I’ve been listening to Primus since middle school, loved every album and knew every song from Frizzle Fry to Antipop. This was around 2007 maybe 2006 when I discovered them and was hooked from the beginning. I wore Frizzle Fry and Pork Soda shirt to school every day I could in middle school so much so that people got mad at me. Last year I finally saw them live for the first time and was so excited for a hype show. I brought 2 friends even. I knew there would be the weird parts and newer songs obviously, but throughout the concert the vibe was very very mellow and they only played 8 songs I recognized for the 2 and a half hour set.
Even the songs I recognized it sounded like they were playing a very chill mellowed out version of it. I was expecting something similar to how Suck On This Live sounds, I’ve watched the Woodstock 94 set live a million times, my uncle saw them back in the day and talked about how they used heavy machinery to throw mud at the crowd (I knew that wouldn’t be happening), and to be honest I was pretty let down by the show. I was almost embarrassed for the first half of the set only knowing 2-3 songs and kept telling my friends this wasn’t what they were normally like live.
Now for some context, I’ve done a lot of acid back in the day and have gone to many jam band festivals and such, and I remember sometimes Primus would be on the bill for some of the bigger festivals I wanted to go to but never got the chance to attend those. So when I saw them live I kinda figured they must have taken inspiration for their new sets now from these festivals and became way more psychedelic. I don’t trip anymore but I could tell the whole set including the few more energetic songs I knew were meant to tripped to.
Around when exactly did they change from the higher energy Suck On This Live sound to the psychedelic jam band sound? I just figured it wasn’t really necessary since Les Claypool has like 10 other side projects that are mostly all very trippy and figured he was using those projects as an outlet for the more psychedelic stuff. I figured that high energy Primus live sound would at least be somewhat the same and the whole set being meant to trip to would be saved for those shows. Can anyone with more Primus experience than me explain this a little bit? Thanks