Claypool Gold: Les Claypool’s Frog Brigade, The Claypool Lennon Delirium & Primus — 6/12/26 — Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC)

Les Claypool is, quite simply, a template of The Weird. If you’ve been reading my posts, you know I love me some Weird (and if you haven’t read me before, you can find me writing a lot about the Weird, which is ultimately what is normal in my book), and Claypool absotively posiliutely sets that tenor for me as a reference point. I started with Primus, of course, with Cheese back in grad school days, to catch up on what I’d missed thus far and then staying pretty present with them through Antipop, for which I’d seen them with Buckethead in Philly.

Then came the Primus gap,which is where I got to distinguish Claypool a little more through Oysterhead and Colonel Claypool’s Bucket of Bernie Brains, Holy Mackerel and the Frog Brigade, not to mention the albums that bore his name alone. Not only am I constantly wowed by the inventive fireworks on display in his playing, playful yet substantial enough to let almost anyone playing with him float some toy boats on the basement he has already filled to the brim with water, but the range of influences that float in and out, from The Residents to cartoons to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to Bootsy Collins, and that’s all only the tip of the weirdness.

So, Claypool Gold? Primus and the Frog Brigade and the Lennon Claypool Delirium? Fuck yeah!

But damn, I hadn’t been to a major venue in…damn, can’t even name it. Parking in hinterlands to trudge through humidity, passing folks smoking openly (how lovely, that legalization!) and selling hot dogs. And with SPAC being a primarily outdoor venue, the humidity stacked only higher…and I had me my 100% polyester Primus & The Chocolate Factory With the Fungi Ensemble tee rockin’ (for which, I must say, I got quite a load of compliments…even in the hotel before the show that night).

But this didn’t allay my fascination at all with watching the virtuosity on display. Okay, I mostly had to watch on the big screens, but watching Claypool do his thing is hypnotic. The lefthand finger trills on “American Life,” banging an electric standup for “Jilly’s On Smack.” He plays with a confident set of hands that are clearly striking the fuck out his instruments but with such a casual demeanor that the performance itself emulates the sound — circling back to my basement analogy, his hands also do that fill so that his bass struts or longnosed masks are just the mixed metaphor of icing on a highly as fuck already satisfying cake.

All right, I only named Primus songs above, but this is not to say the Frogs or Lennon were chopped liver. Those ensembles were just further testament to the abnormally large range of sounds Claypool has spelunked and put into his mixture, like a musical Katamari Damacy. Psychedelia, xylophone, saxophone. All ensembles came together for the finale before the intermission as well as the encore, an extended “Southbound Pachyderm” that managed to quintuple the magnificence of the original.

But what thoroughly comforted me was the wholesale weirdness of the crowd — an odd amalgamation of stoners to punks to hippies to weird old farts like Tours Youly. To give the crowd time to gather back in the SPAC before Primus took the stage, a little documentary played on the trio, which featured notables like Geddy and Alex from Rush, John Norwood Fisher from Fishbone, as well as a host of younger critters influenced by Claypool and Primus, who all got their own cheers, but to see Stewart Copeland pop up and hear a huge ovation for The Police and Oysterhead percussive backing warmed my cockles (! — did I really just write that?!?).

Am I gunning for another big venue show where screens are necessary to get much of a glimpse of the performers and bottled (more like canned) water is a significant comparison to your ticket price?

No.

Was I wowed just the same by Claypool Gold?

Fuck yeah.

image courtesy of SPAC website