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The Super Bowl halftime show, featuring Bruno Mars and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, elicited plenty of cheers from fans in MetLife Stadium, but some watching at home — including former Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid — had a bone to pick with the chosen performers.
PHOTOS: Super Bowl 2014: 12 Big Moments From Sunday’s Game
Taking to Twitter mere seconds after the camera panned to RHCP bassist Flea slapping his instrument with his staple stage stomp, Reid commented, “That guitar is plugged into NOTHING,” followed by several more missives explaining that there was “a flaw in the illusion. They slipped up by not covering that for camera. They actually DON’T want Blatantly Fake made obvious.”
Flea has since responded to the air-guitar claim, writing on the band’s website that they were aware from the beginning that everything but the vocals would be pre-recorded. Although the group’s stance on miming in the past has been “we will absolutely not do it,” he wrote that the band chose to go through with the performance because “it was a surreal-like, once in a life time crazy thing to do and we would just have fun and do it.”
Still, the controversy has only picked up steam as various sports outlets jumped on the story, and even inspired the ever-reclusive Axl Rose to weigh in. Read on for the Guns N’ Roses frontman’s guest post, where he writes of Flea’s magic ass transmitter, “the largest karaoke audience ever” and somehow finds a way to tie in the sign language faker from the Nelson Mandela memorial.
In the Name of Science
In regard to the Internet’s “no wireless” controversy regarding the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Super Bowl performance as reported on ESPN …
I enjoyed the show and I’ve no idea what the real story is nor would I want to suggest or imply anyone wasn’t actually performing or that what they were playing wasn’t what we actually heard. That said I feel it’s important to always look on the positive side of things and to give the benefit of doubt.
So consider that maybe sometime before their actual performance that rather than use a guitar cord or standard wireless, that in the name of science and for all mankind Flea courageously had a newly invented breakthrough in microchip technology installed in his ass that picked up the frequencies of his bass and transmitted them to his amplifier.
Maybe they all had microchips installed in their asses and not only pick up the frequencies of their instruments but get DirecTV and the Internet too! Like Google Glass … Google Ass! They could be “Scientific Pioneers!” Like Buzz Aldrin and shit! True (pardon the pun) ASS-tro-nots! Or like Super Bowl crash test dummies for bands kinda like those cars that drive themselves!
And besides, if the band wasn’t really playing or wireless or whatever and Anthony was really singing they may have set a new world record for the largest karaoke audience ever! Awesome!
So relax and show some pride! This is probably all just Google finding new ways to enrich our lives with the selfless volunteering of the Peppers and the ever-ongoing creative process of true innovation, or perhaps a new lounge bar record of super magnificent proportions and a new pinnacle of human achievement not seen since the sign language guy in South Africa!
God Bless America, the Peppers n’ technology … PN’T!
Ax
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