RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS - AT THE RITZ - APRIL 26, 1990 - TICKET

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RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS - AT THE RITZ - APRIL 26, 1990 - TICKET
The Red Hot Chili Peppers, who played at the Ritz on Thursday night, are an invitation to partake in a new version of an old myth. Like the Beach Boys before them - and the Red Hot Chili Peppers are a 1980's version, in several ways, of the Beach Boys - they create an image of Southern California. But it is modern California, where everybody walks around in shorts, doesn't wear a shirt, and has big tattoos and a great physique. And their music, hyperactive, referential and loud, is meant for a party.
And party is what the audience does. On the floor of the Ritz, the audience swirled and heaved, occasionally lifting one of its members over the heads of the crowd in an attempt to take the stage. It never worked, but that was not the point: the point was that the audience had come together as one.
The group - guitar, bass, drums and a singer - mixed short instrumental tunes with covers of older rock material by George Clinton and Jimi Hendrix. And their own material, taken from their new album, ''Mother's Milk,'' and from older albums, stole liberally from 1960's and 1970's sources, taking bass lines from the Meters and from Parliament-Funkadelic. But the theft had some respectability to it: instead of aping funk and soul bands, the group speeded everything up, added more guitar, and turned the tunes into punk workouts, athletic, intense and visual. And the sound system, obscuring the singing as usual, made the sources seem even farther away.