The Red Hot Chili Peppers have become the biggest rock band of the past 15 year s by brazenly embodying the form's traditional vices and virtues. Led by singer Anthony Kiedis, they have led a life of drug and sex-fuelled degradation in the underbelly of their native Los Angeles, leading to the early death of original guitarist Hillel Slovak.

Kiedis was schooled, as a Hollywood club kid, by watching Led Zeppelin in their 70s heyday and, like them, the Chili Peppers' dangerous appetite for life has enabled openhearted, muscular music. Mixing punk, funk, rap and classic rock with an unerring ear for the components of a killer single, they accidentally alchemised the sound that has defined post-Nirvana rock.
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Having survived their excesses for a calmer middle age, they also now stand as knowing commentators on the decaying Californian dream.

Without ever compromising, they currently speak rock's international language more fluently than anyone.

Walking on in unatmospheric East Anglian sunlight, they promptly proved they haven't lost their touch with "Dani California", from their somewhat bloated new double album Stadium Arcadium. Kiedis bounds around stage, passionately clutching his microphone, while guitarist John Frusciante provides bluesy bottle-neck licks, over the talismanic Flea's bucking baselines. Another unkillable chorus, about a lost girl who seems to embody LA, had its kick off at Portman Road.
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Flea, crop-haired in a psychedelic body suit, is soon making local friends, declaring Ipswich "the centre of the universe". Kiedis offers his sensitive side, on the soft relationship autopsy "Scar Tissue", it is charismatic merging of sensual bit-of-rough, musical idealist, rapper and rock crooner which the Chili Peppers spin around. But it's when the whole band bear down, as on the increasingly aggressive, countryish hoe-down "Snow (Hay Oh)!" that the crowd really finds its voice.

Their new album's title track ascribes a sacred scent of ritual to stadium shows, and the Chili Peppers maintain an unusual sense of intimacy from their faraway stage.

When the bass riff from Clash classic "London Calling" leads into "Right On Time", it's one of several songs to show off their punk roots.

But it's with "Californication" that they really find their range. Kiedis conversationally outlines his vision of his medicated, sick yet golden state while Pop Art video images of busty blondes in big cars underline it.

The Ipswich crowd roar along. But when Flea's ominous base riff kicks out the start of "By The Way", as it finally gets dark enough for the crowd's massed mobile phones to shine as they lustily sing, everything ratchets up a further notch.

A riotous clattering of seats before the encore is rewarded by two songs from the Chili Pepper's defining 1991 classic, Blood Sugar Sex Magic. The heroin lament "Under The Bridge", introduced by a Frusciante riff as classically inevitable as an overture, pulses with the tension of a great, beloved song unfolding in front of us.

The double-time funk of "Give It Away" then sees Kiedis handstand on the drums, and the others spin and jerk joyously. They are not done yet.

Copyright 2006 Independent Newspapers UK Limited
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.

Cinderella knew what she was up to when she dressed up to the nines in borrowed clothes and swanned off to the ball.

She may have been little more than a scullerymaid, but she was out to bag a prince, and she got one. These days you'd find her perched on a bar stool in a Mayfair nightspot such as Pangaea or Boujis, dressed top to toe in Gucci or Cavalli, dripping with designer jewels and quaffing Bollinger at [pound]180 a bottle. Oh, and she'd probably, apparently, be Russian.

Gold diggers seem to be everywhere at the moment. From headlines warning millionaires of Slavic sirens out to grasp their expense accounts, to column inches devoted to mind-boggling divorce settlements. In May, Beverley Charman bagged [pound]48m from her former husband - the biggest divorce award ever. Our fascination with women who hook up with wealthy men is almost endless.

Certainly, whenever a good-looking woman marries a rich man we ask the question: is it love or is she after his money? We all laughed knowingly when comedian Caroline Aherne's Mrs Merton asked Debbie McGee: "So what was it that attracted you to the multi- millionaire Paul Daniels?" The red-tops went into a frenzy when it was revealed that Apprentice contestant Katie Hopkins had slept with and then set up home with her well-off married boss. And poor old Heather Mills McCartney can't seem to put a foot right. These people no doubt married for love, but have continually had to put up with questions.
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Recent moves by the Law Commission to give unmarried co-habitees the same financial claims as divorcees in the event of a split were hailed in the press almost gleefully as a gold-digger's charter. So is there a whole new breed of manhunter in town?

"I'm not ashamed to admit that getting married to a wealthy man is my top priority," says Joanna Marie-Clayton, a 27-year old actress and singer from Surrey who is currently working in a care home. "I want to be financially stable and to be able to afford the nice things in life. Frankly, I'm unlikely to achieve that through my own work."

Clayton points out that these days, with the divorce rate so high, considerations such as security are more important than just love. Her dream, she says, is to have a 10-bedroomed house in the country with acres of land and staff to maintain it. "We'd have two or three classic cars - I'd like a Mercedes Kompressor convertible. His and hers would be nice. I'd like lots of dogs, some stables and probably another property in London. I'm not really into designer labels, but it would be nice to be able to buy what I wanted when I wanted. I don't see what's wrong with wanting to meet a man who can provide me with these things - in the past, it was accepted as a woman's duty to make a good marriage and what's so wrong with that?"

The British writer Tasmina Perry, author of the bestseller Daddy's Girls, has chosen gold diggers as the subject of her latest novel, tipped to be this summer's top beach read. "It seemed the right time. There's been a lot of talk in the papers about gold diggers, toxic wives and so on," she says. "Go to restaurants like Cipriani, or Zuma, and they are full of beautiful twentysomething girls on the lookout for a rich man. When I was researching the book, I spoke to a lot of women who were being plied with champagne every night, yet none would admit to being a gold digger. Then, you discover that wealth is at the top of their wish list for a man. So what, I found myself wondering, is the difference between being Cinderella and gold digging? Where do you draw the line?"

The simple answer, of course, is that in these days of equality, women no longer need to marry into money - we can make our own. In a report published last month by Barclays Wealth Management, economists predicted that there will be more female millionaires in the UK than men by the year 2020, and less than one in four of these will have acquired their wealth through marrying a rich man. Yet, persistently, the ones we are really interested in are the ones who have married wealth.

Whole magazines are devoted to the antics of the Wags and young girls are citing Coleen McLoughlin - who, after all, is only famous for being Wayne Rooney's girlfriend - as their role model. They want to be her - and they're realistic enough to know that a good marriage is their best chance.

There are a whole crop of internet sites to assist women in their quest for a wealthy man. Liselle is a beautiful blonde thirtysomething manager on a salary of [pound]20,000. She has joined the dating website Sugardaddie.com to find herself a rich spouse. "For me to seriously consider him, a man would have to be earning [pound]90 to [pound]100k" she says. She believes he'd be getting a bargain - a gorgeous young wife, love, sex and, one day, a family. In return, she would step up into a whole new financial bracket.

Dr Sheila Keegan, a psychologist with the social-research consultancy Campbell Keegan Ltd, believes she has seen a shift in our attitude to the gold digger lately. "Historically, almost the only way for women to get wealthy was to marry well," she says. "Then came the feminist era when women were supposed to do it for themselves, and they despised the dependent woman. But now we seem to be in a post-feminist era when there isn't that worthiness and sensitivity there was in the 1960s and 1970s because equality is just assumed, and on that basis there's more acceptance of women who want to marry a wealthy man."