My Soulmate Doesn't Listen to Primus

So I was at the Les Claypool show at the Forum last night, and was struck by the unbridledness of my joy at seeing Les play, and more than that, feeling him play as the air was filled with noise emanating from his fingertips on his Carl Thompson bass.

Was it worth it? Unquestionably. I walked in knowing as little as possible of Les' solo work and was gambling on it being one of those things where even if it comes across as mediocre on his Youtube channel would be excellent live.

But I get ahead of myself, when I walked into the Forum I broke into a Patrick Bateman like sweat feeling an urge to vomit. It was 9pm (doors opened at 8.20) and I feared that the opening act hadn't yet come out to perform and for all my tardiness I would have to endure another hour of waiting, except worse, waiting while a supporting act played.

I was relieved when Claypool and his band appeared on stage within a few minutes of my arrival.

The band was awesome fantastic etc. The moment Les started playing I started to move. It was good, the man can play.

Now, I looked around for the dude with the back-pack because if anything was safe to assume it was that Claypool fans would be more genetically deficient than Patton fans. It certainly was far more of a sausage fest thats for sure, and the crowd did look at least 50% genetically deficient (even if they did cheer when Claypool asked them if they were cream of the crop). That's not dissapointing, infact as much as I sympathise that bands like groupies and all, I do find women annoying at concerts. True I've never seen a woman wear a backpack to a concert but they do have a tendacy to bring handbags, dickhead boyfriends and wear highheels and other impracticalities whilst at the same time still being too short to see over the Gargantulons in the crowd.

A lot of incidents requiring security in my experience usually involve at least one girl being a bitch.

Sure enough I spotted backpack guy (not the same one as the Peeping Tom concert but an idiot none-the-less) ahead of me. But that was not who was to annoy me tonight.

In one aspect I was annoyed by a bundle of 6 footer guys directly ahead of me, and why they had chosen to cluster where they did, but fact was that I could have pushed forward if I wanted to. Also my annoyance was hypocritical, I had looked around behind me earlier and noticed a 4 foot girl behind me and thought 'she isn't going to see a thing' but I didn't mosey behind her so that I would not be obstructing her view of the stage. In fact I pressed forward. So just because I consider myself a 'reasonable height' (5'9") to stand anywhere in a crowd doesn't mean people who are 5'7" would agree with me. So if somebodies 4" taller than me and wants to stand in front (and have a massive haircut) I should just suck it up. Particularly since twas I who hadn't had to suffer through a dull support act to get my position.

It was just frustrating how the twin towers could align sometimes though so I couldn't see between them, effectively making one tall guys head twice as wide. note to tall people, stand side by side at any concerts because counter intuitively this will space your heads much better for people trying to see beyond you at an angle. The only time your collective heads will obstruct another audience members is if they are looking near to parralal to the stage. And nobody is looking from there.

No what was annoying me was the girl next to me that made me hope Les Claypool realised how lucky he was to be able to take his pig mask off.


And she was dancing enthusiastically all night like she was at a wiggles concert. She seemed to know all of Claypools solo material as I seemed to know her life story. She was a homely girl that had discovered a nieche for getting a boys attention, if you said you liked Primus you had a common ground with the boys that 98% of the other girls in high-school didn't. At some point she had actually gotten into his music in this nefarious scheme. (it's much easier to listen to something like Tool if you are a girl, but this girl really did need to eliminate 98% of the competition).

That said as ugly and malformed as 50% of the 98% male crowd was last night, I got the sense that you really had to be bottom of the barral to get excited over this girl being there. And I did chance a glimpse of her boyfriend who would lean forward for the occasional smooch, and he was pretty rough, not rough as in 'tough' but rough as in, he was lucky to have her, and that's saying something.

