How PRIMUS conquered the world (they suck)

no, no girls or bikinis oh yeah, hey, there's one thing. My Primus is one of the most unlikely success stories in music, to put it mildly, its music is, shall we say, extremely strange, somewhere between Frank Zappa and some soundtrack. strange imaginary circus with lyrics about fishing and Willy Wonka, and yet somehow this incredibly strange band has managed to reach Billboard's top 10 twice, sell two platinum albums, and become a fixture on MTV with music that sounds So. They also created the theme song for South Park, as you all know, it is one of the most popular and longest running comedy television shows of all time.

Oh, and did I mention that their guitarist possibly invented death metal? It's true and even today

they

sell between 3 and 5,000 seats at a time. When

they

're on tour and the question is how do they do it, what's the story behind one of music's most unlikely hits and I'd also like to thank Factor for sponsoring this video. They deliver chef-prepared meals right to your door. that are ready to eat in just 2 minutes, it's the perfect solution if you're looking for quick, upscale meal options that can be made easily, meaning you can skip the trip to the supermarket and all the cutting, prepping, cleaning and All of that while still getting the flavor and nutrition you need and it's also a great way to save money.

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I heard Primus for the first time on the MTV show. Headbangers ball, I think in 199, but its origins go back much further. The band started in 1984 in the Bay Area with the original lineup consisting of Les Claypool on bass, Todd HTH on guitar and a drum machine because they just couldn't. They couldn't find anyone to play drums and after finally finding a human being to play drums in 1986, they recorded their first demo which included early versions of some of their classic songs as Sergeant Baker. Sergeant Baker is my name. I'm going to teach you how to play the drums.

Playing is definitely a little slower and more relaxed than what they would become a few years later, but even then you can hear the potential as a sign that they were onto something and that people recognized what incredible musicians Les Claypool once was. I even got the call to replace Cliff Burton in Metallica L. You're not used to playing this kind of music, are you? The Metallica concert obviously didn't happen, but that might have been a good thing because after going through half a dozen different members over the course of a couple of years, the Primus lineup finally solidified with Tim Herb Alexander on drums and Larry Lond on guitar, who had also played with Les in a metal band called Blind Illusion and with their lineup finally somewhat stable recorded their 1998 demo, Sausage.

This was by far the best sound they had made thus far and became a hit in the Bay Area metal scene. It got to the point where it looked like this weird little band might really be going somewhere, and to build on the momentum they had, they borrowed $3,000 from Les' dad to record their first album, it was called "

suck

on this" and They made the strange decision to do it as a live album. Normally a live album is something that bands only do when they are already in their career as a kind of bonus for the fans, it is usually not the way you would like to present your band. to the

world

and yet something probably worked because the band was so incredibly tight that their live recordings sound better than most bands in the studio and, as Les Claypool remembers, this was their first real breakthrough, we pressed a thousand records and we take them to the stores ourselves. and we set aside about 200 records to send to radio stations all over the country.

College radio stations immediately sold out locally. We were like we sold out the Omni at the time, then college radio picked it up somehow and we just figured it out and made another thousand records and sold them the traction they got in the underground with their independently released album . We signed them to Caroline Records who would put out some very important punk and metal bands like Suicidal Tendencies and Bad Brains and eventually released their debut studio album in 1990 called Frizzle fry with the lead single by John the Fisherman. Claypool from Les ranked this as his favorite Primus album and I personally agree that it's still very strange because I mean it's Primus and I don't think they can be normal. if they tried, but the songs are a little more accessible than their other material and it became something of an unexpected underground hit, with around 880,000 albums and catching the attention of major labels who are looking for the next big thing and could sound crazy. that the major labels thought Primus of all bands might be the next big thing and Rec recorded them in some sort of bidding war, but it actually made sense at the time, remember that's when Faith No More broke out with the epic Red Hot.

The Chili Peppers took off and Funk metal was probably the biggest new trend in the

world

of heavy music, so they eventually signed to Inner Scope Records as the label's second band, but Inner Scope would eventually become the home of the artists. like fluff cookie Lady Gaga and Eminem and was co-founded by the legendary Jimmy Ioen, who you may know as the co-founder of Beats, so they had some serious firepower behind them and released their second album sailing the seas of cheese in 1991, which would change everything for them, but right now we have the guys from Prime, they have the new album sailing the seas of cheese and you have a video called Jerry Was a Race Car Driver thanks to them having the power of Thanks within their reach, they were able to get a lot of support from MTV, especially their weekly metal show called Headbangers Ball, which turned their first single, Jerry Was a Race Car Driver, into something of a hit; it reached number 23 on the Billboard charts.

