On October 7, 1991, the Red Hot Chili Peppers played a wild, abbreviated warm-up set at the Music Machine in West Los Angeles, just two weeks after releasing their breakthrough album Blood Sugar Sex Magik.

The club show put the band in front of superfans, friends, and family before a tour that would kick off a week later and conclude the following October, spanning 136 performances across 96 cities in 14 countries. The tour would also include several U.S. West Coast dates where the Peppers headlined with both Nirvana and Pearl Jam as openers.

It all started on this night in 1991 in a club that legally held just over 200 people.

After being holed up in a reportedly haunted house in the otherwise groovy hills of Laurel Canyon while recording what would become their penultimate album, Anthony Kiedis (vocals), John Frusciante (guitar), Flea (bass), and Chad Smith (drums) realized they had something special—something they wanted to deliver to our mothers, our fathers, and our daughters, in that order.

For some reason, they chose to first preach their gospel of generosity at the Music Machine, one of the few clubs on the west side of Los Angeles, instead of one of the older, more established haunts like the Whisky, the Roxy, or the Viper Room.

Sadly, this was one of the last hurrahs for the underground club that had opened in the 1970s. It would shutter in 1993, not long after a show by Weezer (who wrote much of The Blue Album just a few blocks north on Amherst).

The Chili Peppers’ set that night included seven songs, featuring two live debuts (“Give It Away” and “My Lovely Man” from the new record) and two covers (The Velvet Underground’s “After Hours” and the Stooges’ “Search and Destroy”).

The topless, tattooed, sweaty, hyper quartet played the Iggy Pop classic twice after technical issues marred the first attempt.

To be fair, it’s hard for any amount of gear to stay stable after that opening line: “I’m a streetwalking cheetah with a heart full of napalm.”

Maybe the equipment failed because what preceded the cover was the raucous live debut of “Give It Away,” a song that would soon catapult the funky punks well beyond their wildest dreams.

The track would become their most performed by a wide margin, clocking 1,077 plays. Only two other Chili Peppers songs have ever been played over 800 times: “Californication” and “Under the Bridge.”

The latter, also from Blood Sugar Sex Magik, had only been performed once before the Music Machine gig.

In September, Kiedis and Frusciante did an acoustic appearance in Amsterdam and debuted “Under the Bridge” live, making the West LA show its first full-band performance.

“Give It Away” was famously inspired by Kiedis’s 1980s girlfriend, Nina Hagen, who celebrated the idea of letting go of possessions. He recalled in his memoir Scar Tissue that she once gave him one of his own favorite jackets from her closet, explaining why it was good to be selfless.

“If you have a closet full of clothes and you try to keep them all, your life will get very small,” she told him. “But if you have a full closet and someone sees something they like, if you give it to them, the world is a better place.”

Proof you should always listen to your girlfriend, the song became their first #1 on Billboard’s Modern Rock Tracks chart, peaking at #73 on the Hot 100.

It also earned the Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance with Vocal at the 1993 ceremony and two MTV Video Music Awards in 1992 for Breakthrough Video and Best Art Direction.

The album Blood Sugar Sex Magik, released September 24, 1991 (the same day as Nirvana’s Nevermind), dwarfed 1989’s Mother’s Milk, which had gone gold thanks to its cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Higher Ground.”

The 1991 follow-up went multiplatinum, selling more than seven million copies in the US alone.

The album was produced by Rick Rubin at a four-bedroom Laurel Canyon home once owned by Errol Flynn, known as The Mansion.

The band had been seeking alternatives to traditional recording studios and, after neighbors complained about noise from a previous location, Rubin found the perfect spot.

Often misidentified as Houdini’s Mansion, the property earned its ghostly reputation because the escape artist and his wife once rented a cottage on the grounds.

Though he never owned it, many have reported paranormal activity in and even beneath the property, where century-old tunnels were sealed long ago... yet the noisy spirits remain.

The goal was for the band to record and crash in different rooms as they tired, but Smith reportedly refused to sleep there. The others, however, loved it—ghosts and all.

“I remember, philosophically, it being really exciting,” Flea told the Los Angeles Times for the album’s 30th anniversary a few years ago.

"The idea of not being in a recording studio and having to deal with their rules if I wanted to walk down naked in the morning smoking a joint and playing a funky bass line."

The session went so well that Rubin bought the property, later using it to record Stadium Arcadium with the Peppers and albums by Audioslave (Out of Exile), The Mars Volta (De-Loused in the Comatorium), Slipknot (Vol. 3: The Subliminal Verses), and Linkin Park (Minutes to Midnight).

The Chili Peppers have no tour dates announced right now, they have been active on their Sirius XM channel, Whole Lotta Red Hot, Channel 315.

Also, you can join the band's community via their website by signing up for their email list.