Red Hot Chili Peppers Bring Stadium Arcadium Tour to BankAtlantic Center

The Red Hot Chili Peppers played BankAtlantic Center on Monday night, the South Florida stop on the second North American leg of the band's Stadium Arcadium World Tour. Bassist Flea opened the show with the recognizable bass figure of "Can't Stop," guitarist John Frusciante and drummer Chad Smith dropped in behind him within four bars, and singer Anthony Kiedis came out from stage right with the first verse already cued up — the same opening sequence the band has used for most of the current touring cycle.

The set ran roughly two hours and drew heavily from "Stadium Arcadium," the double album the band released in May 2006. "Dani California," "Snow (Hey Oh)" and "Tell Me Baby" all landed in the first half of the show, with "Otherside," "Scar Tissue," "Under the Bridge" and "Californication" pulled forward from the band's late-1990s and early-2000s catalog. Frusciante took an extended solo segment between the main set and the encore, the same loose, unhurried interlude the band has been playing through the tour.

The BankAtlantic Center floor was a mix of long-time Chili Peppers fans and a younger arena-pop audience drawn by the singles that have dominated alternative rock radio in South Florida for the past year. Gnarls Barkley, scheduled as the opening act for several dates on this leg, did not appear on the Sunrise bill; the Mars Volta took the opening slot, running through an aggressive forty-minute set that left the early-arriving crowd a little stunned and a little louder.

The production stayed simple by 2007 arena-tour standards. A wide LED video wall behind the band, a few moving lighting trusses, no catwalk, no pyrotechnics. Most of the visual interest came from the band itself — Flea barefoot and bouncing across the front of the stage, Frusciante mostly stationary at his microphone with a Stratocaster, Kiedis using the full width of the platform on the up-tempo songs.

For Broward fans, the show was one of the marquee April concert dates at the Sunrise arena, in a stretch of the calendar that has already brought Justin Timberlake and Nickelback through the same building this year. The Stadium Arcadium tour continues with U.S. dates through the spring before moving to Europe in the summer.