It sold several hundred copies in the first few months and somehow one of the strangest bands on the planet had become something of a mainstream success and let's talk a little about why all this happened. First of all, it was the 9 and basically In the wake of Nirvana's success, any alternative was great, but let's also give Primus some credit because they did something incredibly rare and difficult to do, which is that they made these fun, catchy songs that had sort of mainstream rock crossover appeal but they were also incredibly weird and technical and maybe the most progressive band to ever have that level of success and the first thing anyone noticed, even if you didn't necessarily know much about playing music, was Minus Claypool, even if you had never held a Bas in your life it was obvious that this man completely redefined what was possible to do with Bas.

He was playing a fretless six-string base with a strike bar that to this day I still don't think I've ever seen anyone else play, and he was doing things that seemed downright impossible for a human being to play, like the main riff from Tommy the cat, so we had something very interesting where Bas was the main instrument of the band and Larry's guitars were an equally strange perversion. than anyone would expect from a rock guitarist with so much going on with the bass and Tim's drums being so technical that there really isn't much room for the guitar to do typical guitar things so he hardly plays any riffs . per se it's more like ambient sounds and I understand that a lot of that sound came from their original guitarist Todd, but I think Larry really took what he did and took it to another level and to congratulate them both, Tim Alexander is just a absolute monster of a drummer, sort of like the alternative Terry Basio I'd say, and as unlikely as it was, at the same time you can also see why it worked and they continued to ride the wave by making a small appearance on Bill and Ted's Bogus.

Journey with Kiana Reeves and somehow even played on MTV's Spring Break special in 1992, right after Mark Wahlberg at the time better known as Marky Mark, but that was just the beginning for Primus and if that was all Whatever they did, it would still be very impressive, but that was Just the beginning of Primus in 1993 they returned with their next album, Pork Soda, which was even darker and stranger than sailing the seas of cheese with the lead single My Name Is Mud and once again, somehow, they got a lot of support from MTV, esp. the very popular show beas and budhead that gave them a lot of love no, there are no girls or bikinis oh yeah hey there's something private, it's my thing and thanks to all that, somehow, this album managed to reach number seven on Billboard , the legendary critic.

Roger Chrisal called them possibly the strangest top 10 band of all time and I'm personally inclined to agree with him that they also played Woodstock '94 for the 25th anniversary of the iconic Festival, where, like everyone else, They were pelted with mud, very fitting for a band with a song called My Name Is Mud and just to prove that all the success wasn't some kind of weird cosmic fluke, they returned with their fourth album called Tales From The Punch Bowl in 1995, which once again felt like it was almost deliberate. designed to not be a hit with its strange cover art and the lead single a song called Winona's Big Brown Beaver that was about exactly what you think it was about and had an incredibly strange video of the band using these plastic cowboy suits as nightmare fuel .

Going A Big Brown Bech shows them to all his friends. The song's title got them in trouble with MTV, who thought the lyrics were too suggestive for prime time, so the video was relegated to playing only late at night. but somehow none of that mattered. Primus was like an unstoppable force. At this point, the album peaked at number eight on Billboard, becoming their second consecutive album to reach Billboard's top 10 and somehow even garnered a Grammy nomination for best hard rock. Interpretation Larry L summed this up well in an interview he gave at the time before each new album.

I swear this is the one no one will ever get. Nobody may understand it. Nobody will buy this one. He's been proven wrong every time, but despite all their success, Primus were struggling behind the scenes. In 1996, their longtime drummer, Tim Herb Alexander, left the band and was replaced by Brian Mantia, aka Brain, who had actually been in the band before for about two weeks. he was one of the few people who could take Herb's place and just a quick side note: if you've never seen his instructional video you should remember getting it when he came out and to this day it's basically like the Bible . of GrooVe for me and with brains on board they went back to work stumbling into what would become another great moment for the band.

