Primuksen Les Claypool rankkasi yhtyeen albumit paremmuusjärjestykseen

Yhdysvaltalaisen rock-yhtye Primuksen legendaarinen vokalisti-basisti Les Claypool on antanut hiljattain haastattelun Noisey-nimiselle sivustolle, jossa hän rankkaa yhtyeen albumit paremmuusjärjestykseen. Voit katsoa Les Claypoolin valinnat sekä perustelut valinnoille tästä:

07. “Antipop” (1999):

Les Claypool listaa viimeiseksi vuonna 1999 julkaistun ”Antipop”-albumin. Claypool on kertonut, että albumin teon aikaan yhtyeen jäsenillä oli aika kireät välit keskenään, ja se heijastui myös itse albumiin. Claypoolin mukaan albumilla on suunta kateissa, ja sen takia se onkin miehen mielestä yhtyeen huonoin albumi. Les Claypool kertoo albumista seuraavaa:

”Mainly because it was a tough time for the band, personally. We weren’t getting along very well. I feel fortunate that Primus stopped at the end of the 90s. We went on a hiatus, which is a fancy way of saying we just didn’t like being around each other and we wanted to break up but we didn’t have the balls to actually break up. I think we stopped before we totally shit our pants, but I think the closest we came was doing the Antipop record, because it was somewhat directionless. I think there’s some good nuggets on there, but it’s not near as good as some of the other recordings we’ve done over the years. Music is supposed to represent the soundscape of your life. People look at various records and think of what was going on in their life at that time, and during that time, we just weren’t getting along very well, so it doesn’t bring up the greatest memories.”

06. “Tales From The Punchbowl” (1995):

05. “Brown Album” (1997):

Sijoille 6 ja 5 Claypool listaa vuonna 1995 julkaistun ”Tales From The Punchbowlin” sekä vuonna 1997 julkaistun ”Brown Albumin”. Claypoolin mukaan albumit ovat varsin tasaisia, joten niitä oli vaikea erottaa toisistaan sijoituksissa. Mies on kertonut pitävänsä kyllä kummastakin albumista, mutta ei yhtä paljon kuin yhtyeen seuraavista levytyksistä. ”Brown Album” sijoittuu listalla sijalle viisi sen takia, että Claypoolin mukaan sen tekeminen oli mielekkäämpää kuin ”Tales From The Punchbowlin”:

”For me, I’d say ”Brown Album” and ”Punchbowl” are about equal. It’s not that I dislike them; it’s just that I don’t like them as much as some of the other records. The only record that I really have any bad taste in my mouth about is Antipop. Otherwise, I felt they were all representative of what we were trying to do at the time, and I’m proud of them.

Punchbowl, there’s some great tunes on it. It was the first one recorded at my house. In fact, I had just moved to the Rancho Relaxo, out there in the middle of nowhere. There was a big storm came through, the biggest storm they’d had in many years, knocked all the power out. We actually ended up renting a Honda generator to finish mixing the record. Punchbowl was the last record with [drummer Tim Alexander], so it was becoming a little more distant, as far as the three of us participating. It was a lot more of us writing in the studio, as opposed to us getting together and rehearsing up some stuff.

There’s still a bunch of tunes on that record that we still, to this day, include regularly in our sets. A song like “Southbound Pachyderm” is one of my favorite Primus tunes ever. It’s such a great song to play, such a great song to stretch on. It’s very textural, too. “Grapevine” is on that record, too. “Electric Grapevine”—we play that a lot these days. I think there’s a lot of strong pieces on it, it’s just a little more disjointed than Pork Soda of [Sailing the] Seas of Cheese, and that was just the beginning of Tim’s exiting.”

