Primus reunites with its original drummer after 8 years, for the Tour De Fromage 2003. “Animals Should Not Try to Act Like People” was released on October 21st. It has 5 new songs on the CD and 13 original videos and many other clips on the DVD.
Back in ’96 when Primus replaced their drummer Tim with Bryan “Brain” Mantia, I thought, there goes another really good band. But they went on to release “Antipop” in ’99 and it turned out to be their most commercial success to date. So I really don’t know but I do know what I like and I like Primus.
The driving force behind Primus is Les Claypool. Les is working all the time on one thing or another. Some of his other projects are Oyster Head and The Fearless Frog Brigade. But when Les, Tim and Ler play together as Primus they’re one of the top power trios in the world today. Primus always excited me because you never know what they are going to come up with next. The first time I’d seen a Primus video it was “Wynona’s Big Brown Beaver” where they were dressed as big plastic cowboys. And when they name albums like “Suck on This” or “Pork Soda”, how can you take these guys seriously? All you have to do is listen to the music.
Les Claypool has got a very unique point of view about fans recording his shows. He doesn’t really encourage you but I don’t think he really cares. On their web site, www.primussucks.com there is a page called the Bootleg Barn and this is what Les has to say, “Over the years many Primus bootlegs have been popping up throughout the dark, dank underworld of the illicit traders of other people's music (otherwise known as bootlegers).We decided to create a venue for the fans to hear some inspired performances that otherwise might have slipped away into the netherworld of memory. The quality varies. Some of this stuff might have come from the hardcore fan with the Walkman, others appear to have been from the mixing board, one will never really know. We don't even care, just enjoy.”
I was able to get an interview with Les but it was a telephone interview. I usually start interviews with, “Here light this.” It’s kind of hard to ask for a light on the telephone. So here goes.
Interview with Les Claypool
November 22, 2003
F Hi Les. Good afternoon.
L. How are you doing?
F. Great. Have you had a chance to see the magazine?
L. I have not.
F. No? O.K. It’s Cannabis Quebec.
L. O.K.
F. I guess we’ll just jump right into it. The tour ends in just a couple of days?
L. The tour ends in New York.
F. How has it been getting back to the Primus thing and touring?
L. It’s going incredibly well.
F. What was it like touring with Tim again?
L. Well, I toured with Tim a couple of summers ago. He came out with Frog Brigade. It wasn’t the first time. As far as Primus, it’s great. It’s Primus.
F. What it the “Primus thing”? I’ve read a couple of times that you referred to it as the “Primus thing”.
L. The “Primus thing”? Well, it’s Les, Larry and Tim. It’s the chemistry that the three of us have when we play together. You know, whether you like it or not, it’s the music that comes out, the sounds that are unique.
F. Well, I’m personally into the power trio and that’s what excited me when I found out more about your band. The last review I did was about a power trio, local one. Have you ever heard of Tea Party?
L. I have not.
F. No? They’re pretty good. Well, let’s move on. Rush, has it been a really big influence? How has it influenced your music today?
L. Rush was a big influence when I was a very young person, when I was like16 years old. That was my world.
F. It was mine, too. I haven’t missed a Rush show in Montreal in more than 20 years.
L. Well, I have. (Laughter) I mean, what I’m saying is, Rush was a huge influence on me as a young person, um, but you know as was Led Zeppelin and Evil Kenivel. (Laughter). You know but as you get older, I definitely have a strong spot in my heart for the old Rush material. But I mean, you know, along come people like Tom Waits, Peter Gabriel and Lou Graham and so many different things. To just refer to Rush is not being remotely fair.
F. How long have you been a dad?
L. My kids are 6 and 7.
F. Oh, short ones, hey Good for you. Do you tour much? I mean, are you out on the road a lot of days of the year doing other gigs and stuff?
L. Yes, I tour quite a bit.
F. I’ll be at the show tonight.
L. Pardon me?
F. I’ll be at the show tonight.
L. So will I!
F. Yeah! O.K. a couple of… How about some pot questions?
L. O.K.
F. Do you smoke?
L. I quit smoking about a year ago.
F. Oh. Any particular reason?
L. Um, I had a bad experience with um, a a a different smokable substance and it just put me off smoking altogether. I actually did smoke recently and it didn’t affect me the same so I … You know there’s one addiction that I’ve easily kicked. (Laughter).
F. That was it you smoked?.
L. It was some bad opium.
F. Oh. Ow. Yeah.
L. I smoked for about 15 years. I think with any addiction, whether it’s coffee or cigarettes or pot or alcohol, it’s… I guess you have to put it away once in a while. Now that I’ve put it away for this past year, I actually can remember things. (Laughter) I find that, you know, especially having children, that I want to remember those times.
