Jeff Miers: Sound Check
An ambitious Les Claypool continues his odd and wacky ways
Les Claypool is decadent and depraved. This is not necessarily a criticism. Not content to simply fill the role of pre-eminent rock bassist for his generation — a position he already firmly occupied by the time Nirvana made the cover of Rolling Stone for the first time — Claypool and Primus sought to redefine Caucasian funk with a series of increasingly strange and mostly wonderful records during the ’90s.
And then things started getting really bizarre.
As weird and wacky as Primus was, the trio always maintained a tangential relationship with alternative rock. One might find the band’s albums occupying space between, say, the then-latest efforts from Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and even Phish, in any given college dorm. It was accepted that the band was eclectic, but still, more like an eccentric cousin to the Red Hot Chili Peppers than the full-blown, unfettered freak of the family.
But even as one began detecting the influence of Primus in the work of a few of the heaviest bands of the ’90s, among them Korn and Tool, Claypool and his bandmates were drifting further and further to the left. Soon, the group was far closer to the avant-garde than the mainstream, and Claypool’s staccato sing-speak and uber-funk bass playing began to assimilate the influence of Tom Waits, Captain Beefheart and what sounded like a seriously twisted appropriation of gamelan music. If 1991’s “Sailing the Seas of Cheese” was both freaky and funky, “Anti-Pop,” the record the band recorded as the ’90s groaned to a close, certainly lived up to its name, proving that Primus had basically invented its own subgenre of rock.
As Primus became more and more odd, solo projects became de rigueur for the band members, and Claypool began to work outside the group more often than within it. By 2000, he’d teamed with Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio and Police drummer Stewart Copeland as Oysterhead. From this point forward, Claypool’s work — and his lovable, insane uncle persona — would be eagerly accepted by “jam band” audiences.
Here, it became apparent that Claypool was acting as a bridge between idioms — and not for the first time. A product of a childhood spent studying progressive rock luminaries and the music of the Beatles, Claypool brought virtuosity to bear on the grunge world. Then he began assimilating the influence of Waits, who became an occasional collaborator, and the percussion-heavy, skewed classical music of Frank Zappa. With the onset of this decade, the bassist became a conduit once again, this time one that connected progressive music, ’90s alternative and the improvisation-based jam band scene.
Now, following several tours and recordings with his Colonel Les Claypool’s Fearless Flying Frog Brigade, and a few tours with the reformed Primus, Claypool has released a new solo album that handily encapsulates most of the styles he has worked within over the years. “Of Fungi and Foe” comes hot on the heels of two other Claypool projects: his debut nod as film director, writer and star (“Electric Apricot: Quest for Festeroo,” which lovingly spoofs the jam-band scene in much the same manner that “This Is Spinal Tap” pokes fun at heavy metal); and his first effort as a novelist (“South of the Pumphouse,” a Hunter Thompson-esque romp involving drugs, violence and . . . er, fishing).
As ambitious and largely successful as these ancillary efforts are, however, it’s with music that Claypool retains his largest influence and flexes his artistic muscles most impressively. “Of Fungi and Foe” is, according to Claypool’s liner notes, the result of two separate commissions: one for “an interactive game about a meteor that hits Earth and brings intelligence to the mushrooms within the crash proximity” and the other a film that delineates the activities of “a 3,000 pound wild boar that terrorizes the marijuana fields of Northern California.”
The game (released as “Mushroom Men”) and the film (known as “Pig Hunt”) are clearly right up Claypool’s dank and dimly lit artistic alley. Both managed to feed the man’s imagination, and the result is an album of bizarre but compelling character studies set to the tune of Kurt Weil-like percussion marches; various bowed, plucked and strummed basses; and Claypool’s intensely creepy vocal intonations. Not surprisingly, humor abounds in the man’s lyrical observations, be they concerning the serial drunk driver in “Ol’ Rosco,” the girl who “wants to grow up to be Sarah Palin” in the brutal “Red State Girl,” the hapless American visiting Britain in “What Would Sir George Martin Do” or the arrogant-but- clueless drug dealer providing the subject for “You Can’t Tell Errol Anything.”
How Claypool will manage to pull all of this off on the concert stage is a mystery, but it’s one that you can solve for yourself when he brings his new touring band to the Town Ballroom for an 8 p. m. show July 18. One thing is for certain: Whatever Claypool pulls from his hat is likely to be the opposite of what you’d expect.•
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