Review: Primus delivers a bucketful at House of Blues

Geoff Carter

Monday, July 26, 1999 | 12:14 p.m.

Way back in the 1990s, there was a band called Primus. They were a funky progressive rock trio, much like Rush before them (only with that extra, added funk), and they began shows by announcing themselves thus: "Hi, we're Primus and we suck." This was, of course, irony. Bassist Les Claypool, guitarist Larry Lalonde and drummer Brain Mantia are all brilliant players, professionals to the bone. But the phrase stuck and now the band cannot begin a show without their audience chanting "Primus sucks! Primus sucks!" - exactly as they did before the band's Sunday night set at House of Blues.

Yes, the 1990s were a time of great irony. Thematically, Primus will never have things as good as they had them in this fabulous decade - playing against a wacky real-life counterpoint of oil wars, smart drinks and Pamela Anderson Lee. Maybe writing and playing songs like "Those Damn Blue-Collared Tweekers" and "Shake Hands with Beef" was the band's defense mechanism - the musical equivalent of running in a serpentine while Stone Temple Pilots, Pearl Jam, et al. tried to get them in the cross hairs.

The kids will always want to bang their heads; that's just the way things are. Primus, at heart an improvisational outfit that has more in common with Frank Zappa than Led Zeppelin, compromised by turning their amps way, way up and pulling out the occasional dirty double entendre. Thus, the same band that can play the very metal Ozzfest - as they just finished doing - can collaborate with fiercely inventive low-jazz god Tom Waits - as they've done several times. It's that adaptability that will save them when irony goes out of style, and, thankfully, the band seems to know it.

Playing in sweaty, close quarters - by my count, there were 10 angry, frustrated bassists to every one bemused woman - the band drew from every part of their brilliantly executed, thoroughly goofball legacy, from the speed freakiness of "Jerry Was a Race Car Driver" to the anti-march "Here Come the Bastards" - which I always thought should have been George Bush's official campaign '92 anthem.

Their chops were, as always, sharpened to a lethal point. Claypool played so fast and loose that he looked like he was faking it. Guitarist Lalonde played a restrained line without being fussy and Mantia brought down the thunder he's earned the right to use by working with such giants as Bootsy Collins.

One of those side projects earned Vegas a welcome dividend. It was no doubt while playing with Collins in the Bill Laswell project Praxis that Mantia befriended Buckethead, an anonymous guitar hero with a Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket on his head, a plastic mask covering his face and a mastery of the guitar few can hope to rival. Sunday night Buckethead joined the band on stage several times, most notably for a blistering version of "Too Many Puppies" that included a short vamp on Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train."

It was an inspired moment. The band locked into rock warrior stances, pumping out the first few notes of the metal chestnut as if they were going to give the crowd - an angry, disenfranchised 18- to 34-year-old male crowd - exactly what they wanted. Then, without warning, they sidled back into their own song, brushing aside the metal riffing as if they had already forgotten they had played it. Sometimes, when seasoned by professionals, irony is sweet indeed.