Arts & Entertainment
 

Original Primus rocks Verizon

The winter leg of Primus' reunion tour hits with creativity old-school fans love

by Chris Goodier
The Daily Cougar

Almost 48 hours have past since the Primus carnival left town, and bruises are only now beginning to heal while those sweat-soaked jeans in the corner are beginning to resemble the same cheese that fans chanted for in unison on Friday night at the Verizon Wireless Theater. 

Touring for a reunion can be a lot of fun for both the performer and fan, and it seemed that bandleader Les Claypool and friends enjoyed commandeering the stage for over two and a half hours. In support of their recent DVD/EP release, Animals Should Not Try to Act Like People, fans following the winter leg of the band's Tour de Fromage have seen blistering dual-set shows filled with improvisational excursions, tweak-inspired visual distortion and a smattering of the band's pre-millennium musical catalog. A most amazing effect from witnessing the original Primus lineup of Claypool on bass and vocals, Larry LaLonde on guitar and drummer Tim "Herb" Alexander was the freshness of the trio's musical foray. 

At points during the show, listeners found themselves in the middle of what seemed to be burgeoning new material. In a way it was, and it has been seven years since the world of rock music has heard the instrumentation of this once-mighty three piece. With radio airwaves saturated by years of nu-metal drop tuning, the Primus veterans pursued experimental projects while those seven-string toting juveniles burned out on the earlobes of a music-consuming public.

Another thing stood out at the show: solos. Always considered a musician's band, songs of the performance changed direction with the same randomness as Claypool's indiscernible yodels. LaLonde's guitar playing has to be one of the most distinctive in modern music. Hints of prog-rock surfaced in dissonant fusion-like blurts as atonal rhythm stabs bracketed harmonics and behind the nut strumming. Alexander's drumming gave evidence as to why he's the band's workhorse. A self-admitted Neal Pert (of Rush) fan, the drummer broke into a solo lasting longer than 20 minutes. Your standard percussion solo became tribal and then turned psychedelic, as "Herb" triggered ambient samples by hitting certain drum pads, offering a trailing ominous chorus resembling a Peter Gabriel soundtrack. 

Parts of the first set prompted comparison to pursuits of accomplished jam bands like Phish during passages that extended into improvisational excursions void of any predestined stopping point. For Claypool, the previous five years have been spent collaborating with jam-based outfits such as the Les Claypool Frog Brigade and Oysterhead (featuring Trey Anastasio of Phish and Police drummer Stewart Copeland). Each side project showed marks of hippie rock: audio tapers at shows, a legion of followers from gig to gig and a spot at Bonnaroo Festival. Primus's characteristic sideshow weirdness persisted though, as Claypool's cockatoo demeanor spit shrill vocal ramblings like a west-Texan auctioneer or square dance caller. Highlights of the first set included a performance of "Groundhog's Day," with most of the material coming from past releases such as Frizzle Fry(1990) and Pork Soda(1993). 

The second set was a commentary on avante-rock history, and a start-to-finish live performance of Primus's 1991 release Sailing the Seas of Cheese provided the entire reason why many attendees from the Dr. Seuss striped-hat generation filled the sold-out Verizon Theater.

The blinding and beefy guitar riffage and time changes reminded everyone of the tweak-inspired frantic energy once subscribed to by Primus in the Bay Area in the early 1990s. Crowd favorites of the fourteen-track LP included "Those Damned Blue Collar Tweakers," a disturbing rendition of "American Life" and of course, "Jerry Was a Racecar Driver" and "Tommy the Cat." 

The set wasn't a mere album replay, since the trio's attention deficit allowed room for jamming and masked guests. A mysterious bassist emerged wearing Ronald Reagan's face while another masked guitarist could have been a visit by the elusive shredder Buckethead. This cleared room for Claypool to reemerge in a lighted mining helmet and play along. Fans wouldn't leave until two more songs followed the encore of "John the Fisherman." Recordings of every Tour de Fromage performance, from Fall to the present, are available to download in their entirety at www.primuslive.com.

Primus

Verizon Wireless Theater

520 Texas Ave.

The verdict: As old-school fans chanted endearingly, "Primus sucks!"

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