What perplexed me was that Les Claypool at one point started a song which in all honesty almost felt wiggles-esque something about 'apathy is back in style' that was stuck in my head on the ride home and is thankfully gone now. I'm one of those fans of Les that was disheartened when he started weighing in politically. I felt that as one of the pioneers of alt-rock-metal of the 90's he made a much better statement by singing about beevers, cheese and fishing than writing whimsical if not cutting ditties about Sarah Palin. Too many puppies was political enough for me.
Anyway, so whilst I can agree with the message, the song was if not crap... tedious, but he broke it down in the middle and played 'Southbound Pachyderm' now the Pachyderm girl next to me was suddenly perplexed by the fans strong reaction to the song and how everyone seemed to whistle in the exact same way at the exact same time.

She turned around to her boyfriend and asked 'what's this song?' breaking my mind into a million little pieces. It hadn't occured to me that somebody would listen to Les Claypool's solo stuff without being a die-hard fan of Primus, it is afterall less accessable than Primus and Primus (if you consider Frizzle-Fry to be their quintessential album) is pretty inaccessable. So this hussy had infact just listened to the solo albums in her boyfriends car directly before the show. She was a parasite latched on to this guys 'Primus' nipple and feeding off his life force. But what motive could she have? She at least, could do better. Like get herself a nice burly fear factory fan.

Ah but superficial I am and an arsehole, she was having a good time and I was happy for her, but her purse kept bashing my elbow and I didn't exactly want her bumping and grinding against me as I did any of the other freaky looking guys. On the whole Claypool's fans are to be expected, much nerdier than Mike Patton fans, much more male represented than Patton fans (having said that, the extremity of Patton's nerd fans did appear more nerdy than Claypools, I imagine if you want a real nerd fest, go to Nine Inch Nails) and you wouldn't want to meet a woman there.

I knew then that as Chris Rock said there are no soulmates, you'll never meet a girl that loves the Wu Tang clan and Seinfield.

Also the show was really excellent, even the 'bad' songs like Red State Girl where much better live. I've been beating myself up the past six months for being a loser, and the crowd actually made me feel a lot better about myself. I always come home from concerts feeling like a decent and considerate person, because it seems you can't keep dickheads out of concerts, and you can't keep money out of their pockets because somebody needs to work in Geelong and they will inevitably come to concerts.

But Les is actually one of the few people I would describe as a 'winner' one of very very few. But whilst I was pondering how bands like Peeping Tom, De La Soul & Les Claypool can attract dickheads (of which reason tells me I must be one) to their concerts like moths to a lampshade, perhaps being a winner is cursed, in that winners attract Losers, and all you can do is take their money.

From seeing Tool it occured to me that they are practicly obliged to play 'Stinkfist' at every show they do on every tour, and writing a classic song like that is indeed a curse because you have to play it for the fans. But I honestly as a fan wouldn't listen to it that much.

In Claypool (and Primus') case I certainly don't listen to Tommy the Cat that much. And gosh darn it! I find that people who come to somebodies solo show and yell out 'Primus sucks!' and 'Tommy the Cat' are either A) disrespectful or B) so inexperienced and delusional that they suspect Les might announce a solo tour and actually disguise Primus and sneak them into concerts in order to surprise and delight his loyal fans with an impromptu Primus show. Either way they are C) annoying. Although it was funny to hear Les explain how he would love to just play Tommy the Cat but the set list wasn't up to him.

The show is awesome enough, we shouldn't demand more of him. You can demand basic courtesy of your fellow human beings, I feel but the guy has the right to write and perform his own music and it was up to us to buy a ticket to his show. 'There's no harm in trying' one might say, but its the constant attempts of idiot fans to try and goad a Primus show out of a solo act that won't see Les in a hurry to tour Australia with Primus playing Tommy the Cat on the 'Just for old times sake' tour.

Lastly, digital cameras, apparantly in the 80's and early 90's bootleggers where the annoying parasites that populated concerts, nowdays it seems to be people who sit behind a camera the entire concert taking a constant stream of pictures. People holding up cameras obstruct the view more than cigarette lighters do, and they seem to forget to actually enjoy the show so obsessed are they with preserving the memory.

Incidently you can find pictures from what seems to be a legit photographer here (including the pig mask).