Highball With The Devil (Les Claypool & The Holy Mackerel: 1996)
Guests include Lane and jazz guitarist Charlie Hunter, but mostly it's Claypool on guitar, drums and bass, and
it doesn't sound very different from his regular band (the wonderful loose groove "El Sobrante Fortnight").
He's a terrific drummer (best heard on "Delicate Tendrils, behind a Henry Rollins narration), and
his bass solo on the Reddings' "The Awakening" makes you wonder why he doesn't do more out-and-out soloing on Primus records.
As usual, though, he lets some tunes run on too long while he's delivering half-baked lyrics that try way too hard to be twisted
("Granny's Little Yard Gnome").
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Brown Album (1997)
The first album with former Praxis drummer Brain, and the band moves farther from jamming and instead gets locked into repetitive grooves that are sometimes thrilling ("Golden Boy"), sometimes
intriguing ("Duchess And The Proverbial Mind Spread"), but almost always eventually boring. A foreshadowing of the sterility and staleness that would overwhelm Antipop.
"Shake Hands With Beef" was the first single.
Also this year, Primus wrote and performed the "South Park Theme."
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Rhinoplasty (1998)
More covers, including the Police's "Behind My Camel," XTC's
"Scissor Man" and Metallica's "The Thing That Should Not Be."
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Antipop (1999)
A tongue-in-cheek title, as this is easily the most mainstream Primus record I've heard. Nothing wrong with that, except that the genre
they've picked is rap/metal, trading their previous outré groove for the same piledriver power chords a thousand other bands are
using. Appropriately, guests include Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst, Tom Morello and James
Hetfield, not to mention Matt Stone.
The album's worst moment is provided by Tom Waits, who produces and adds vocals and discordant mellotron to the grating Courtney Love anti-valentine "Coattails Of A Dead Man."
There are some good tracks here, of course - "The Ballad Of Bodacious," the hidden track "It's Just A Matter Of Opinion" - but every other Primus record has more.
Also this year, Claypool produced half of Buckethead's Monsters & Robots.
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Live Frogs Set 1 (Colonel Les Claypool's Fearless Flying Frog Brigade: 2001)
Recorded October 8 and 9, 2000 with a lineup including Huth, Lane, keyboardist Jeff Chimenti, guitarist Eenor and saxophonist Skerik.
Though this entity hadn't been together long and they jam like crazy, they somehow coalesce into a band with a coherent sound, moving smoothly from solo to group sections ("Riddles Are Abound Tonight").
The jamming only goes awry on a fifteen-minute, directionless, repetitive cover of King Crimson's "Thela Hun Ginjeet."
Most of the tunes are Claypool's, from non-Primus projects like Sausage ("Shattering Song"), and range from his usual free-funk to
surf music ("Hendershot").
Generally, he's happy to share the limelight, playing his usual intricate/anarchic lines but never drowning anyone out, and as each musician displays a variety of soloing techniques, the sound never gets stuck in one bag for too long.
And any group that can hold my attention through a ten minute version of Pink Floyd's "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" has got something special.
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Live Frogs Set 2 (Colonel Les Claypool's Fearless Flying Frog Brigade: 2001)
In which the Brigade covers the entire Pink Floyd Animals LP. Much as I like the previous record, I won't be rushing to pick this up.
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The Grand Pecking Order (Oysterhead: 2001)
A short-lived band consisting of Claypool, Stewart Copeland and Phish leader Trey Anastasio -
most tracks have music by the band and lyrics by Claypool and Anastasio, though "Radon Balloon" is just Anastasio and the annoying
sing-song "Shadow Of A Man" is just Claypool.
On guitar Anastasio sounds like Pat Metheny crossed with Stephen Stills, and on vocals he's mellower still -
it's very weird to hear his tame leads in the middle of a Claypool rant like "The Army's On Ecstasy."
There are some loud tunes ("Little Faces"), but also some conventional rockers (the Lennon
psychedelia homage "Oz Is Ever Floating").
The one track where the band really gels is "Pseudo Suicide," a jam with two lead guitars.
Toss in some subpar Claypool tunes (title track) and you're in trouble.
The good news is that in avoiding his usual manic slapping, Claypool makes some good use
of bass effects (the Bootsy-style "Mr. Oysterhead"). Plus, Copeland sounds great whatever style he's backing
("Polka Dot Rose"), the sound is uncluttered if schizoid, and it's worth checking out just because it's so different from Claypool's usual.
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Purple Onion (The Les Claypool Frog Brigade: 2002)
Not technically a Claypool solo project, but it sure sounds like one. Well, him or Zappa, and I think Zappa's retired or dead or something.
Lots of jokey tunes ("Long In The Tooth"; the pseudo-sea chanty "David Makalaster"),
but more often than you'd expect, they come off (the jaw harp/funk bass/slide guitar - courtesy of Warren Haynes - singalong "Buzzards Of Green Hill"; the bouncy "Ding Dang" with prominent vibes from Mike Dillon).
And while the band members - Dillon, Lane (drums), Eenor (guitar) and Skerik (sax) - may have some weird names, they sure can kick ass (the demented groove "Whamola"; the concluding raga-esque "Cosmic Highway"). And to follow through on the Zappa parallel, when Claypool misses he misses badly, with the warped humor occasionally overriding the music (the aggravating "Barrington Hall"), and you sometimes wish he'd just write regular songs instead of playing Weirder Than Thou.
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The Big Eyeball In The Sky (Col. Claypool's Bucket of Bernie Brains: 2004)
A godsend if - like me - you think that these guys are much better at hard funk than the cowboy clowning (Claypool), metal mindlessness (Buckethead) and organ onanism (Bernie Worrell) they often indulge in as solo artists. (Sorry to break the symmetry, but I don't have any comparable complaint about Brain.)
This occasional supergroup is noted for playing lengthy instrumental improvisations in concert, but on their studio debut most of the songs have lyrics, many of them Bush-bashing ("Junior"; "48 Hours To Go") and all of them exhibiting Claypool's usual wackiness ("Tyranny Of The Hunt"). Better yet, they recruited a singer who can actually sing - Gabby La La - to add backing vocals to "Hip Hot From The Slab" and the wonderfully catchy anti-corporate media title track.
Most of the tunes are driven by bass grooves ("Thai Noodles"), but with plenty of space left open for Bernie's organ burbling and Buckethead's geetar magic ("Buckethead," which builds to one of his most gripping recorded solos). There is one mellower number, the ten-minute reggaefied instrumental "Elephant Ghost," and it's the album's one weak track.
Not as wide-ranging or unpredictable as Transmutation, but probably the best record Bucket, Bernie or Brain has appeared on since.
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Of Whales And Woe (Les Claypool: 2006)
It seems a bit curious to me that no one's playing true hard funk these days except for some hippie freak on mushrooms, but at least he does it well. Cut free from a band identity for the first time in ages, Claypool plays exactly what he wants, and it's mostly tight as fuck bass-led grooves ("Nothin' Ventured"; "One Better"), with the occasional slow burner ("Lust Strings") or sound experiment ("Back Off Turkey"). Claypool still has that annoying quavery voice, but fortunately many tracks are instrumental or nearly so. Most of the tunes are concise ("Phantom Patriot" not included), so the only real complaint is that there's not much to listen for apart from the leader's bass, despite the touches of marimba ("Robot Chicken"), Skerik's sax and Gabby La La's sitar and theremin ("Vernon The Company Man"). But when the leader's bass is this listenable, that's a quibble.
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