Primus At The Sylvee 04/23

[andvari7]

Good morning,

I had the pleasure of attending the Primus concert at The Sylvee, in downtown Madison, WI, last night. It was part of their Tribute To Kings Tour, and my fourth time seeing the band.

Venue: The Sylvee was opened in 2017 or 2018, in a new building. The doors open up directly to the floor, and there is no endless meandering to get to the stage. Best part: The bathrooms are the cleanest, best-maintained bathrooms I have ever seen at a venue. Very healthy crowd. I like this place a lot.
Opener: A two-piece - drums, guitar/sampler/synth quasi-instrumental act called Battles. I don’t know their catalog especially…at all…but they sound like something I’d hear on WXRT, whenever I go to Chicago (which, as you know, is a significant part of my job description; kind of hard to avoid, when that’s where my office is). Interesting, in a good way.
Primus: Les’ voice has never been great, and it’s a lot harder to do some of the older material. His bass playing is legendarily sloppy, but he has perfected it, to the point where it really isn’t. Ler was playing mostly an SG the first set, but broke out an LP Axxess, and his purple-and-orange Willy Wonka Strat. I liked the sound of the Strat best. Amps were Marshall plexis, and his gigantic pedalboard. Guitar playing was fantastic - Ler is my favorite player, so I’m somewhat biased - and the only real mistakes were when playing songs they hadn’t touched in 25 years. Herb’s drumming is a masterclass in percussion. If there were mistakes, I sure couldn’t find them. But the whole is greater than just the sum of its parts, and that is absolutely true for this band.
I liked the varied setlist - a few of the hits, but several songs that they just don’t do very often, and two brand new songs, from their EP Conspiranoid, which was just released the other day. It’s kind of hard not to rattle off Primus songs, but I understand that most of you here probably don’t listen to them.
Set two was the entire Rush album A Farewell To Kings. Les played Rics the entire time - a 4001, and a double-neck - and wore a kimono (actually, I think it’s a yukata, but you’d have to be a real bore to know the difference, or to care). He isn’t especially good at hitting Geddy’s vocals - Geddy can’t even hit those notes anymore - but he made it work as best as possible. Ler played an ES-355 and a doubleneck, and had an acoustic on a stationary stand for A Farewell To Kings and Closer To The Heart. It seemed like half of the audience went for this set, given all of the Rush shirts, and it was a lot more subdued. I honestly expected that.
The encore had three songs, one of which is brand new, and it ended somewhat anticlimactically. I got it, but some friends of my brother’s and mine didn’t.

Setlist is on setlist.fm, so I’m not going to list it here.

My biggest complaint with Primus, since 2011, has been in the construction of their new material. It seems like they have been taking fragments of what could be fleshed out into 2-3 really good songs, and putting them together, into one incomplete idea. The best example of this is The Desaturating Seven album from 2016, of which the title track was on last night’s setlist. Conspiranoia, the big song from the new EP, was sort of straddling that line, but the second song from the EP, Follow The Fool, played live, for the first time, in the encore, was the complete opposite. One main riff, comprising the majority of the song, and it worked pretty well.

Great show, though, and I’m glad my brother persuaded me to go. I wasn’t planning on going - had I not broken my arm, I assumed I was going to be at work, and not able to have a weekend. The biggest takeaway was how much I liked the venue. I’m sure that it will turn to shit within the next ten years.

Thank you.

[Beef]

That's awesome man, sounds like a real good time. Battles first record Mirrored sounds like nothing else, definitely worth a listen. But they kind of went downhill after Tyondai Braxton left. Either way John Stanier is a killer drummer though (original drummer in Helmet and Tomahawk as well).

[itchyfingers]

Les is a sloppy bass player?

[andvari7]

According to quite a few people, yes.

[ajaxlepinski]

93XRT.... listening to it now. Going on my favs list on the cell phone.


Did Primus play Wynona's Big Brown Twinkie? (edit: nevermind... checked setlist.fm... nope)
Love that song... really floats my boat ...and the vid never fails to give me flashbacks!!!



It's tough for bands to keep writing meaningful songs that can thrill and audience like their early music.
As you get older, your perspective changes, you get married, have kids and you lose the edginess that only youth seems be able to inject into their material.
So, you cut-and-paste bits of different songs together rather than taking the time to lead each song in its own direction... you take the easy way out because, it's your turn to do the dishes, help your 90 year old mother-in-law get into bed and walk the dog.
Even though, you know that more time in the studio can equal bigger bucks, you'd rather watch Better Call Saul or Fear The Walking Dead.
Nevertheless, you go out and gig because you love it and the extra cash is the only acceptable excuse to get out of the house.
What!?!?!?!?!

[BroSlinger]

It's tough for bands to keep writing meaningful songs that can thrill and audience like their early music.
As you get older, your perspective changes, you get married, have kids and you lose the edginess that only youth seems be able to inject into their material.
So, you cut-and-paste bits of different songs together rather than taking the time to lead each song in its own direction... you take the easy way out because, it's your turn to do the dishes, help your 90 year old mother-in-law get into bed and walk the dog.
Even though, you know that more time in the studio can equal bigger bucks, you'd rather watch Better Call Saul or Fear The Walking Dead.
Nevertheless, you go out and gig because you love it and the extra cash is the only acceptable excuse to get out of the house.
What!?!?!?!?!

dang.

So, yeah, I'm going to Primus at the Clyde Theater on May 10. This venue is owned by the guy who owned Sweetwater. It's like a country club inside. Gorgeous. I always drink too much there. Can't do it this time though since the inlaws are going to be waiting for me after the show. They are babysitting the kids and the wife is out of town.

I need to look up some of this shit to make sure I'm not bored with stuff I've never heard. I'm not huge into Rush. I hope they play stuff from Pork Soda and the Brown Album.

[spawnofthesith]

I fucking love proums

It's tough for bands to keep writing meaningful songs that can thrill and audience like their early music.
As you get older, your perspective changes, you get married, have kids and you lose the edginess that only youth seems be able to inject into their material.
So, you cut-and-paste bits of different songs together rather than taking the time to lead each song in its own direction... you take the easy way out because, it's your turn to do the dishes, help your 90 year old mother-in-law get into bed and walk the dog.
Even though, you know that more time in the studio can equal bigger bucks, you'd rather watch Better Call Saul or Fear The Walking Dead.
Nevertheless, you go out and gig because you love it and the extra cash is the only acceptable excuse to get out of the house.
What!?!?!?!?!

dang.

So, yeah, I'm going to Primus at the Clyde Theater on May 10. This venue is owned by the guy who owned Sweetwater. It's like a country club inside. Gorgeous. I always drink too much there. Can't do it this time though since the inlaws are going to be waiting for me after the show. They are babysitting the kids and the wife is out of town.

I need to look up some of this shit to make sure I'm not bored with stuff I've never heard. I'm not huge into Rush. I hope they play stuff from Pork Soda and the Brown Album.

They mix up their setlists every night, sometimes in a huge way, sometimes just a little