Have you ever experienced something that you just can’t explain? I’m a skeptical guy by nature, and I don’t believe in bigfoot or ghosts or anything like that, but recently something happened that made me feel like I was in an episode of The Twilight Zone. It all started when my girlfriend got me a present.
That’s not the weird part. She’s always doing thoughtful little things like that. This time, she bought me a flannel while she was out shopping. After she gave it to me, I told her that she was very sweet, but she had accidentally grabbed a large instead of a medium. I asked what store she bought it at so I could return it.
I guess she was kinda embarrassed by her mistake because she didn’t answer right away. Then she very rapidly told me that she had lost the receipt, and all sales had been final, and the store had burned down, anyway. She asked me to just try it on. Rather than rolling my eyes and explaining that I would be swimming in it, I decided to put it on to show her just how ridiculous it would look.
Here’s where things get strange. Not only did the shirt fit, but it also fit better than any other shirt I owned. It didn’t hug my sides or ride up over my belly. It didn’t strain when I lifted my arms above shoulder level. It even looked good in the mirror, and I wasn’t wearing an undershirt to help smooth everything out.
I double-checked the tag to make sure I hadn’t just read it wrong, but nope: there was still a big ol’ “L” staring back up at me. I tried on my favorite t-shirt to compare, since I have pictures from college that prove that it fits well. Now, though, I couldn’t help but notice a slight breeze on my tummy where the shirt just barely failed to reach my jeans.
I’m sure there’s some kind of rational explanation. The dryer probably shrunk all my old shirts. Or maybe there’s something wrong with the flannel itself, like that time my girlfriend got me those shorts with the factory misprint that said they were a 38 waist instead of a 32, which is my size. Those are now my favorite and most comfortable shorts! For now, I’m okay with chalking it up as one of life’s great mysteries.
Lookout cofounder Larry Livermore was never shy to take credit for the label’s numerous early successes, at one point going so far as to buy a frilly cape, a scepter and a crown with the phrase “I Made Green Day! Me!” engraved in it, which he would frequently wear around the office. However, the impresario has been noticeably terse about his frequent visits to the Cayman Islands, many of which were by a private jet, and once, the recently hijacked Goodyear blimp. Several former Lookout employees have posited that these “business” trips were actually a front to smuggle unsold Crimpshrine EPs out of the country to avoid the embarrassment of still having them. However, others have speculated that the trips were actually a way for Livermore to indulge his crippling addiction of gambling on illegal zebra fighting, which at that time was only accessible in international waters and all of Texas. Additionally, by the late ‘90s the whole of the Bay area had fallen under the control of a local political boss named “Capricorn Jack,” who would go on to influence some of the label’s most nefarious later dealings.
Despite the name, this isn’t the band’s debut, but their sophomore album. This collection of sometimes interesting but mostly half-baked funk-metal songs includes a more energized but unnecessary re-recording of “We Care a Lot” (from their debut). While not much of a singer in the traditional sense (especially when compared with successor Mike Patton), what Chuck Mosley lacked in pitch he made up for with a fuck-it punk enthusiasm.
The exceptional title track might be best known as the theme of the show “Dirty Jobs” (hosted by amiable everyman turned Fox News turd Mike Rowe). The charming naivety and rawness of this debut help it just barely edge out its follow-up. There are moments that hint at what FNM would one day become, but Mosley’s singing is once again the weak link, holding the album’s better songs back from being welcomed to Bangersville.
On their final album before a lengthy hiatus, we find the band treading familiar ground, continuing to sprinkle their zany genre digressions alongside synthy-groove metal. There’s an exhausted feel to this album, as though the band’s effort at defying genre had itself become a formula. The metal riffs of songs like “Naked in Front of the Computer” give it a shot in the arm, and Patton’s creepy crooning is as powerful as ever on such tracks as “Last Cup of Sorrow.” Patton himself said (perhaps too harshly) that the band split after this album because they’d started to make “bad music” and it was “time to pull the plug”.
18 years after their previous album, FNM returned refreshed and invigorated, with the reunited band sounding excited to be making music together again. The stylistic explorations are reined in a bit, which helps keep the album from becoming as wacky as some earlier works. Tracks like “Separation Anxiety” and the explosive “Black Friday” show the band is still pretty adventurous for a bunch of guys that need to schedule regular colonoscopies.
Ditching original singer Mosley, the band poached a baby Mike Patton from Mr. Bungle, who reportedly wrote the album’s lyrics in just two weeks. “The Real Thing” could probably be considered the rap-rock urtext, though that transgression can be forgiven due to the hook-heavy, slickly produced and strange album it is. Is it goofy? At times, very much so. However, that silliness is tempered by Jim Martin’s metal influence and the band’s increasingly sophisticated songwriting. Patton leans hard on his bratty, nasal delivery, which can quickly become obnoxious.