04. “Green Naugahyde” (2011):

Puoleen väliin listauksessa yltää yhtyeen vuonna 2011 julkaistu ”Green Naugahyde”. Claypool kertoo pitävänsä paljon albumista yhtyeen rumpali Jay Lanen bändiin takaisinliittymisen takia, ja yhtye soittaakin kyseisen albumin kappaleita paljon livenä:

”I really like Green Naugahyde. We play a lot of that material these days. Again, it was [drummer] Jay Lane coming back into the fold, which was very exciting. It was all of us getting together and being excited to be together. In the 90s, Primus would make a record, then tour, then make a record, then tour, then make a record, then tour. In the course of those several years, we put out more records than most of our contemporaries, by quite a lot. You watch someone like Tool who puts out a record every three to five years, we were every year—boom, boom, boom, we’d have a record. That was great, but it also got to the point where it burned us out a bit. Having that time from 2000 to 2010 for us to—obviously, I went off and did a ton of stuff, and everybody did their thing, and then coming back with Jay Lane, who has always been my guy as far as go-to drummers, we were very excited and fired up to make that record.

For me, as a bass player—I came across this when I did the Oysterhead record—I approach a song much differently if I’m writing to someone else’s part. I enjoy doing that. And it’s a great contrast to the stuff where it’s all obviously bass-driven. So that was a fun record to make, and I feel like it was a very strong record. It was critically well-received. A lot of our contemporaries came back with records around that time, and it seemed like ours was the one that was most representative of what we used to be, to an extent, as opposed to—I don’t want to name any names, but some records that came out around that time that were comeback records but didn’t really represent what you knew and loved about those bands.”

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03. “Pork Soda” (1993):

Kolmanneksi yhtyeen diskografiasta Claypool valitsee vuonna 1993 julkaistun ”Pork Sodan”. Hänen mukaansa yhtyeen kolme ensimmäistä albumia määrittivät yhtyeen saundin, ja sen takia ne ovat jätetty listauksessa viimeisiksi. Claypool sanookin ”Pork Sodan” olevan yhtyeen menestynein albumi myynnin osalta:

”It’s just that it’s not one or two. [Laughs] I just think those first three records—not including the live record—are what really defined Primus. We were all at the top of our game, and we were all firing on eight cylinders. It was a very exciting time. That climb up the hill is a very exciting time. We were doing some experimenting on Pork Soda. Every record, we’re turning over new rocks, trying to figure out what the hell we’re going to do, sonically and composition-wise. Pork Soda was a reflection of a lot of the touring we had done those first few years. Songs like “My Name Is Mud” that came from me jamming this bass part backstage at The Greek Theatre in Berkeley before we went on, and my dad sitting there and going, “Well, that’s a good one.” It eventually became a song. It’s probably our most successful record, as far as sales.”

02. “Sailing The Seas Of Cheese” (1991):

Toiseksi Les Claypoolin listalla nousee vuonna 1991 julkaistu ”Sailing The Seas Of Cheese” sen takia, että se on ehkäpä yhtyeen arvostetuin albumi. Se on myös yhtyeen ensimmäinen julkaisu suuren levy-yhtiön kautta, ja sillä oli yhtyeelle iso merkitys:

”Seas of Cheese is probably our most respected album, I would think. But it was also that record like, “Here we are, about to release something on a major label,” and we’re about to be marketed right alongside the other bands that were popular at the time, which were these hairball bands—the Poisons, and the Guns N’ Roses, and these different things that we just did not fit in with. That was the impetus of the title, Sailing the Seas of Cheese, because we just knew all of a sudden we were going to be thrust into this world where we weren’t sure anyone thought we belonged. It was sink or swim; we were going to sail the seas of cheese.”

1. ”Frizzle Fry” (1990):

Omaksi suosikikseen Les Claypool valitsee vuonna 1990 julkaistun ”Frizzle Fryn”, joka miehen mukaan kuvaa upeaa aikaa heidän elämässään. Claypoolin mukaan yhtye oli tuohon aikaan kaikille jäsenille kaikki kaikessa, mikä heijastui myös tälle albumille. Claypool on kertonut levystä seuraavaa:

”My favorite album is Frizzle Fry, just because it represents such a spectacular time in our lives, because we were young, we were going up the hill, we were doing things nobody was doing, accomplishing things nobody—even ourselves—thought we were going to accomplish. At that point in your life, you don’t have family and kids and mortgages, and your whole, entire world, revolves around your band and your bandmates. It’s just a spectacular time.”