I don't think it can be properly communicated how heady times were musically in the summer of 1991...

Before that summer, a lot of legendary artists we now take for granted simply were not in the national/international conversation. Nirvana released Nevermind. Pearl Jam released Ten. Metallica released the black album and suddenly appeared in the mainstream. Cool As Ice changed our lives.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers were among that bumper crop of great artists to pop up that summer. This strange, wholly unprecedented album Blood Sugar Sex Magik arrived. Songs like "Give It Away" entered the collective memory banks, never to be ejected.

This heavy yet so catchy rock-funk song was suddenly playing on mainstream radio right along with Genesis, U2, Michael Jackson, and Bryan Adams. I felt my spirit rise whenever it started playing in the car on some Saturday errand.

We all welcomed the super-powered bassist Flea into our conversations. We were enamored with the strange "is he singing is he rapping does he know what he's doing" voice of Anthony Kiedis.

I have no idea how younger people see this song. It still glitters with its novelty to me, 26 years later. When I was born, Elvis's "Hound Dog" was less than 26 years in the past, and that song sounds ancient to me. Possibly more telling, that Chili Peppers album is also closely entwined in my memory with a revolutionary video game released the same summer, Super Nintendo's Final Fantasy 2. I'm not sure: Is the song timeless, or is it 16-bit technology?

It probably seems dated to the young. Kids today probably wouldn't even want to keep this song like the kaiser.