Jim Martin’s signature riffage is absent, as the guitarist fucked off to become a farmer, apparently unhappy with the band’s broadening musical direction (allegedly accusing FNM of playing “gay disco”). The genre-hopping sometimes veers too far into kitsch (“Star A.D.”, but when the stylistic forays work, they’re fun, as heard in the smooth jazz of “Evidence”. The spasmodic utterances on “Cuckoo for Caca” make it plain to see why Patton was hired to provide zombie screams for “Left 4 Dead.”
Already realizing the rap-rock schtick was a dead end, the band jettisoned it to make way for the eclectic batch of songs found here. Patton outgrew the snotty vocal style of “The Real Thing” and was reborn as a consummate frontman with a wide stylistic range. Each player is given ample space to showcase their strengths, from Roddy Boddum’s synths to Billy Gould’s twanging bass, while Jim Martin grounds it all with his solid thrash playing. The album was probably a bit shocking to fans of earlier radio-friendly singles, with Patton’s shrieking and pig-squealing (“Smaller and Smaller”, “Malpractice”), fellatio instruction (“Be Aggressive”) and intentionally offensive song titles (“Crack Hitler,” “Jizzlobber”).
Is the schtick getting old or is Primus struggling to remain Primus? This is the most Frank Zappa drenched in Ketamine of all of their albums thus far. The album just kicks off with a sluggish spoken word mistake of a track and is never able to catch up with itself. I will applaud the band for leaning away from the catchy hooks into more experimental territory, unfortunately that experiment was a failure.
Why does every latter-day Primus track sound like a doctor trying to explain something to you while you are slipping under anesthesia? There is just no energy in most of these tracks with some of them sounding like a demented segment of “Sesame Street.” This all sounds like if Tool took themselves slightly less seriously. I know Primus isn’t really the kind of band to have singles, but it is like they are actively working against having any kind of melody or hook.
After over a decade without a full-length album, that isn’t live or a greatest hits, Primus is back and still sounding like a PG-13 They Might Be Giants. And why not take some time off when you have “South Park” money? That being said, this album is kind of meandering and uninspired. It feels like Primus went from genuinely quirky to weird for weird’s sake. At its best, this album sounds like a child’s toy running low on batteries at its worst it sounds like early Red Hot Chili Peppers.
There is something so apropos about Primus covering the entire soundtrack of “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.” Unfortunately, the whole album feels very slapdash and the fact the entire thing was based around covering “Pure Imagination” it makes every other track seems like an afterthought. Most of Les Claypool’s performance sounds like a drunk dad leaving you a meandering voicemail at 2 a.m.
I’ll admit, as someone who had a poster of Primus on his wall and wore the t-shirt, I was long over them (the “Brown Album” was just too hard to stomach) by the time this album came out and I never actually listened to it. I will say that it seems that they got the kickback in their step. This is a fun, energetic roller-coaster of an album and I feel bad that I never listened to it. Once again every track is essentially a character breakdown of an R. Crumb doodle but at least it’s fun.
Maybe it was the surprising success of “Pork Soda” but this is the first album where Primus sounds like they don’t know what to do with themselves. Don’t get me wrong, all the songs still sound like the theme song to canceled Saturday Morning Cartoons, but it all feels forced in a way that seemed so effortless beforehand.
Like them or not, rarely has a band come out of the womb so fully formed with such a confident personality as Primus does on “Fizzle Fry.” Les Claypool is already a complete carnival barker on acid from track 1. Most other bands would tip-toe around sounding like a cartoon walrus (both in voice and lyrics) for their first album.
Like the Kinks, every song is its own sad little story about loss, fate, and Kubrick. At least that is what I got out of it. This album is like a Rorschach Test, everyone is going to get something different out of it but in the end it is probably just silly nonsense. Primus has a way of drawing pictures with their music, strange little doodles in the margins of society but somehow, at least with their best albums, they are able to remain just barely within the lines of pop-music making enjoyable melodies out of the strangest of circumstances.
You know how there are these folk artists with no formal training that make crucifixes out of old bike parts or whatever and just fill their yard with them, not doing it for fame or fortune but because they just feel compelled by some unknown force to create. Primus is the musical equivalent of that and it shows on this album. They are folk artists who have a passion and a need to express themselves in the only way they know how. Obviously, Les is their leader but that doesn’t negate the work of the other members… whatever their names are.
Born in New York City, Elise Parker never, ever let you forget the fact she was born in New York City. She claimed until her dying day to have never loudly cheered “Woooooo!” when a band would ask the audience “How’s everyone doing tonight?”
Born in Toledo, Ohio, Gary Kirkpatrick moved briefly to Cleveland before getting sick of the goddamn jokes and moving back to Toledo. He was a huge fan of the band Evanescence, once saying of them “Don’t ever tell anyone that Evanescence is my favorite band! That shit is fucking embarrassing.”
Born in an abandoned school bus somewhere outside of Kenosha, Wisconsin, Robert Oliphiler became known to his friends and family as “Scudnuts” after a childhood Razor scooter accident over hot asphalt. After later moving to Kenosha, he could often be found asking to bum cigarettes outside of bars he’d been banned from.