Fans of Red Hot Chili Peppers may know bass player Flea is also an accomplished trumpeter. But his most recent horn performance might’ve happened right under everyone’s nose.
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Flea pulled double duty on September 23 when the bassist not only played a set with Red Hot Chili Peppers but also made an appearance playing trumpet with Lauryn Hill’s backup band at the Global Citizen Festival in New York City.
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On Instagram, he posted a soundless clip of himself amid the backing band revealing that he was indeed one of the players in the horn section during Hill’s peformance. “Your boy grateful to be rocking in the horn section for the transcendent @mslaurynhill last night! Thank you to my friend Igmar Thomas for inviting me and to Ms. Hill for having me.”
Igmar Thomas, whom he shouts out, is the musical director of Lauryn Hill’s live band. During her set, she ran through 10 favorites from both her solo album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill and her time in the Fugees, according to Setlist.fm.
Flea told New York radio station ALT 92.3, per Far Out, about his favorite song from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. “Man, it’s so hard for me to answer. No matter what we do…we can do anything, we can be the most poignant, poetic band on earth, and people are always going to be like, ‘Oh, the guys with socks on their cocks.’”
“But, I don’t know, I guess, in terms of sentiment and in terms of rhythm and feeling, ‘Give It Away’ has always been a song for me that no matter how many millions of times we play it, every time we get to the end of it, and we’re closing out a show, and me and Anthony [Kiedis] are all like vibrating and jumping up and down and everything is alive,” he continued. “The idea of giving it away is such a beautiful thing.”
“So, for the sake of trying to make this a good interview, I’ll say that one,” he concluded. “But every song is a different facet of who we are, and it’s such a hard question for me to do, and kind of impossible.”
Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for Rock Under the Stars
