Life & Los Angeles are the color of their multitudes—one color: texture. Red Hot Chili Peppers music, atmosphere, outlook, presentation, release, good will to all—they’re an embodiment of this principle—in a world of chaos you’re anchored by beautiful possibilities—“Throw Away Your Television,” played in the middle of the set: “reinvent your intuition.”

The doors opened a little late because Flea broke a piece of equipment playing Led Zeppelin during sound check. We waited in a herded line, showered and hair-gelled or combed with a towel (the sense of important night deodorant), at the Club Nokia upstairs bar after being channeled through metal detectors and up escalators under heat vents releasing steam from the ESPN Zone kitchen. Boyfriends go to get lime drinks in plastic cups that sweat. Shirts made special for the evening were $35, black with pink children swinging under lettering, all put toward charity, Flea and Keith “Tree” Barry’s Silverlake Conservatory of Music for the children of L.A. suffering from cuts to public school arts & music funding. Without music classes there would’ve been no RHCP—Flea would’ve devoted his teens entirely (rather than partly) to crime.

Thelonious Monster, Bob Forrest’s band, opened with kinetic energy of drums played by a man smoking cigarettes in his underwear, elevated by Bob, the incredible moth-eaten survivor with corn hair tucked into brim hat, singing almost upwards into the microphone songs like “Sammy Hagar Weekend” and “Body And Soul?” (also bits of The Doors’ “The End” to close—“That’s a Doors song!” a bald father said to his young teen son). Bob Forrest is acne-scarred and fluid and comfortable, self-reflexive, “Isn’t that the guy from Celebrity Rehab?” He told the crowd not to drive drunk—but if for some reason someone did, he/she should come to him for treatment to get out of jail (guys at the railing raise their plastic beers in a toast, throwing the devil horns and roaring…Bob runs a rehab center on the corner of Hollywood & Vine).

Separated by a short-walled sectioning due to price range differences, my friend who came with me found himself in a flux of eager female fans while I bobbed at the knees and head from a closer view. I’d look back to see him grinning. The music affects people in a way no other life can. A lithe teen with flowing curled blonde hair pasted or taped an extra level to white platform shoes and put the Chili Pepper asterisk in red on the side by the heel/ankle. Women twice her age (past old enough to be her mother) came over to talk and laugh. Some seemed like liberated Taylor Swift fans (she was playing the Staples Center across the street, drawing a lot of cowboy boots and skirts), some like pretty refugees from the punk 80s, some indulging another’s petrified glow in the light of his/her favorite band. (“I know what it’s like, you just want to hear your favorite band. Think of us as foreplay, build-up to your ecstasy,” said Forrest.) Security was busy all night reaching for elbows, ending a fight in the pit (a guy took an invitation to mosh the wrong way, wheeled around—whack!—blood coming from a nose), doing nothing about gentle gray jellyfish-like puffs of pot smoke from huddled groups. The Nokia floor is left permanently sticky from sloshed drinks like a college apartment living room. Wristbands are the key. Mine glittered in silver, it couldn’t slide off if I wanted it to. The leaning tower of speakers are alarmingly loud once the show begins, the drums, the stern, gum-chewing event staff directly beneath them unfazed. A group of men in their forties and fifties arrived in the pit at go-time wearing red and white flight suits bearing the lyrics “GIVE IT AWAY NOW” on the back, the Chili Pepper mafia.

“Monarchy Of Roses,” a new meld of Black Sabbath and Michael Jackson disco, started it off. They’ve been playing similar set lists in pre-tour shows—lots of older pre-Stadium Arcadium stuff that suits new guitarist Josh Klinghoffer’s style, less solo-based, more melodies. Anthony Kiedis’ jacket came off by the second song (“Can’t Stop”), he ran to the side of the stage to kiss his boy Everly who was sitting on a box of roadie equipment. The show, in that space, is transcendent. It’s an expression of psyche such that nullifies any other wish but wanting to continue. “Soul To Squeeze,” personal songs, mosaic lyrics, colored notes. It’s a moment of life cut from your own stone. Flea’s bass moves up through and around, making the floor climb and dip like a snake squeezing underground. Chad Smith the hardest hitting drummer in the world, tossing drum sticks. Klinghoffer, long pale limbs and sweat-stained unkempt brown haired head/face, treats the time as a sublimation of public motion and deliverance. He covers his friend John Frusciante’s songs with his own warmth and wheels around the stage and throws picks to people in the crowd. --“It’s a beautiful thing you’re all doing tonight,” Kiedis said. “The people of Los Angeles supporting the young people of Los Angeles.” He danced with his eyes placed into those of the girl swaying on someone’s shoulders.

The Peppers played until around 11, providing an encore of improvisation and Blood Sugar Sex Magik face poundings. Nobody blushed at the lyrics of “Sir Psycho Sexy,” it was a crowd who came to adore each other’s sweat. The last thing on my mind was drugs. I looked at the arm tattoos onstage that used to be pinpointed with syringes. Now it’s just part of their meditation, grist for the mill in providence. With a deep bow and two hands pressed together in blessing, they left the stage for the night. The new album, titled "I'm With You," comes out August 29.

Reach writer Michael J here