Students from Flea’s Silverlake Conservatory of Music have shown their appreciation of their school’s founder in the shape of an EP called Our Loving Tribute to Red Hot Chili Peppers.
It’s a four track release and was executive produced by the bassist himself, alongside Merck Mercuriadis, the founder of Hipgnosis Songs. The four Chili Peppers songs the kids cover are Subway To Venus, Sick Love, Hump de Bump and Soul To Squeeze.
The EP was attributed by the SCM All Stars, a collective of the top students at the school. As you can see below, the group performed their version of Hump de Bump on Good Day LA recently with a guesting Flea on trumpet.
Anyway, Flea sounded made up by the tribute, saying in a statement: “The kids! I’m so grateful that our music can be a vehicle for their spirits to fly. This is what music is for. I am so proud of them.”
Red Hot Chili Peppers singer Anthony Kiedis was impressed too saying, “I can’t think of anyone I’d rather be tributized by.” (Is ‘tributized’ a word?)
“Student musicians are the best,” he added. “Let’s all take a listen to how they interpret these tunes. Thank you Flea and good work Merck.”
The Chili Peppers release is the third in a series of tribute EPs the Conservatory students have put out this year. They previously released Our Loving Tribute to The Pretenders in May and Our Loving Tribute to Neil Young in July.
Flea founded the Conservatory way back in 2001 with sometime Chilis member Keith ‘Tree’ Barry. The bassist has maintained close links with the school since – he released his first solo EP via the Conservatory’s website in 2012 and the Chili Peppers played a charity event there in 2019 which turned out to be their final performance with guitarist Josh Klinghoffer.
