What if music were all just one gigantic joke? What if the study of harmony and structure were nothing but a useless waste of time? What if questioning what meaning this or that song might have is just another method of screwing up your brain?
This is what someone who listens to "My Name Is Mud," the song that opens Primus's Pork Soda, thinks. The pig's face dominating the cover, with that expression somewhere between grotesque and horrifying, so falsely truthful, the sparse, dry sound, perfect for any moment when you feel like telling someone to rent out their reproductive organs, those slurred triplets, then exploded and finally literally torn out by Les Claypool from his bombarded bass, assaulted, violated, beaten without pause and without restraint also by demonic incandescent sextuplets.
Sometimes Frank Zappa for the composition, sometimes Flea for how he handles his tool, sometimes genuinely and sarcastically a caricature of himself, Les Claypool is a genius on his instrument and for his artistic vein. Few chords that, with extraordinary reversions and a technique that only he can bring into play, transform simple arrangements into real battles of sound.
While listening to this record, I feel a strong urge to hit my sister hard and rough (she did well to move away, n.d.Iko). AND I GET A TERRIBLE URGE TO BEAT MY HEAD AGAINST A WALL, against the strongest wall I can find nearby. I can't explain why, but I recommend listening to this record locked in the complete solitude of a padded cell for the mentally unstable, to avoid possible abuse complaints or simply avoid an ugly collection of bruises on your cheeks.
Stunning, I can't find any other adjectives to describe that strange state of mind I feel while the funky-shit-metal of "DMV," so simple it seems mocking, scratches my skin with that useless, stupid, vomit-inducing riff, truly vomit-inducing, truly VERY vomit-inducing. I'm stunned by Claypool's off-key and shrill voice, so dazed that I could fall in love with his chilling mustache, which I imagine hiding who knows what kind of decaying food residues. I see him there in front of me pointing out in what position he'd like to bang the waitress of that restaurant dump while, as a seasoned minstrel, he hints at the first notes of "Hamburger Train."
Do you want to know something? I believe that if we all could simultaneously hear the notes of "Mr. Krinkle" in the street, it would result in the greatest "Royal Rumble" mankind has ever seen before.
Buy it. Our body needs to be pulverized by those three for a couple of hours a month. The treatment they give us on this record (as in Sailing The Seas of Cheese, for that matter) is a cure for our daily frustrations. Screw New Age, screw Chill Out, screw that bourgeois, prudish jazz, screw everyone, if I want to vent now I have those bastards of Primus.
Let's put on our wig of long, straight, black, greasy, and smelly hair, put on a nice pair of pants reinforced at the crotch, put on that jacket ruined at the elbows and run down the street with Primus's music still buzzing in our ears. You can always find someone with a reason to be punched...
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