Review: Brilliant goofballs Primus rock the House

Geoff Carter

Tuesday, July 27, 1999 | 9:53 a.m.

Way, way back in the 1990s there was a band called Primus. It was a funky progressive rock trio, much like Rush before it (only with that extra, added funk), and its members 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 its audience chanting "Primus sucks! Primus sucks!" -- exactly like they did before the band's Sunday night set at House of Blues.

Yes, the 1990s were a time of great, great irony. Thematically, Primus will never have things as good as it 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 such as "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 the straight-up joe rock of Stone Temple Pilots, Pearl Jam, et al. tried to get them in the crosshairs.

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

Playing in sweaty close quarters -- to my count, there were 10 angry, frustrated bassists to every one bemused woman -- the band drew from every part of its 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. While playing with Collins in the Bill Laswell project, Praxis, Mantia no doubt 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 fretboard few can hope to rival. 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 it was going to give the crowd -- an angry, disenfranchised 18-34-year-old male crowd, the kind that knocks you down at shows just because -- exactly what it wanted. Then, without warning, the band members 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.