The Red Hot Chili Peppers - Save the Population - Non-Album Tracks (2003-2005)

Here's the next of my Red Hot Chili Peppers stray tracks collections. I think it's a particularly strong one.

The first song here, "Save the Population," was released on their "Greatest Hits" album in 2003, and was a minor hit. As I explained with my last post on this band, around 2002, they recorded enough material for a new album. However, all but four of the 16 songs from those recording sessions have remained unreleased and even unbootlegged. (The four are "Save the Population," "Fortune Faded," "Bicycle Song," and "Runaway." The first one is here, and the other three are on my previous stray tracks album for them.) One band member has said that he hopes this lost album will be released someday.

What's remarkable is that even if you take away all but the four released songs from that lost album, the band had enough material for two more albums in this time period! My last stray tracks album I posted for them mostly comes from 2002, and this one mostly comes from 2003 and 2004. The majority of the songs here are originals. I think the only ones that aren't are "Havana Affair," "I Just Want to Have Something to Do," "Black Cross," and "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)."

Also, the vast majority of songs here are live recordings. But one of those live tracks is from a B-side, and four others are from two different live albums. So there are only two songs that are officially unreleased. Both of them sound as good as the rest.

I made a rather severe edit for the song "Tuesday Night in Berlin." The original version is 14 minutes long. I cut that down to a "mere" nine minutes, because I thought the original had some meandering parts that went on too long.

The band played a large number of cover songs in these years. However, the vast majority of these would either just be guitarist John Frusciante playing solo and/or only doing a snippet of a minute or less. I didn't include any of those.  I did include the few instances when they played a cover song all the way through as a band.

I end this album with "Under the Bridge." Of course, that's one of their best known songs, from 1991. The reason I put that here is because this is a semi-acoustic version with great sound quality. It's different enough from their usual version that I figure it's worth hearing.

01 Save the Population (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
02 Tuesday Night in Berlin [Edit] (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
03 Bunker Hill (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
04 Havana Affair (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
05 I Just Want to Have Something to Do (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
06 Brandy [You're a Fine Girl] (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
07 Rolling Sly Stone (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
08 Leverage of Space (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
09 Black Cross (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
10 Mini-Epic [Kill For Your Country] (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
11 Under the Bridge [Acoustic Band Version] (Red Hot Chili Peppers)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15259287/TRedHChilP_2003-2005_SvePoplation_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I Googled the band's name and "Save the Population," and found that someone else, howdoyoudoaninternet, had made a cover for an imagined album of that title. It looks fine to me, and it saves me from having to make one, so that's what I have here. I brightened it up some.