The video for this song freaked me the hell out when I first saw it in 1991. A bunch of shiny dudes in the desert, jumping around like they were tripping balls.
WTF?!
I couldn't deny, though, that these guys sounded like nothing else in the late 80s/early 90s (except maybe Jane's Addiction). MTV was just beginning to realize that hair metal sucked, yet they still dutifully put Warrant, Poison, and their ilk in rotation with no apologies--music that I never warmed to. But here came these freaky-styley cats who sounded like the sons of Sly Stone and Patti Smith and not some glammed-out, boozed-out Led Zep wannabes. (That's not to say they didn't have their vices or abstained from anything. A number of their songs, including a few from Blood Sugar Sex Magik, deal with this.) But these were punky funkateers who just didn't care about appealing to the same mulleted audience that was pumping its fingerless leather-gloved fists to "Cherry Pie." Which suited me just fine.
Chad Smith and Flea grooved harder than most any rhythm section out there. John Frusciante's guitar attack was equal parts thrash and funky chicken scratch. And Anthony Kiedis spit lyrics like an ol' skool hip hopper but could also slide into a soulful wail at will.
"Give It Away" was a perfect synthesis of each of those elements, held together by a tight groove and an infectious lyric that might have been about sex, charity, or a little of both, capped off by that mantra-like refrain: Give it away, give it away, give it away now.
Shit is still my jam.
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