CHILI PEPPERS CAUGHT UP IN LIVE PENIS GAFFE AT THE GRAMMYS

RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS turned the air blue on the red carpet at the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles last night when they forgot an interview was going live to US homes. The group was being interviewed by E! NEWS host RYAN SEACREST when frontman ANTHONY KIEDIS sprayed Silly String all over the broadcaster. In an attempt to brush the mess off Seacrest, bassist FLEA inadvertently touched the presenter's genitals, and then joked, "Is that your c**k down there." Red-faced Seacrest had to remind the group his broadcast was going out live.

RHCP WANTS YOU TO MAKE THEIR VIDEO

The Red Hot Chili Peppers have launched a contest on video-sharing website YouTube that gives fans the opportunity to create the official video for "Charlie," from Stadium Arcadium. The winner of the contest will receive 5,000 dollars and a trip to meet the Red Hot Chili Peppers and see them perform live in Paris, France on July 6th.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers are reaching out to their fans and budding directors to create a video from STADIUM ARCADIUM after seeing so many creative videos for their songs on sites like YouTube. "Videos are harder than they look. It's very very rare and beautiful and monumental when someone makes a truly good video...this is an opportunity to have that happen for this song," says Anthony Kiedis.

The winning video will be the "official" video for the song. To enter the contest, which runs through April 20th, eligible entrants should visit or http://www.youtube.com/group/RHCPcontest or http://contest.warnerbrosrecords.com/RHCP and follow the instructions to upload their video entry. The contest is open to entrants from the United States, UK, Germany, Australia, Canada and Sweden.

Red hot chili peppers played first gig 6000 years ago

New evidence found by biologists shows that people living in the spicier regions of the world were eating chili peppers as early as 4000 BCE. What's more, they were using them in very much the same ways and the same regions as they are today.

Some regions of South America today have a largely maize-based diet often spiced with chili peppers. New research shows similar food was being eaten 6000 years ago.

Researchers, including a paleoethnobotanist at the University of Missouri-Columbia, recently found fossil evidence in seven archaeological sites ranging from the Bahamas to present-day Peru that showed people were eating domesticated chili peppers as long as 6,000 years ago. This makes chili peppers one of the oldest domesticated food sources in the Americas. The study will be published in the Feb. 15 edition of the journal Science.


By analyzing the grains on cooking tools, researchers were able to determine that people used the same grinding stones to grind corn, chili peppers and a root crop called manioc, and they probably combined these ingredients to make soups, stews and other dishes. Deborah Pearsall, professor of anthropology in MU's College of Arts and Science, found evidence of this diet on grinding stones from four ancient households at Real Alto, leading her to conclude that these foods were eaten by everyone, not just the commoners or the elites.

"Before our research, there wasn't much archaeological evidence to show that prehistoric people in Central and South America were eating domesticated chili peppers," said Professor Pearsall. "Chili peppers don't preserve well because when you cook with them, you eat most of them; you don't have husks or shells that are thrown away and preserved. That's why we used a technique that involved analyzing microscopic starch grains on cooking and grinding tools to find this new evidence."

Professor Pearsall, who studied tools from sites in Ecuador and the Bahamas, teamed with a group of scientists doing research in various locations in Central and South America; the project was led by Linda Perry, a research associate at the Smithsonian National Museum of Nature History's Archaeobiology Program. Perry discovered an unknown microfossil starch grain while doing research in Venezuela, and when the other researchers compared notes, they realized that their work in the Bahamas, Panama, Ecuador and Peru also revealed the same unknown starch grain. After studying the starches of many domesticated and wild plants, Perry determined that the mystery starch was a chili pepper.

"We knew from historic and ethnographic records that people were eating domesticated chili peppers, but this archaeological evidence confirms those findings. It also shows us that chili peppers are one of the oldest domesticated food sources in the Americas and that people in distant areas all ate them. This suggests that these groups might have had some type of contact with each other," Professor Pearsall said.

Loma Alta and Real Alto, the sites in southwestern Ecuador studied by Pearsall, turned up the oldest starch of domesticated chili peppers, at approximately 6,000 years old. Starch of the peppers in other sites ranged from approximately 5,600 years to 500 years old. Under a microscope, the starch grains appeared as large, flattened disks with shallow central depressions, different from the appearance of starch grains from other foods.

Plea to death crash driver

Police are calling for the driver of a car that allegedly struck and killed an 18-year-old South Korean student queuing for concert tickets in Whangarei to hand themselves in.


Sang Je Lee, who was in his third year of study at Whangarei's Pompallier College, had been queuing with friends for tickets to the coming Red Hot Chili Peppers concerts in Auckland when he was struck by a car about 3.25am yesterday while lying in the car park next to the Rebel Sports complex.

Detective Shane Pilmer, of Whangarei, said it was not known how Mr Lee had come to be lying in the middle of the car park, but said it may have been something as innocent as "looking at the stars".

He urged the driver of the car and their passenger to come forward.

"They may have panicked and thought the best action was to take flight ... but they've had time to think about it now."

