Thursday, October 09, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Music: Sailing the seas of change

Primus regroups with the music industry in flux

By Mike Prevatt

When Primus leadman/bassist and rock eccentric Les Claypool visited his old buddy Jimmy Iovine--chairman of Interscope Records, Primus' former label--it was about promoting a new project involving a comprehensive DVD, along with an EP that marked the reunion of Claypool with original members, guitarist Larry Lalonde and drummer Tim Alexander. Claypool seemed most excited about the DVD retrospective. Iovine was particularly interested in the five new songs the trio had recorded.

"The original plan was just to put out the DVD," says Claypool via phone from his Northern California home. "When we met with Jimmy and [Interscope executive] Steve Berman, Jimmy said, `Look, they have this new 50 Cent thing...'"

Iovine is referencing the fairly recent phenomenon of packaging new releases with a bonus/supplemental DVD, usually featuring live material, interview footage, backstage antics and the like. The five major labels began marketing albums this way to entice music fans to buy their music, rather than freely download it from peer-to-peer Internet services like Kazaa, and Interscope in particular found chart-topping success earlier this year when it re-released 50 Cent's debut, Get Rich or Die Tryin'. It also was a savvy way to get music-oriented DVDs in the music section of retail outlets, rather than being hidden away in the back of the movie area. ("You're competing with these multimillion-dollar movies with multimillion-dollar budgets," says Claypool.)

Though Claypool emphasized the extensive DVD, Interscope packaged the project--titled Animals Should Not Try to Act Like People--in a double-CD jewel case (released this week). From there, the endeavor unfurled.

"It all has just sort of snowballed--a slow snowball that's plodding down a slight grade," says Claypool. "We had no intention of getting back together, and then we started to make a DVD, [thinking], hey, let's sew this thing up and make a comprehensive package. At the time, we became nostalgic, and next thing you know we got back in the room and jammed. There was chemistry, and a lot of those things got on the album. Jimmy was very excited about us recording a few songs, and then we were going to do a few [tour] dates, and now it's five weeks of dates."

The five-song EP with Animals will be familiar to Primus admirers, full of slappy, angular compositions evoking dementia and dystopia. In keeping with the Primus tradition, a good portion of the recording is improvised, especially in its epic closer, "My Friend Fats." However, even for Primus it was a new level of spontaneity--fitting, given Claypool's forays within the national jam band community, with projects like his Flying Frog Brigade and Oysterhead (with Phish leadman Trey Anastasio and former Police drummer Stewart Copeland).

"[`My Friend Fats'] has more dynamic structure--that's the topography of the song," says Claypool. "It doesn't have a lot of different parts as much as it does extreme dynamics. It's a different approach."

And speaking of atypical methodology, Primus' five-week tour (debuting Oct. 13 in Petaluma, Calif.) won't be the usual reunion-tour campaign. The show is set to consist of two acts: One will showcase the band's back catalog, with a setlist to vary from night to night, and the other will solely consist of a start-to-finish performance of its 1993 album, Sailing the Seas of Cheese. During each set, visuals will be "improvised" alongside the music--just another trick from a band that has kept onlookers guessing since its late-'80s inception.

"Frog Brigade did the same thing with Pink Floyd's Animals, and people loved it," says Claypool. "The continuity of Seas...was deliberately made so it was like watching a film. That's the way Animals is. I went to [Larry and Tim] said, `We gotta do this, it will be incredible.' It's like putting on a play."