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Alien lanes
Primus return to the outer limits
BY SEAN RICHARDSON

Last year, Primus emerged from the first serious hiatus of their career with a hit CD/DVD package, Animals Should Not Try To Act like People (Interscope), and a successful US tour. The double-disc collection, which includes a half-hour of new music and three hours of archival video, proves the Bay Area alterna-rockers are still doing things their own way. And the road trip, which was their first with drummer Tim Alexander in almost a decade, has been extended to include another string of dates this month. Each night of the current trek, the band are performing their first studio album, Frizzle Fry (Prawn Song), all the way through. Last weekend, they played Bonnaroo 2004, and they’re at the FleetBoston Pavilion this Wednesday.

From the beginning, Primus’s wicked combination of chops and originality made them the ultimate musician’s band: with his deranged vocals and hyperkinetic bass playing, frontman Les Claypool is a hero to aspiring shredders everywhere. Along with their penchant for exploring rock’s outer limits, that’s usually a recipe for cult stardom. But the band have somehow been able to connect with the mainstream — two Top 10 albums, more than two million in total sales — even though they sound as if they’d never given a second thought to typical notions of accessibility.

The crown jewels of the Animals collection are the 13 music videos Primus made in the 1990s. Some of these are also available with audio commentary from the band, whose tonal resemblance to their MTV contemporaries Beavis and Butt-head is uncanny. But all jokes aside, these guys made some of the coolest videos of the era. They start off simple: on "Jerry Was a Race Car Driver," Alexander’s mammoth drum kit pretty much steals the show. The video for their biggest hit, "My Name Is Mud," climaxes when Claypool takes the song’s "aluminum baseball bat" to the camera lens. The singer makes his directorial debut on the clip for the 1995 smash "Wynona’s Big Brown Beaver," which is the group’s definitive visual statement. Over some of their most thrilling instrumental high jinks, they don cowboy suits (complete with masks) and share the screen with a bizarre cartoon based on the tune’s lyrics.

Alexander left Primus soon after "Wynona," which remains their last major commercial triumph. But on the video front, the band were just getting started. The clip for the 1997 single "Shake Hands with Beef" is a howl: performing on top of a trashcan, they transform into mosquitoes and wreak havoc on a trailer-trash picnic. Their 1998 cover of "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" was amusing in and of itself but also became a great excuse for an elaborate stop-motion video full of demons and chickens.

The DVD is packed with Primus concert footage, from an early college-radio performance to an appearance on the Limp Bizkit–headlined Family Values Tour 1999. At Woodstock ’94, Claypool inserts a Jimi Hendrix–style "Star-Spangled Banner" (complete with whammy bar) into the middle of "Those Damned Blue-Collar Tweakers." The backstage segment "Horrible Men" is notable for its superstar cameos, including a hilarious shot of a prankster in a chicken suit lurking behind Layne Staley during an Alice in Chains set at Lollapalooza 1993.

When drummer Brain left Primus after the 1999 album Antipop to join Guns N’ Roses, the door opened for Alexander’s return. It didn’t happen right away, because Claypool was busy with a few other projects, including the supergroup Oysterhead. But when it did, the band wasted no time going into the studio to record the five new tracks on Animals. In light of the hard-rock direction they took five years ago, they sound as relaxed as they ever have. But it’s a stretch to call the new songs mellow, especially since Claypool starts things off with the murder parable "The Carpenter and the Dainty Bride."

Except for his beloved "Mary the Ice Cube," Claypool’s cast of characters gets only seedier from there. The crooked cop in "Pilcher’s Squad" performs drug busts over the disc’s most perverse groove; the alcoholic in "My Friend Fats" is treated to eight minutes of slow-burning psychedelia. Claypool and guitarist Larry Lalonde go heavy on the fuzz and the delay for "Fats," and Alexander works overtime on the hi-hat. After all these years, Primus still make the alien sound enthralling.

Primus perform this Wednesday, June 23, at FleetBoston Pavilion, 290 Northern Avenue in Boston; call (617) 728-1600.


Issue Date: June 18 - 24, 2004
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