Though it may prove once and for
all how
out of touch I am, I will admit that prior to this assignment I was not
familiar with Les Claypool or his main claim to fame: Primus. As a
matter of fact, I had never even heard his band or anything he had done.
Originally I had assigned this feature to another writer -- never even
considered doing the thing myself. I had the volume 1 CD in my vehicle,
awaiting shipment. As fate would have it, I found myself in traffic one
morning and, as my mind wandered, I absently flipped over the Claypool CD in
order to take a look at the cover art and track listing. The title of
the first track nearly jumped off the page and the rest, as they say, is
history. "Thela Hun Ginjeet,"
the aforementioned song, is an absolutely brilliant King
Crimson tune which was originally released on their classic
"Discipline" album (1981). It's one of my all-time favorite
progressive tunes and very well done by the Frogs! Okay, right off the
bat we see evidence that Les won't soon win any singing awards, but that's
okay too, because Adrian Belew (of King Crimson) is no vocal virtuoso
either. Les's is a nasaly voice, complete with some serious limitations
in range, but who's listening to him sing? The band is on FIRE!
The Floyd thing ("Shine on You Crazy Diamond") should get a nod for notching up the suspense and expectation
amongst the crowd, much like the original must have done back in the
day. Seriously explosive drumming! Recorded
live last summer in San Francisco's Great American Music Hall, Live Frogs
Volume 1 is an amazing assortment of precision chaos ranging from the delicate
accuracy of a prog rock masterpiece to flat-out thrashin' guitar, thumpin'
bass, squealin' sax and frenetic drumming... these guys have got some serious
chops! They totally take down the house on what sounds like just
one hell of a night of pure jamming... and the audience explodes with each
passing song. The two most recognizable
tracks are standouts, namely "Thela Hun Ginjeet" and "Shine On
You Crazy Diamond by Pink Floyd. Both manage to stay relatively true to
the original (the former more than the latter), with the frequent unexpected
runs of guitar, bass or sax only adding to the quality of the tune rather than
taking away as live covers can. Homegrown
songs outnumber covers on Volume 1 however as Les and company perform
"Riddles are Abound Tonight," "Shattering Song" and
"Girls for Single Men," all culled from Claypool's side project
"Sausage" (a band featuring Todd Huth (guitar) and Jay Lane (drums)
who both, conveniently enough, became draftees of the Frog Brigade).
These are some rambling, funky songs that spotlight the capabilities of the
whole group -- especially Claypool's bass mastery. "Shattering
Song" stands out amongst these three -- it's fast-paced and mysterious
with a rip-roarin' bridge that, at high volume, shook some paint off my
walls. And the sick-ass bass line and wailing sax on "Girls for
Single Guys" (let's just forget about the annoying vocals -- if you can
call them that) ain't half bad either! "Hendershot"
and "Running the Gauntlet" come from yet another Claypool project
"Holy Mackeral". The choppy guitar effects on Hendershot got
my attention, but I just couldn't get my hands around the rest of the
song. "Running the Gauntet" comes complete with trippy
keyboard and bass noodling and a perfect example of Claypool's Zappa-esque
lyrical sense. Of the Claypool originals, I think I like this track the
best. While this music may be a little
bit too avant garde and funkified for my general listening pleasure, I can
honestly say that, though I came into this assignment naive, I did enjoy Live
Frogs volume 1 and will find myself revisiting in the future for sure. Volume
2 on the other hand is an absolute Gem! I don't recall any other band
ever doing anything like this -- I mean, this is a complete, forty-plus minute
cover! It's Les Claypool's rendition Pink Floyd's classic,
"Animals," from start to finish, and it is absolutely awesome!
If somebody held a gun to my head and made me compose a top twenty list of my
all-time favorite albums (and that's what it would take to make me do
that...), "Animals" would rank prominently in that list. So
there was a lot of incredulity to get past when I listened the first
time. But it turns out that "Animals" is one of Les's all time
favorites too and a piece of music that he had always dreamed of doing
onstage. So boy did he ever do it up right! I
received the CD before I had gotten all the way through Volume 1, so I hadn't
yet heard "Shine on You Crazy Diamond." So as I said above, I
had my doubts as to what I was going to hear. But the CD starts with a
drawn out acoustic guitar line that leads to the intro, "Pigs on the
Wing." Hmm, not bad, but this one would be pretty hard to fuck up.
Claypool takes a back seat on vocals, passing the baton to Todd Huth. It
pains me to think that many of Les's Primus fans might not have ever heard
"Animals" before. I don't want to admit I'm getting older, but
hey.. my kids have never seen a record player before either! The
crowd is pumped as the synths introduce "Dogs." This is
a work of absolute genius, handled with a brilliance that I didn't think a
covering band could capture on stage. This is live remember, so there
aren't any of the barking sound effects and stuff like that, but still it's a
rendition that oozes respect for the original and puts to bed any concerns I
had about this album to start with. Even Pink Floyd themselves might
have a hard time recreating the magic with such precision! The
two remaining Animals songs, "Pigs" and "Sheep" are, once
again, pretty true to the original. There's enough flexibility in the
score to allow for some pretty serious jams to materialize, but they don't let
any of their free-handling deviate from the spirit of the piece they're
playing. I always had a thing for the lyrics on this album, and they're
belted out with clarity and precision throughout. The
outro, "Pigs on the Wing part 2" ushers the end of a magical evening
for the folks lucky enough to be in the house that night. The acoustic
guitar trails off to a crowd nearly delusional with excitement. It was a
bit of a risk for a group of individuals known for their ability to run off at
tangents and jam for hours to embrace the structure of... well.. mostly a
tribute concert. Les Claypool's Frog Brigade pulled it off in a big way! Both
volumes one and two come highly recommended for fans and the naive alike, but
the second disc is an absolute gem! I'm pleased to have taken over this
assignment at the last minute.
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