Flea looked like Sting with lavender hair & other post-Peppers thoughts

What's wrong with this picture? Flea is flying & Josh Klinghoffer is sitting, with a boot on his broken foot.

Star Tribune photo by Carlos Gonzalez

A few more thoughts beyond my review about the Red Hot Chili Peppers at Target Center Tuesday:

*In 2000 and again in 2003, I cut the RHCP some slack because it was opening night of their tour in the Twin Cities. In 2006, they played their tour finale here. This time, they – well, Anthony Kiedis – just seemed inexcusably tired as they headed into the home stretch of a long tour.

* To use a sports analogy (the Peppers love NBA basketball, especially the Lakers), at this concert, this quartet was like a relay team. Two guys did their parts and ran their butts off, a third guy was injured but tried hard and the fourth dude just didn't seem to care. Bummer.

* RHCP had a first-rate light and video show. That's become such a hallmark for them that maybe we take it for granted.

*As he did in 2006 at the Xcel Energy Center, Flea thanked the Twin Cities for the Replacements, Husker Du and Prince.

* Kiedis wore a ballcap saluting the cool punk band OFF!, which has opened some of RHCP's shows on this tour. Instead, we got Thundercat, a jazz-rock fusion quartet that was stuck in the 1970s until they played an acid-jazz finale. Not a bad band, but not the right context.

* The RHCP set featured only one original song prior to 1991. That was 1987's "Me and My Friends."

* The notion of doing Neil Young's "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere" was lame. Especially as part of the encore.

* Which did you miss more: "Higher Ground" or "Scar Tissue"? I vote for the Stevie Wonder cover.

*As of now, the Chili Peppers are the only band in the Rock Hall of Fame that made their biggest impression in the 1990s. To be sure, Metallica was huge in the '90s but also very big in the '80s.