Big unit shifters in America with the sports metal kids of Generation Y (the one after Generation X), the Red Hot Chilli Peppers cater for a different and smaller audience in Britain, where they've made bitter comments in the past about our inability to "understand" them.

No longer able to pass off Give It Away and Under The Bridge as funk-grunge anthems, the Peppers have long been excommunicated from the indieground. Ironically, as their fanbase has become more mainstream, their music (notably this year's Californication album) has become rougher around the edges. But it remains emasculated funk-metal for people neither hip enough for funk nor hard enough for metal: threatening in a we-won't-hurt-you-if-you-play-us-on-MTV kind of way.

The Chilli Peppers are pitiful when they rock, but infinitely worse when attempting to be profound. Kiedis yelps keylessly through Under The Bridge; its younger sibling, Californication, is the "deep" piece that a former punk might find in his old teenage lyric book, shiver at, then burn.

A glance around tells me that Wembley Arena is almost full, but it feels half-empty. There's noise, sweat, dancing. It isn't that there's no atmosphere; more that the atmosphere's nipped out to the toilet and got lost on its way back. So what's missing? Is it that for all their drugs and Day-Glo hair and movie star friends, the Red Hot Chilli Peppers neglect one major ingredient: the music? Or is it that the only people this grotesque brand of Burger King funk can reach out to are the same kind of vacant, screwed-up, overgrown teenagers who produce it? Both, I'd bet.

***** Unmissable **** Recommended *** Enjoyable ** Mediocre * Terrible