F. Yes, we do. Yes, we do.
L. I have very good friends that are uh … Actually, one of my best friends is the founder and owner of General Hydroponics. I’m sure that you are familiar with that company.
F. O.K. Cool
L. But um, he just received a patent, I think, last year for the Transdermal Cannabis Patch.
F. (Laughter) Really?
L. Yes.
F. Well, I didn’t even know that there is a cannabis patch.
L. Well, there’s not in production yet, but he’s received the patent for it, which is a huge thing. Especially in the U.S. as far as legislation because one thing that’s kept legislation from um, one stumbling block as far as the legalization of medical marijuana and then the regulation of the dosage and now there’s the cannabis patch.
F. That’s a regulative delivery system. Let’s change channels? Tell me about your thoughts and policy on bootlegs.
L. We allow for people to tape our shows. Hopefully they’re not selling them, they trade them on line. We’ve been taping our own shows and we’ve been selling them on line. Bootlegs, obviously, I would rather people didn’t bootleg me because it’s my … I like the notion of people being able to have access to material because it does a wondrous thing.
F. So long as they’re trading it, you don’t really have much problems? You prefer that they don’t?
L. To me that’s not bootlegging. Bootlegging is when you take something and profit from someone else’s creativity. That’s just stealing. But if people want to record the shows and trade them, that’s great or they could buy them off us or T-shirts or what nots. I don’t sign bootleg T-shirts, I don’t sign bootleg posters, I don’t sign bootleg CDs.
F. Cool. That’s that. I wanted to let you know that here in the city right now; we are suffering a transit strike so that means that there is no public transportation. I know that the show is sold out, but it is going to be difficult for people to get back and forth. There is no buses or subway happening right now. It might be something to consider. It’s kind of crippling our city. You had no idea about that, did you?
L. How long has that been going on?
F. This has been day 7. They’ve been giving us essential service but a Saturday night show… So all the venues have they all been sold out, that you’ve been going to?
L. Yeah, pretty much all of them.
F. Everybody has just been waiting for you guys to get back. Anything you would like to know?
L. Nope.
F. Nope? O.K. So you didn’t see the magazine.
L. I have not. But you know I do a lot of interviews and I definitely haven’t seen a lot of things. It’s not uncommon.
F. Well it is a French language magazine.
L. Well I definitely wouldn’t have seen it. (Laughter).
F. I dropped off with Big Bird, a couple of magazines and tea for five. I hope we all get blasted.
L. Well thank you very much.
F. Think I can bump into you tonight at the show?
L. You never do know.
F. You never do know. Thank you very much for the interview.
L. Alright, Fred. Have a good one.
F. Bye now.
L. Bye.
Montreal Show
November 22, 2003
Tour du Fromage 2003
Primus Review
It’s a cool November night with a bus strike in Montreal and a sold out Primus show. Zachary and I show up without tickets but that is never really a problem. I get a pair of tickets from a good friend of mine at cost but tickets on the street are about twice the price. We get inside at around 8:00 and find a table. While we’re waiting for the show to start, I’m checking out the crowd and I could see a very wide variety of fans. There was a couple who had to have been in their 70s all the way down to the teenage power drinker at the next table who ended up falling off his chair in a couple of hours. Him passing out didn’t bother anybody. His friends were there to take care of him.
By the time the show started in 30 minutes, the place was packed and you couldn’t tell that anyone had a problem getting there. I met one crew that drove 10 hours from Nova Scotia and a few more guys from Ottawa. This one pair of guys drove from Toronto to see the Montreal show and rushed back to Toronto to see them again the next night. All in all, I would have to say, that this was the most sophisticated and thoughtful crowd I have ever seen.
The show starts with “The Toys Go Winding Down” and the crowd goes wild and it stays that way for most of the night. Right away a mosh pit starts and a few seconds later people are crowd surfing. As long as the band was playing, there were people up and flying around. I have seen many mosh pits that were just so violent and dangerous; that I never wanted to go into one. But this one, I watched the first set and spent the second set in the pit.
Primus music is really hard to describe when you’re just talking about recordings and even harder when you’re talking about them live. The chemistry that these three guys have together when they jam is very powerful and creates a unique sound and Les with his rubber bass just takes the crowd anywhere he wants. Some of the variations they played were so trippy and out there. When they played “The Last Superpower aka Rapscallion” I felt like I was at a Pink Floyd show in the 70s while at other times it sounded like last week’s rave. It was a lot more psychedelic than I expected but that’s good.
