They brought an extreme level of musicianship back to popular music when, slacker technique was just ‘like-whatever-fine-I-guess’. Primus captured a rock audience with acerbic insight and funky fun at a time when the high tide of flannel and stadium rock was filled to evenflowing. They are a band so famously unique that iTunes made them a genre unto themselves. With their resplendent fan favourites, ambitious misses and iconic Les Claypool, there isn’t another Primus and there never will be. In 2011 a series of shows marked the first appearance of the band in 14 years, since then there have been a number of tours culminating in a two night stand at the Royal Albert Hall (April 4-5 2014) where the band played all their successes (‘hits’ is perhaps too piquant) and albums Sailing the Seas of Cheese (Yay!) and Green Naugahyde (Hmm). Not so long ago it would have been rare for Primus to play the UK. Is this it, or is it just a ploy to build the audience from such desultorous lows towards higher crescendos? Primus a rare treat The set begins too slow and without vigour, the crowd’s adrenaline starts to melt away. Les looks lonely onstage, low lighting catching strange angles against his pointy nose, thin features and professorial goatee. Musing on whether Claypool’s Wonka was perhaps a little sour for some tastes fade as the band hit the stage, the atmosphere overloads as the crowd roars and it could be a celebration, but visibly Primus is in the throes of alienation. There are expressions of concern regarding how much ‘new material’ will be played ranging from resigned curiosity to outright dread. What the jam-funk flame of Primus has awoken: a gyrating swarm of moths and barflies, has very great expectations for their band less The Primus and more their Primus. Time has set me down firmly into my youth and some sort of circus druid proceeds to complain about something, before being jostled into the beery throng by a conga line of bros ready to ‘fucking mosh maaaaan’. It’s 2015 and I’m surrounded by flannel and Nirvana shirts, about to watch a band I last saw nearly twenty years ago.Īs if in hemp laden reverie the faces in those shirts aren’t twenty years older, miraculously they are still twenty.
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