Let’s keep things in the key of Chili Peppers and drop my favorite cut the band ever did, this slap-happy funk bomb of psychedelic joy, “Show Me Your Soul.”

Dropped as a side nugget during the Mother’s Milk cycle, this song blew me away with Anthony Keidis (back in the long locks, sans porn ‘stache days), Flea, John Frusciante and Chad Smith humming on all cylinders. Probably the sexiest expression of newfound love, I still have the potential to just lose my shit cranking this one with no one around.

Every time I hear this song or watch the gleeful video, I always sigh at the end (a true sentimental gentleman), knowing it represents the end of an era for this point in the band’s history. The subsequent Blood Sugar Sex Magik and Californication changed the tide and the band itself, even with the momentary drop-in of Jane’s Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro for the rowdy if sometimes unfocused One Hot Minute.

Not a lick of it, with moments of greatness amidst the commercialized watering down of the band on those and subsequent albums, compares to the booming energy and love of roots this song shoves out with a wild alpha-omega blend of machismo and femininity. As I mentioned in the last post, I’m very fond of the Chili Peppers’ more recent albums The Getaway (a therapy album I needed during a rough stretch, and I played the snot out of) and the exuberant Unlimited Love.

Still, try putting anything following “Show Me Your Soul” against it. Limp noodle by comparison.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.