Primus

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A stubbornly alternative group, alien to the commercial route, immune to the lure of compromises, heir of the "freak" philosophy and ethics, and representative of the genealogical line of "neo-freaks" inaugurated by the Butthole Surfers - that's Primus. Created by bassist and vocalist Les Claypool, Primus was a bright spot among the rock groups of the early 90's. Each track was like a stylistic puzzle; the group had few predecessors as their style resembled progressive-rock (from Frank Zappa to Rush) but had the feel of hard-core. Listeners can hear echoes of Minute Men and Black Flag, but the smooth progression between tones was anything but punk. Claypool grew up in the Bay of San Francisco, CA, associating with the Rhythm & Blues as well as Jazz circuits in the area before ending up in a group called Primates, which was formed in 1984 with his friends. When Claypool met guitarist Larry Lalonde, musical veteran with 3 albums under his belt with the group Possessed, the formation of a dark-metal band was obscured. Under the influence of drummer Tim Alexander, the group changed its name to Primus and its sound to an intellectual punk-metal. The groups lyrics immediately endeared them in the hearts of their fans; for the lyrics were paradoxical and comical and even had a funky rhythm.

Suck On This (Prawn Song, Jan. 1990) was recorded live in 1989 to capture the energy of the group. The instruments played awkward, bare harmonies and sobbing rhythms. All together, it was too shaggy and quivering to stand out so they moved closer to Jazz (like moving from King Crimson to Soft Machine) and could have passed for Pere Ubu and the Butthole Surfers, while borrowing ideas from Yes and Rush. Claypool's singing was the unifying element of the free-for-all jamming, but it was this jamming that gave the music its ultimate meaning - using their abilities: highly creative ideas, dissonant orgies, blaring improv, and psychotic accelerations. If the irreverent and hateful metal-funk of John The Fisherman, Jellykit, and Harold Of The Rocks was the genre in which it was easiest to discover them, then they would be made great in the iconoclastic fantasy of the mutated blues in Groundhog's Day (Zappa-style), the vaudeville comedy of Heckler (Weill-style), the psychedelic raga of Pressman (Pink Floyd style), and the overwhelming drunken revelry of Pudding Time (Beefheart style), ending in the wild and delirious pow-wow of the title track; a summary of their inspirations. There was a place for everyone in their composed puzzle but in reality for no one: in the end, the work could not be less of an imitation of other groups/styles.

Frizzle Fry (Caroline, Feb. 1990) was the group's first studio recorded album, which presented Primus with a heavy-metal sound. The mixture of sounds turned out to be a happy one because the aggressiveness was moderated by an almost "freak" humor (the lyrics barely touching surrealism) as well as some catchy refrains. At the same time, Claypool was put in the spotlight as one of the greatest rock bassists of all time. Tracks like To Defy The Laws Of Tradition and The Toys go Winding Down, although not with the speed and fury of heavy-metal, retained their explosive energy. The humorous vein of their work leaked out from gag-songs like Too Many Puppies, which were in some ways related to the songs of David Thomas: powered by an incalculable rationale, but also devastated by the violence of thrash. These types of tracks had satire like that of Zappa within thick and tragic contexts of instrumental scores that were anything but ironic and were sung with the anger and sarcasm typical of punk.

The group produced a more simple and professional style on Sailing The Seas Of Cheese (Interscope, 1991), despite the no less acrobatic work at the bass. Once again comical scenes were used to conquer alternative radio: from the rhyme of Here Come The Bastards, worthy of early Zappa, to the "modern dance" style of Pere Ubu in Sgt Baker. With multiple grafts from jazz-rock, funk, and hip-hop came Jerry Was A Race Car Driver, which demonstrated a more scholarly equilibrium of elements and arrangements greater than imagined. The heavy-metal components were always in waiting and came out in improvs under the form of electric boards from the bass but they were always a metaphorical heavy-metal that referenced something else. Tracks like Eleven and Those Damned Blue-Collar Tweekers were mini-concerts of rhythms and vocalizations of a grotesquely primitive "heaviness". The limits of this style of savage, hedonist revelry were run over by "industrial" nerves above all in Is It Luck. The sound of Primus never became just one sound, never self-indulgent, not even extremist. It was a very evolved form of internalization of sound and what that sound had to represent. Every track finished different from the one before it and so it was with every album. The lyrics had an unusually relevant role. At times the songs were constructed around them, as in American Life, with their pressing, ritualistic crescendo and noise counterpoint on guitar; and in Fish Or, the long jazz-gothic-psychedelic excursion that crowned the album. The album sold about a half million copies and catapulted Primus to the avant-garde of alternative rock for college radio.

