Primus
Sailing the Seas of Cheese

"Alea Iacta Est"

And the fateful moment has arrived for me as well, my knees are shaking..., the moment of my first review on this site, discovered almost by chance only a few days ago (I humbly beg forgiveness for this unforgivable oversight).

To avoid any misunderstandings, I will make a premise, in such a way that perhaps the flow of my narrative can be better understood: it will be a true and unconditional declaration of love towards the band and the album that represent the absolute pinnacle of my long and complex musical journey, which began in the early eighties. A journey back in time and memory, hoping it will be a source of help in recalling. That said, let's omit further useless introductory ornaments and start the navigation...in the seas of cheese.

First of all, I want to thank Les, Larry, and Tim (for the fans of the band and for completeness, I deliberately won't mention Mantia and Jay, the other two impeccable drummers who took turns in the band's career, because I consider this first formation unbeatable), who with the passage of years and after hundreds of listens of their challenging and intricate, yet original proposal, managed in the not so easy task of dethroning from the heights of my listening a trio of musicians I rightly considered unsurpassable; I am referring to the "Dire Straits," "Bob Dylan," and the "Pink Floyd" in strict alphabetical order...I imagine someone already scoffs and stops reading here: feel free to do so...de gustibus, of course.

Everything and its opposite have already been said about its absurd cover and the title of the work in question; for years, there have been two reviews on the site that describe well what it refers to. I add that when the work came out and I bought it in May 1991, I ruined my eyesight reading and trying to translate with the dictionary the contorted texts handwritten in a script, damn you Les, for many parts incomprehensible. My dear readers, at that time Google Translate and the internet were a dream.

Even on the previous musical backgrounds of the three, numerous articles have been written, which I encourage searching for and reading (a little help among colleagues: "Blind Illusion and Possessed"). The same goes for technical skill: Les, a bassist, technically indescribable by me, also because I am not a musician, I don't know a note of the staff, I don't understand a bit of technique; I like to define guitarist Larry as an insane and absurd cross between Alex Lifeson of "Rush" and Robert Fripp of "King Crimson" and he was a student of a certain Joe Satriani (good heavens..); what to say personally about drummer Tim: broken rhythms, progressive-paced gallops that don't give breath, odd times galore (maybe!!).

And let's talk about their style and influences; a mixture of genres with few comparisons in the entire world of music: funk, metal, progressive, blues (sick), jazz-fusion, country, psychedelia (distorted). In their irreverent and ironic proposal, we can find clear musical elements attributable to the "Pink Floyd, Resident, Pere Ubu, Minutemen, George Clinton", plus the two bands mentioned in the description of the guitarist's sound, etc., etc. All with the supervision of another eclectic figure in the music world, namely the late (double sigh) Frank Zappa.. and here I pause for a minute to remember with emotion the genius of Baltimore.

The good Les has agreed with all music critics, and not only, who have wasted years of their lives in the futile attempt to categorize this so strange and sick proposal with a single definition. The frenetic bassist has defined the band's sound as "psychedelic-polka"... the surreal circle has thus been closed. The album is a kind of concept with never trivial lyrics that connect to the musical style of the three circus phenomena, describing outcast characters living on the margins of society; crazy stories narrated with the voice of a living cartoon by Les.

To the cry of "Primus sucks," the album unfolds through whirling rounds of notes in just over 45 minutes and 13 songs that I don't want to analyze with a track-by-track, which I consider useless even to me due to the insane complexity of the matter in question; I would let myself be captured by the sordid charm that these songs represented in my distant youth and could extend infinitely. I only cite the penultimate track "Fish on," almost 8 minutes of total sonic catharsis, of swirling climbs and descents, with lyrics perfect to describe the perverse minds of ours; such wonder represents for me the absolute peak of the entire work of the band. Close your eyes, let yourself be guided by emotions as I do every time I put so much stuff in my player and set off for the long journey... Poetry in music... The number ONE and it could not be otherwise with the brilliant name they bear. We are almost at the end...for the few who are still holding on.

Everything that has been written came out of the keyboard with heart in hand, guided by emotions and not by the brain, without caring for sure grammatical or punctuation errors (I apologize to the editors for the hard work); and most importantly, it’s all my own stuff, surfaced with utmost joy: and it is the Truth. Believe me, and with this, I do not want to justify the criticisms that will pour in: I prefer a review like mine, as banal as you want, retro, written by a nostalgic older person full of himself, than cold pages of limitless emptiness, black as pitch, useless, a continuous copy-paste from the internet as I have unfortunately had to notice online (obviously not referring to Debaser where everyone is excellent at writing....). With this, I don't want to teach anyone anything, far from it, but just how I think about the art of music, I will rarely come back with one of my reviews...at this point someone will certainly be happy with this last thought of mine. I will only continue to comment on works that I think deserve, falsely modest, my attention. That is that, but how much I have written....!!!!!.......Verbose..

I'm done (finally); I leave you with my ironic note (which unfortunately is often missing on Debasio).

"The review of De...Marga...sucks, but PRIMUS doesn't"...but perhaps the opposite is also true. To you the difficult judgment.

Ad maiora....as a professor from my high school days, recently passed away, used to say....To the good old days that were.