Peppers bring heat to snowbound Iowa

A bold opening can make all the difference - especially as a grand gesture to spark an arena show.

Both the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Gnarls Barkley delivered the goods on that front Friday night at Wells Fargo Arena, capping a day in which most of Iowa was shut down by the second nasty snowstorm within a week.

Gnarls Barkley, the beloved oddball duo of rapper-singer Cee-Lo Green and producer-DJ Danger Mouse, blasted off Friday to the tune of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" and a 10-piece backup band complete with a string quartet.

Then the Chili Peppers topped Gnarls with an opposite, stripped-down approach: Bassist Flea, guitarist John Frusciante and drummer Chad Smith tore into a monster jam as a sinewy trio with Hendrix overtones.

There were 12,850 fans who purchased tickets to Friday's concert, and those who battled through the snow to attend rather than collect a refund that was offered - maybe about 75 percent of the original total based on an eyeball estimate, before a final head count was available - were rewarded with a pair of hot performances.

Four high school juniors from Ames rolled down what they described as an icy Interstate Highway 35 to attend the concert and counted 52 cars and four semitrailers in the ditch.

"It was pretty wicked weather on the way," said Ben Pyle, who rode in a four-wheel-drive Suburban with Jordan Bergman, Luke Bauer and Derek Trickle.

They were determined young fans eager for a rite of passage: Friday marked their first Chili Peppers concert.

"It's worth the experience," as Pyle put it.

Speaking only from a musical and not a safety standpoint, yes, it was.

"Thank you - thank you for the blizzard, too," Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis quipped early in his band's set.

But forget Kiedis, who as a singer is merely a decent rapper. Frusciante rated the MVP for the Chili Peppers, elevating nearly every song with his adventurous, psychedelic guitar explorations.

He veered from feedback in the tasty grind of "Blood Sugar Sex Magik" to gentle strumming and lead falsetto vocals for his own tender solo version of Fleetwood Mac's "Songbird."

Even the rote encore (flat drum solo leading into the expected final blast of "Give It Away") was redeemed when Kiedis left the stage and the core Chili Peppers trio sunk into a deep reggae groove; Frusciante then launched into the psychedelic stratosphere to end the night as blissfully as it began - no lead vocalist to distract, just three instrumentalists whose synergy has evolved well beyond the narrow confines of what makes the Chili Peppers popular on radio and in music videos.

For Gnarls Barkley, the singer was the most impressive thing.

Last time the Chili Peppers performed in central Iowa, way back in the (prehistoric to some) grunge era of 1991, at Stephens Auditorium in Ames, the California boys brought with them the then-little-known bands Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins.

A year ago, Gnarls Barkley also would have rated a relatively obscure hopeful, and Cee-Lo spent years as the standout in an Atlanta rap crew (Goodie Mob) deserving of more recognition.

But last year changed everything for Gnarls Barkley when the song "Crazy" exploded across multiple radio formats.

Cee-Lo on Friday put the spotlight (literally) on the band's string quartet (dubbed the "G-Strings") to lead off "Crazy," which he credited as the "very reason I am rich and famous today." But his soulful, arena-sized wail was arguably most hypnotic on "Transformer."