Pork Soda (Interscope, 1993) perhaps signaled the apex of their search for sound and an equilibrium between the various components (lyrics, melodies, and rhythms) which was surprisingly a success of classification also. The group was all too aware of their worth and of their innovations. Primus lost its spirited spontaneity, its naive impulse, and the fresh improv that it had at its beginning. The group became just a pretext to debate on the existence of their own music. In the syncopated din of songs like My Name Is Mud as well as in the spectacular metamorphosis of long instrumental jams like Hamburger Train, Claypool demonstrated that he was now a composer of serious music, although he masqueraded as a high school comedian. The drunken singing, the dissonant phrasing, the crooked tempos, and graceless combinations all camouflage the actual dramatic and complex instrumental scores. Claypool was at the climax of his writing, directing, and arranging abilities; at the same time the electricity and "heaviness" of the sound grew to create new, rough, manly rhythms for bass and guitar. An example of this contradiction in their sound can be heard in the slovenly but precise Bob, which followed in the footsteps of the Rolling Stones with a very alienated and slow sound, including a pair of wrong notes in place of the riffs by Richards. The grotesque remained the strong point that was expressed through novelty (the excellent Welcome To This World, a joining of the crackling blues of Slim Harps and decadent cabaret of Kurt Weill or the oriental lit of The Air Is Getting Slippery, a fair-ground ragtime), embellished by dissonance and roughness, or that indulged in demented pantomime (another imitation of Pere Ubu such as Nature Boy or the satirical-horror portrayed in Mr. Krinkle). The group was redefined by its dark humor which was more like a maniacal version of a parody: Pork Soda was a fresco of contemporary society spoiled by an infernal malignancy. In this sense, it was a concept album and it was not by chance then that the group members were likened to the soundtracks for animated cartoons. Although overly convoluted, the sound of the album was, however, a point of arrival for Primus. Claypool was no longer an amateur that tried to entertain a handful of youth post-hard-core but an expert that maintained a more vast and demanding audience. The album consecrated the group as one of the institutions of the new rock.

Since 1988, Claypool also played in the group Sausage, with Jay Lane on drums (who also played with the Charlie Hunter Trio) and Todd Hut on guitar (who also played with Porch). Their first album, Riddles Are Abound Tonight (Interscope, 1994), was a vain exercise in conceptual funk-rock. The brief Prelude To Fear referenced early Primus and was unruly and metallic. But, Riddles Are Abound Tonight, with its funky metallic sound and neurotic recitation, seemed new wave, and the thick, dark tumult of Here's To The Man was played like a meeting between Steve Albini, Lydia Lunch, and Sonic Youth. Temporary Phase was a long trance with a strong syncopated beat, almost dubs, on which the group pasted casual, conversation like lyrics. In the track that most resembled a song, Toyz 1988, there were echoes of the progressive-rock of Art Bears. The trio was satisfied to have laid out a set of mostly refined sounds (the long Shattering is no more than blabbed by a dissonant guitar over trotting country-western rhythm). From this point of view, the apex was perhaps represented by the instrumental jam Recreating, a little masterpiece of assimilation of noises (helicopter, electric saw, siren) in an improv jazz serenade. If the entire album was at this level, it would have been a masterpiece of avant-garde jazz-rock. The work confirmed, however, another time of crisis for Claypool, who seemed uncertain about which path to take.

One would need a river of ink to create a written analysis of the musical art of Claypool. He was satisfied dishing out a work of pure avant-garde in Tales From The Punchbowl (Interscope, 1995). Three long tracks, almost instrumentals, gave a measure of sophistication to the rhythm and harmonics of the group. In Professor Nutbutter's House Of Treats, Lalonde made the atonal riff flow with the transcendent feel of Robert Fripp, Claypool made his chords reverberate in a hypnotic and mechanical manner, and the monumental playing by drummer Tim "Herb" Alexander crowned the track. The same dark atmosphere, the same listless rambling, but more tension and a psychedelic crescendo form Southbound Pachyderm. The nervous jamming in Over The Electric Grapevine fails, perhaps the victim of over-thinking. There were, however, improvised structures in continuous movement anchored only to the counter-melodies by the bass.