Primus is a very innovative and creative band. Sometimes bizarre and silly but always out there. There was a pair of spherical screens that hung over the stage like giant insect eyes. What was being projected on these screens was sometimes very, very bizarre but completely in tune with everything that was going on, on stage. I think the strangest thing I had seen on the screen was when Les was playing a high tech version of a washtub bass in the song “Eleven”. He came out like a mad man banging two sticks together wearing a magistrate’s robe and wig. Playing that crazy washtub thing was so weird. There was a vampire troll kind of creature playing the exact same instrument, in time. But I have to tell you, I wasn’t really watching the screen.
When it came time for the drum solo, I paid close attention because of all the blah blah about Tim. I guess I was a little super critical because of the blah blah and well, I live with a drummer. It was the “Eleven Drum Intro”. So while I was listening I thought OK he’s proficient but then I started to hear things that I’ve heard practiced a million times before and I started to loose interest. Just then he started to play some drums that had an echo and that got my attention and kept it for the rest of the solo. He was able to pull out something that I’ve never heard before. Tim (Herb) Alexander is one hell of a drummer and it was easy to see how he completes the trio.
Every time they played one of their more popular songs, the place just went completely insane. My favourites are: “My Name is Mudd” and “Jerry was a Race Care Driver” but they didn’t play my all time favourite “Southbound Pachyderm”. My favourite song of the night was the encore, “Harold of the Rocks”. In the middle of the song they bridged it with a variation on “Dazed and Confused” which was so incredible. Without the traditional bass line it was just, just WOW!
These guys put on a three hour show and didn’t miss a beat. It was a great show and a wonderful experience.
Metropolis Play List
The Toys Go Winding Down
Mr. Knowitall
Pilcher’s Squad
‘Ol Diamond Back Sturgeon
The Last Superpower aka Rapscallion
Bob
My Name is Mud
Seas of Cheese
Here Come the Bastards
Sgt. Baker
American Life
Jerry was a Race Car Driver
Eleven Drum Intro
Eleven
Is it Luck?
Grandad’s Little Ditty
Tommy the Cat
Sathington Waltz
Those Damned Blue-Collar Tweekers
Fish On
Los Bastardos
Harold of the Rocks
This article was written for the magazine Cannabis Quebec in 2003.
Back in ’96 when Primus replaced their drummer Tim with Bryan “Brain” Mantia, I thought, there goes another really good band. But they went on to release “Antipop” in ’99 and it turned out to be their most commercial success to date. So I really don’t know but I do know what I like and I like Primus.
The driving force behind Primus is Les Claypool. Les is working all the time on one thing or another. Some of his other projects are Oyster Head and The Fearless Frog Brigade. But when Les, Tim and Ler play together as Primus they’re one of the top power trios in the world today. Primus always excited me because you never know what they are going to come up with next. The first time I’d seen a Primus video it was “Wynona’s Big Brown Beaver” where they were dressed as big plastic cowboys. And when they name albums like “Suck on This” or “Pork Soda”, how can you take these guys seriously? All you have to do is listen to the music.
Les Claypool has got a very unique point of view about fans recording his shows. He doesn’t really encourage you but I don’t think he really cares. On their web site, www.primussucks.com there is a page called the Bootleg Barn and this is what Les has to say, “Over the years many Primus bootlegs have been popping up throughout the dark, dank underworld of the illicit traders of other people's music (otherwise known as bootlegers).We decided to create a venue for the fans to hear some inspired performances that otherwise might have slipped away into the netherworld of memory. The quality varies. Some of this stuff might have come from the hardcore fan with the Walkman, others appear to have been from the mixing board, one will never really know. We don't even care, just enjoy.”
I was able to get an interview with Les but it was a telephone interview. I usually start interviews with, “Here light this.” It’s kind of hard to ask for a light on the telephone. So here goes.
Interview with Les Claypool
November 22, 2003
F Hi Les. Good afternoon.
L. How are you doing?
F. Great. Have you had a chance to see the magazine?
L. I have not.
F. No? O.K. It’s Cannabis Quebec.
L. O.K.
F. I guess we’ll just jump right into it. The tour ends in just a couple of days?
L. The tour ends in New York.
F. How has it been getting back to the Primus thing and touring?
L. It’s going incredibly well.
F. What was it like touring with Tim again?
L. Well, I toured with Tim a couple of summers ago. He came out with Frog Brigade. It wasn’t the first time. As far as Primus, it’s great. It’s Primus.
