Red Hot Chili Peppers: “Out In L.A.” (EMI)

After years of false pretences, The Red Hot Chili Peppers have finally delivered something that can justifiably be called a stocking filler. Out In L.A. is a ragbag of early demos, live tracks, remixes, leftovers and general cast-offs. It is, by turns, trashy, self-indulgent, thrilling, crass, carnal and bland. In other words, it’s the perfect synopsis of what this band is all about.

Always gloriously unburdened by intelligent thought of any kind, The Peppers (as we hip young things like to call them) are at their best when they indulge their innate idiocy and don’t try too hard. The early demos are surprisingly good. Spunky, goofball three chord tricks played with the minimum of ceremony and at balding, teeth-loosening speed. This is macho asshole music at its groin-grinding finest from a group that originally called itself Tony Flow And The Miraculously Majestic Masters Of Mayhem. It ain’t Mozart but it’s still easy enough to see what some folk got so excited about back in the dim, dark Eighties.

Before long, of course, it would all go horribly wrong. Guitarist Hillel Slovak would score one dime bag too many, the socks gag would wear thin, Anthony Kiedis would start believing his own hype and the band would degenerate into a sort of West Coast funk metal showband. The nauseating aspects of The Peppers are all too well represented here by a clutch of utterly pointless but very portentous dance mixes which prove nothing other than that there should be a law barring George Clinton from within ten miles of every recording studio on the planet.

The live covers (among them Hendrix’s ‘Castles Made Of Sand’ and Thelonius Monk’s ‘F.U.’) are a criminal waste of blank tape and the album out-takes are just plain criminal. There’s even a thirteen second track which manages to seem a little on the lengthy side.

Out In L.A. tells a cautionary tale. Sometimes, people can be as dumb as they look. With The Red Hot Chili Peppers, what you see is what you get. I can think of no greater insult.

• Liam Fay