Now for the clownish side of Primus. Novelty was found in Wynona's Big Brown Beaver, conducted like a square dance; they also produced De Anza Jig which sounded like it was meant to be played by a marching band, and the carnival Hellbound 17 1/2. There was much less playing and more presenting the past in the funk track Del Davis Tree Farm, and the absurd songs Year Of The Parrott and Glass Sandwich. The bass by Claypool towered over the rest of the music with a tempo one finds on guitar (or on the organ of Keith Emerson), denouncing a cult personality that was harmful to their music. The listener wanted the preponderance of improv, recordings faithful to live performances, the true sound of the group, the paradoxical harmonies, because at this point Primus sounded more like Phish.

Les Claypool And The Holy Mackerel was given credit for Present Highball With The Devil (Interscope, 1996), the first solo album by the enigmatic bassist and vocalist from Primus (who here played both the guitar and drums). Several of these tracks were free-for-all, casual Rhythm & Blues jams with his friends. The brief and melodious Running The Gauntlet and the surf-rock Hendershot did not have much in common with Claypool's past. They were too self-indulgent to listen to.

Claypool was as unpredictable as his music. He had just become reputable in the ears of his critics and immediately he ruined his reputation with the most trivial and accessible album of his career: Brown Album (Interscope, 1997). Naturally his class and that of Lalonde (who was always more visible) remained intact but there was little substance behind this album. The problem with songs like Shake Hands With Beef and Golden Boy (those in the more classic funk style) was that they were limited to repeating the riff (as elegant and elaborate as a riff can be). The few conceptual tracks, Bob's Party Time Lounge and Arnie, get lost in the disorganized uproar of ideas. The heart of the album remained, on the other hand, elsewhere: in the Mussolini-like rally of The Return Of Sathington Willoughby, underlined by a martial/industrial pace (with Dadaist chirping on the guitar); in the music-hall pace of Fisticuffs and Puddin' Taine; in the grotesque ska style of Duchess And The Proverbial Mind Spread; in the speed-metal circus style of Coddingtown; and in the ramshackle rumba of Kalamazoo. This was vaudeville pure and simple. Like albums of the minor period of Zappa, this was an album that stood almost exclusively on wit within the lyrics and music. The drummer, Brian "Brain" Mantia (ex-Limbomaniacs and Bootsy Collins) substituted for Tim Alexander.

The EP Rhinoplasty (Interscope, 1998) contains covers and two lengthy tracks: the 8-minute Tommy the Cat and the 7-minute Bob's Party Time Lounge.

Guests of honor abound on Antipop (Interscope, 1999), an even too loose and casual reprise of their career's stylistic highlights, peaking with the nine-minute jam of Eclectic Electric. The news is that Primus return to their original demented-rock format after flirting with mildly-witty commercial funk. Laquerhead, The Heckler, The Final Voyage Of The Liquid Sky, and the closing waltz of Coattails Of A Dead Man open no new doors, but show the band's class. The limit is that it sounds like a retired-firemen's sunday-afternoon barbeque.

Frog Brigade is another Les Claypool side project, although Love Frogs (Prawn Song, 2001) contains mainly material that was already released by previous Claypool bands.

Claypool later joined Oysterhead.

Primus' EP Animals Should Not Try To Act Like People (Interscope, 2003) does not even come close to the magic of the classic period.

Colonel Claypool's Bucket of Bernie Brains is Les Claypool on vocals and Bass, Buckethead on guitar and Bernie Worrell on keyboards, and Bryan "Brain" Mantia on drums. The freenwheeling progr-rock and funkadelia The Big Eyeball In The Sky (Prawn, 2004) peaks with the 10-minute instrumental jam Elephant Ghost.

Les Claypool's OF Whales And Woe (Prawn Song, 2006) is the kind of eccentric collection that one expects from Claypool: eclectic witty vignettes that seem to thumb their noise at all possible cliches of popular music.

Clayton reformed Primus with drummer Jay Lane and guitarist Larry LaLonde and released Green Naugahyde (2011), that contains Jilly's on Smack and little else of note.