F. What it the “Primus thing”? I’ve read a couple of times that you referred to it as the “Primus thing”.
L. The “Primus thing”? Well, it’s Les, Larry and Tim. It’s the chemistry that the three of us have when we play together. You know, whether you like it or not, it’s the music that comes out, the sounds that are unique.
F. Well, I’m personally into the power trio and that’s what excited me when I found out more about your band. The last review I did was about a power trio, local one. Have you ever heard of Tea Party?
L. I have not.
F. No? They’re pretty good. Well, let’s move on. Rush, has it been a really big influence? How has it influenced your music today?
L. Rush was a big influence when I was a very young person, when I was like16 years old. That was my world.
F. It was mine, too. I haven’t missed a Rush show in Montreal in more than 20 years.
L. Well, I have. (Laughter) I mean, what I’m saying is, Rush was a huge influence on me as a young person, um, but you know as was Led Zeppelin and Evil Kenivel. (Laughter). You know but as you get older, I definitely have a strong spot in my heart for the old Rush material. But I mean, you know, along come people like Tom Waits, Peter Gabriel and Lou Graham and so many different things. To just refer to Rush is not being remotely fair.
F. How long have you been a dad?
L. My kids are 6 and 7.
F. Oh, short ones, hey Good for you. Do you tour much? I mean, are you out on the road a lot of days of the year doing other gigs and stuff?
L. Yes, I tour quite a bit.
F. I’ll be at the show tonight.
L. Pardon me?
F. I’ll be at the show tonight.
L. So will I!
F. Yeah! O.K. a couple of… How about some pot questions?
L. O.K.
F. Do you smoke?
L. I quit smoking about a year ago.
F. Oh. Any particular reason?
L. Um, I had a bad experience with um, a a a different smokable substance and it just put me off smoking altogether. I actually did smoke recently and it didn’t affect me the same so I … You know there’s one addiction that I’ve easily kicked. (Laughter).
F. That was it you smoked?.
L. It was some bad opium.
F. Oh. Ow. Yeah.
L. I smoked for about 15 years. I think with any addiction, whether it’s coffee or cigarettes or pot or alcohol, it’s… I guess you have to put it away once in a while. Now that I’ve put it away for this past year, I actually can remember things. (Laughter) I find that, you know, especially having children, that I want to remember those times.
F. Yes, we do. Yes, we do.
L. I have very good friends that are uh … Actually, one of my best friends is the founder and owner of General Hydroponics. I’m sure that you are familiar with that company.
F. O.K. Cool
L. But um, he just received a patent, I think, last year for the Transdermal Cannabis Patch.
F. (Laughter) Really?
L. Yes.
F. Well, I didn’t even know that there is a cannabis patch.
L. Well, there’s not in production yet, but he’s received the patent for it, which is a huge thing. Especially in the U.S. as far as legislation because one thing that’s kept legislation from um, one stumbling block as far as the legalization of medical marijuana and then the regulation of the dosage and now there’s the cannabis patch.
F. That’s a regulative delivery system. Let’s change channels? Tell me about your thoughts and policy on bootlegs.
L. We allow for people to tape our shows. Hopefully they’re not selling them, they trade them on line. We’ve been taping our own shows and we’ve been selling them on line. Bootlegs, obviously, I would rather people didn’t bootleg me because it’s my … I like the notion of people being able to have access to material because it does a wondrous thing.
F. So long as they’re trading it, you don’t really have much problems? You prefer that they don’t?
L. To me that’s not bootlegging. Bootlegging is when you take something and profit from someone else’s creativity. That’s just stealing. But if people want to record the shows and trade them, that’s great or they could buy them off us or T-shirts or what nots. I don’t sign bootleg T-shirts, I don’t sign bootleg posters, I don’t sign bootleg CDs.
F. Cool. That’s that. I wanted to let you know that here in the city right now; we are suffering a transit strike so that means that there is no public transportation. I know that the show is sold out, but it is going to be difficult for people to get back and forth. There is no buses or subway happening right now. It might be something to consider. It’s kind of crippling our city. You had no idea about that, did you?
L. How long has that been going on?
F. This has been day 7. They’ve been giving us essential service but a Saturday night show… So all the venues have they all been sold out, that you’ve been going to?
