Les Claypool's Frog Brigade
Live Frogs Set 1

An artist's career is made up of various stages, each with its own path and final destination; from the first songs recorded in the garage with friends, to the first doors slammed in their face, to niche work leading to successful works, each of these pieces composing the picture of a career brings indescribable joy to the artist. But what is, in all likelihood, the key milestone, the fundamental goal that a musician can achieve is undoubtedly the live performance: whether there are 2, 20, 200, or 20,000 spectators, seeing the fruit of their work affect the faces and minds of the audience is perhaps the greatest joy. Acclamation, applause, encore requests, and chants of approval are the lifeblood of every musician, more than the records sold and more than the money earned (hopefully).

Then take a man like Les Claypool: starting off on the wrong foot, that is with a major rejection behind him (Metallica after the death of Cliff Burton), he first played supporting roles in the trash metal meteor called Blind Illusion, then created what is his most famous and important project: in the year of Our Lord 1989, the first Primus album, "Suck On This" was released (coincidentally, a live album). As they say, from then on, the rest is History (with a capital H).

But Claypool was not just Primus: Les had two other parallel projects, which he led while conquering the world with various albums such as "Frizzle Fry" and "Sailing The Seas of Cheese.” He also headed Les Claypool and The Holy Mackerel and Sausage, which, however, were not as fortunate as the parent group. But Claypool is not the type to leave things halfway, he does not abandon his creations on the road, and this "Live Frogs Set 1" is the most brilliant proof of that.

Live as a celebration, in this case a two-sided celebration: Les actually brings back the two founding members of Primus, namely drummer Jay Lane and guitarist Todd Huth, and with added Jeff Chimenti on keyboards, Eenor on the other guitar, and Skerik on the saxophone, he takes some tracks from his parallel projects and serves them to the audience at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco infused with psychedelia, avant-garde, and incredibly stretched improvisations. Funk, rock, psychedelic, and jazz blend to form a shapeless or unclassifiable album, yet destructive in all its 66 minutes; energy and fun that alternate and exchange in a vortex of innate power, and the listener can only contemplate with admiration the creativity and innate talent of Claypool and his band.

This was the more personal and almost "selfish" side of the album, but Les Claypool is by no means ungrateful or a rascal: he is well aware that his journey and his satisfactions also derive from his youthful listens and the founding fathers of music who took him by hand and guided him on his journey as a musician: the other celebration is therefore dedicated to the bassist's inspirational models, whom he pays homage to in his way King Crimson and Pink Floyd with the hallucinated, wonderful, infinite, and at the same time too brief covers of "Thela Hun Ginjeet" (from the album "Discipline," 1981) and "Shine On Your Crazy Diamond" (in the version by Jack Irons, former drummer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers).

At the end of the album, therefore, after being dragged and tossed from side to side by the cascades of notes, by Les's grotesque voice, and by the absurd and impossible solos composing this live, the first thought will be one and only: Les Claypool is not a man, he is not a bassist or a musician; he is an Artist.