Two guys in Colorado named Trey Parker and Matt Stone were working on a new animated show for Comedy Central called South Park. and when it came time to do a theme song for their show, they approached Primus, but as Les Claypool says, the band didn't take this very seriously. We had seen their Christmas theme that was doing the rounds and realized these guys were cute. smart, but there was no way they could see something like that on TV, so Primus quickly pulled out a song and sent it to the show, but after that Comedy Central came back and said the song was too slow. for the opening with the band busy on tour, they were ready to just abandon the project, as South Park co-creator Matt Stone described it, we couldn't get their manager to talk to us, they said, "You, buddy, take the song and Then finally the South Park guys just sped up the song and convinced Les Claypool to redo the vocals while the band was on tour and someone just handed him a portable tape recorder and that became the South Park theme song that probably has been heard more times than anything else.that the band ever made and followed up with the album brown in 1998, which was more of a fuzzy lowii version of their anti-pop sound in 1999, which began to dabble in new anti-pop metal.

Honestly, it was an interesting experiment that brought together a wide variety of musicians as guest producers, including Tom Weights, Fred Durst of Lint Cookie, Tom MLL of Rage Against the Machine, Stuart Copeland of the Police, and even Matt Stone of South Park. It also featured collaborations with James Hetfield. from Metallica and Jim from Faith No More and although critics of the time generally liked Brown's album and the anti-pop Les Claypool ranks them as two of the worst Primus albums and I personally agree with them , as he explained at the time the band was formed. Basically, we were exhausted, it was a difficult time for the band, personally, we didn't get along very well and that ultimately led to the band taking what would end up being a very long break.

We went on hiatus, which is a fancy way of saying that We just didn't like being around each other and wanted to separate, but we didn't have the balls to separate. I think we stopped before we went totally crazy, but I think the closest we came to it was the anti-pop record, but after a few years the desire to play together came back, so they reunited with Herb in 2003 for an EP and tour and remained somewhat active through the 2000s, but did not release any other new music partly because Herb was losing interest in the band and eventually quit for a second time.

He was replaced by another early drummer named Jay Lane and in 2011 they released their first new album. in over a decade called Green Nagahide, which for me picks up where Brown's album left off, followed by Herb's return for the second time and probably Primus' strangest project, an album covering the entire movie soundtrack Wily Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and in 2017 they released what is now their latest studio album The Desaturating 7, which is a concept album based on the 1978 children's book called The Rainbow Goblins and takes their sound further in the direction of Prague Rock as King Crimson personally.

I think it's their weakest material, but it's still not bad, it's just not really what I want from Primus, but at the same time I also understand that a band can't stay the same after 30 years of career and I always support bands than making the decision to experiment, which brings us to the final question: what is the lasting impact and influence of

primus

, first and foremost, to this day. I still don't think there's anyone on the planet who can do what Les Claypool does on bass. I think he just fundamentally transcended Humanity in his abilities with that instrument and that's especially impressive given that these days there are tons and tons of random 16 year olds on Tik Tok who can play drums and guitar better than what I would never have imagined possible. back in the '90s, but at least for me I still don't think anyone has surpassed what Les Claypool can do on bass.

They also created the theme song for one of the most iconic television shows of all time like you can't imagine. the South Park show without immediately singing that melody in your head and there are probably millions and millions of people who know them just from that, but beyond that, unless there's something I'm missing, I think they still have the title from the weirdest band I've ever had. The level of mainstream success that they've achieved, I mean, back in the '90s, who could have imagined that the band that wrote Jerry Was a Race Car Driver and Tommy the Cat would play on MTV's spring break special and come to Billboard's top 10 twice and would it sell? over 5 million albums, I certainly didn't and I don't think anyone else has either and as for the future, well I think Les had the perfect answer in an interview a couple of years ago that people were asking on the antiquity. days, how long will Primus last?

I'd say well, it'll last until it's no longer fun, okay my friends who make it for this video, as always, let me know what you think in the comments. I would also like to thank everyone. who supports me on Patreon, patrons get all my videos and podcasts early, there are members only channels on my Discord that I'm very active on, I do giveaways, I do Q&As and there's even a way for me to review your music as well so if any of that sounds cool, hit the link in the description of this video and with that I'm going to sign off for now, but I'll see you next time.