L. Yeah, pretty much all of them.
F. Everybody has just been waiting for you guys to get back. Anything you would like to know?
L. Nope.
F. Nope? O.K. So you didn’t see the magazine.
L. I have not. But you know I do a lot of interviews and I definitely haven’t seen a lot of things. It’s not uncommon.
F. Well it is a French language magazine.
L. Well I definitely wouldn’t have seen it. (Laughter).
F. I dropped off with Big Bird, a couple of magazines and tea for five. I hope we all get blasted.
L. Well thank you very much.
F. Think I can bump into you tonight at the show?
L. You never do know.
F. You never do know. Thank you very much for the interview.
L. Alright, Fred. Have a good one.
F. Bye now.
L. Bye.
Montreal Show
November 22, 2003
Tour du Fromage 2003
Primus Review
It’s a cool November night with a bus strike in Montreal and a sold out Primus show. Zachary and I show up without tickets but that is never really a problem. I get a pair of tickets from a good friend of mine at cost but tickets on the street are about twice the price. We get inside at around 8:00 and find a table. While we’re waiting for the show to start, I’m checking out the crowd and I could see a very wide variety of fans. There was a couple who had to have been in their 70s all the way down to the teenage power drinker at the next table who ended up falling off his chair in a couple of hours. Him passing out didn’t bother anybody. His friends were there to take care of him.
By the time the show started in 30 minutes, the place was packed and you couldn’t tell that anyone had a problem getting there. I met one crew that drove 10 hours from Nova Scotia and a few more guys from Ottawa. This one pair of guys drove from Toronto to see the Montreal show and rushed back to Toronto to see them again the next night. All in all, I would have to say, that this was the most sophisticated and thoughtful crowd I have ever seen.
The show starts with “The Toys Go Winding Down” and the crowd goes wild and it stays that way for most of the night. Right away a mosh pit starts and a few seconds later people are crowd surfing. As long as the band was playing, there were people up and flying around. I have seen many mosh pits that were just so violent and dangerous; that I never wanted to go into one. But this one, I watched the first set and spent the second set in the pit.
Primus music is really hard to describe when you’re just talking about recordings and even harder when you’re talking about them live. The chemistry that these three guys have together when they jam is very powerful and creates a unique sound and Les with his rubber bass just takes the crowd anywhere he wants. Some of the variations they played were so trippy and out there. When they played “The Last Superpower aka Rapscallion” I felt like I was at a Pink Floyd show in the 70s while at other times it sounded like last week’s rave. It was a lot more psychedelic than I expected but that’s good.
Primus is a very innovative and creative band. Sometimes bizarre and silly but always out there. There was a pair of spherical screens that hung over the stage like giant insect eyes. What was being projected on these screens was sometimes very, very bizarre but completely in tune with everything that was going on, on stage. I think the strangest thing I had seen on the screen was when Les was playing a high tech version of a washtub bass in the song “Eleven”. He came out like a mad man banging two sticks together wearing a magistrate’s robe and wig. Playing that crazy washtub thing was so weird. There was a vampire troll kind of creature playing the exact same instrument, in time. But I have to tell you, I wasn’t really watching the screen.
When it came time for the drum solo, I paid close attention because of all the blah blah about Tim. I guess I was a little super critical because of the blah blah and well, I live with a drummer. It was the “Eleven Drum Intro”. So while I was listening I thought OK he’s proficient but then I started to hear things that I’ve heard practiced a million times before and I started to loose interest. Just then he started to play some drums that had an echo and that got my attention and kept it for the rest of the solo. He was able to pull out something that I’ve never heard before. Tim (Herb) Alexander is one hell of a drummer and it was easy to see how he completes the trio.
Every time they played one of their more popular songs, the place just went completely insane. My favourites are: “My Name is Mudd” and “Jerry was a Race Care Driver” but they didn’t play my all time favourite “Southbound Pachyderm”. My favourite song of the night was the encore, “Harold of the Rocks”. In the middle of the song they bridged it with a variation on “Dazed and Confused” which was so incredible. Without the traditional bass line it was just, just WOW!
These guys put on a three hour show and didn’t miss a beat. It was a great show and a wonderful experience.
Metropolis Play List
The Toys Go Winding Down
Mr. Knowitall
Pilcher’s Squad
‘Ol Diamond Back Sturgeon
The Last Superpower aka Rapscallion
Bob
My Name is Mud
Seas of Cheese
Here Come the Bastards
Sgt. Baker
American Life
Jerry was a Race Car Driver
Eleven Drum Intro
Eleven
Is it Luck?
Grandad’s Little Ditty
Tommy the Cat
Sathington Waltz
Those Damned Blue-Collar Tweekers
Fish On
Los Bastardos
Harold of the Rocks
This article was written for the magazine Cannabis Quebec in 2003.