Though there were up to 30 fans queuing for tickets at the time, none of those spoken to saw Mr Lee being run over, Mr Pilmer said.

"They heard a loud bang, which was the incident between the victim and the vehicle ... then a screech of tyres".

A grey or gun-metal grey Nissan Skyline was then seen leaving the car park at high speed, he said.

Fans raced to Mr Lee's aid and an ambulance was called, but he died in Whangarei Hospital soon after 9.30am.

Preliminary autopsy results showed that he died of shock, from massive internal bleeding to his injured spleen, liver and lungs. He was also thought to have suffered multiple broken bones.

The incident had shocked the American rock band, a representative said. "The band's hearts and prayers are with the family at this sad time."

The band's New Zealand and Australian tour promoter, Michael Coppel, also expressed his sympathy to the parents, family and friends of the young Northland fan.

Mr Lee had been living with relatives in Whangarei while completing his secondary school education. His parents, who live in South Korea, had been told of his death and were on their way to New Zealand, Mr Pilmer said.

Sang Je, was an outgoing boy and a thriving student at Pompallier Catholic College, his host father Byung Kuoog Kim told the New Zealand Herald.

He said Sang Je had been part of his family, had enjoyed golf, soccer and hockey, and had excelled in chemistry.

Sang Je's mother had given her only child money for the Auckland concert ticket as a present for his 19th birthday.

Rebel Sports' Whangarei manager, Frazer Hoani, said that despite the tragedy, fans continued to queue outside and ticket sales went ahead as planned when the store opened.

Mr Hoani said he did not realise how serious the incident was till late in the morning.

Tickets to the Red Hot Chili Pepper's two concerts - on April 21 and 22 at Auckland's Vector Arena - sold out in just 20 minutes, with 80 per cent sold over the internet.

SHOCKED: The Red Hot Chili Peppers have sent their condolences to the family of a Kiwi fan who was killed in a hit-and-run accident while waiting for tickets to the band's upcoming shows in April.

Chili Peppers fan hit by car dies

A Red Hot Chili Peppers fan died after he was hit and left on the side of the road this morning as he queued for tickets for the band's upcoming Auckland concert.

A Whangarei police spokesman said the incident happened about 3.25am today, as the teenager slept while he waited for a ticket outlet to open at 9am.

The teenager, who suffered a suspected ruptured spleen and broken bones, was taken to Whangarei Hospital where he died.

Sergeant Graham Povey said the teenager was outside the Rebel Sports Complex, Port Road, when the car hit him, then drove off.

The car was described only as dark coloured. He appealed for any witnesses to come forward.

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."

Review: Red Hot Chili Peppers

You probably know the bad-boy/clown-prince stories of the Red Hot Chili Peppers: drugs, assorted ribaldry, creative use of hosiery. Well, forget about 'em.

The Chili Peppers who played the Bradley Center on Wednesday night are just a bunch of nice hard-rocking Hollywood boys. All they seem to want out of life is a cold Vitamin Water and some good tuna maki.

And to play their music, of course. Validated as true survivors by the success of Grammy-winning rock album "Stadium Arcadium," the now 40-something Chili Peppers are happy to forget the crazy theatrics and focus on the music: a West Coast brand of deep metal funk that's a head-bobbing love child of Bootsy Collins and Jimi Hendrix.

Most of the time, anyway. As an arena band that has discovered the joys of song craft, the Peppers have evolved while clinging to their roots. Anthony Kiedis can still nimbly spit his rat-a-tat sound poetry, but vocal pyrotechnics have given over to more subtle and subdued singing.

Even his stage presence, once a frenetic blend of prime-time Muhammad Ali and Bruce Lee, is now more about stillness and concentration.

Even without the long jams of their youth, that heady blend of styles was still there. Kiedis' ruminative mea culpas ("Snow (Hey Oh)," "Under the Bridge") were well-seasoned with Flea's thump-and-ping bass work, and John Frusciante's jagged-edge guitar fills. And the 90-minute plus set was peppered with tasty between-song improvs to make the tightly orchestrated show feel loose.

From Frusciante's first fog-cutting riff on "Can't Stop," which opened the set, it was clear how essential he is to the more thoughtful and craft-conscious Peppers. He even stepped up to sing an achingly gorgeous solo version of Fleetwood Mac's "Songbird."

But the band is by no means a one-man show. Frusciante's crackling rhythm vamps work because Flea's ever-more-musical bass knows how to work around them. And drummer Chad Smith's solid back beat doesn't hurt.

Cee-Lo, the singing half of opening act Gnarls Barkley, was having problems with his voice Wednesday night. "I need your energy," he told the crowd time and again.

And no wonder. His classic, there-it-is soul pipes had to work triple time to rise above the din of the muddy and overpopulated back-up band he had in tow. With simple beats like the Femmes' "Gone Daddy Gone" or the hit single, "Crazy," you could make out some of producer DJ Danger Mouse's sonic wizardry. But most of the set was an over-camped, crazy mess.