greatest state of all…in the winter, summer, spring and in the fall.
Gustavo: Because we’re cool, silly! We’re so cool that the Beatles were able to craft a trippy song, “Blue Jay Way,” based off a street in the Hollywood Hills that’s all of half a mile long. We’re so cool that A Tribe Called Quest penned the hip-hop classic “I Left My Wallet in El Segundo” because Q-Tip liked it whenever Redd Foxx would make a joke about the LAX-adjacent city on Sanford and Son. Hell, we’re so cool that the country standard “You’re the Reason God Made Oklahoma” by David Frizzell and Shelly West is about…someone living in L.A. with no intention of moving back to the Sooner State. Can you blame them? California is where the muses of music come to live and play and become famous—just ask the Red Hot Chili Peppers.•
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Gustavo Arellano is the author of Orange County: A Personal History and Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America. In 2025, Arellano was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his work as a columnist for the Los Angeles Times. He was formerly editor of OC Weekly, an alternative newspaper in Orange County, California, and penned the award-winning ¡Ask a Mexican!, a nationally syndicated column in which he answered any and all questions about America’s spiciest and largest minority. Arellano is the recipient of awards ranging from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies Best Columnist to the Los Angeles Press Club President’s Award to an Impact Award from the National Hispanic Media Coalition, and he was recognized by the California Latino Legislative Caucus with a 2008 Spirit Award for his “exceptional vision, creativity, and work ethic.” Arellano is a lifelong resident of Orange County and is the proud son of two Mexican immigrants, one of whom came to this country in the trunk of a Chevy.
Stacey Grenrock Woods is a regular contributor to Esquire and a former correspondent for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. She writes and consults on various TV shows, and has a recurring role as Tricia Thoon on Fox’s Arrested Development. Her first book is I, California.
