Mr. Claypool’s Wonderful Circus of Musically Trained Primates Rolls Into Križanke (2026)
Primus
Monday, August 3, 2026, 8:00 PM
Ljubljana / Križanke / Slovenia
If there were a prize for the rock band that soaked up the most commercial success in the nineties despite making music that was (and still is) anything but commercial, it would surely go to Primus. The American oddballs, led by the brilliantly eccentric bassist/vocalist Les Claypool, who’s also busy with a heap of side projects, have been filed under just about every genre over the years: metal, funk, funk metal, alternative rock, progressive rock, avant-garde, even psychedelic rock. Their music often mixes elements of all of the above, though they’ve never hidden that prog titans Rush were a key influence, so pinning Primus down to a single genre is next to impossible.
Which is also why it came as no surprise that their show at Ljubljana’s Križanke drew a thoroughly mixed crowd, with wildly different ages, walks of life and musical tastes: from more-or-less grey-haired ‘music doctors’ and black-clad metalheads to alternative kids you could spot from a mile away and assorted dazed ‘herbalists’ who thoroughly fogged up the already stuffy air, in the middle of the current heat wave, with their intoxicating substances. Precisely because of the brutal temperatures, Križanke was a fairly decent setup for a packed-out gig, which kicked off almost exactly at the announced eight o’clock, since Mr. Claypool apparently jumps out of bed every day and plops a bowler hat on his head right at the first light of dawn and the sound of the rooster’s crow, while squirrel eyes watch him from a nearby tree hollow.
You could say there are two key ingredients in Primus’s music that make it especially interesting and different from the related rock bands that popped up in the mid-eighties: their often misunderstood, goofy and politically incorrect sense of humor, and Claypool’s outstanding bass chops. Every aspiring bass player should see the latter live at least once, because their intensity, eclecticism and wit regularly take your breath away. Les’s bass lines are the cornerstone of the recognizable sound in the Primus trio’s setup, though no less important roles go to guitar wizard Larry LaLonde, with his death metal roots, who’s been in the band almost from the start, and new drummer John Hoffman, who joined in 2024.
Primus opened their Križanke set with “Those Damned Blue-Collar Tweekers,” a single from the cult second album “Sailing On the Seas of Cheese” (1991). Strange but true, they didn’t play a single song from their (still) latest studio album “The Desaturating Seven” (2017) this evening, which disappointed the prog fans in the crowd most, since it’s a fun concept-driven prog achievement heavily influenced by King Crimson’s “Discipline” (1981) era. Instead of more recent, more prog-leaning compositions that reflect their musical growth and progress, they brought back plenty of older songs from their commercially most successful period (the nineties) at the request of longtime fans, including “Shake Hands With Beef” and “Over the Falls” from the controversial “Brown Album” (1997). That one was long considered the ‘ugly duckling’ of their discography, but at the request of some fans, the band eventually stopped boycotting it at live shows.
From “Green Naugahyde” (2011), which is still regarded as one of their most beloved albums, we got “Jilly’s on Smack,” whose anti-drug message didn’t exactly rattle the ‘herbalists’ in the crowd, and “Last Salmon Man.” During the latter, Les picked up a strange, rare instrument called the whamola, a single-string instrument with a lever for changing the pitch. The bass master plays this one-string contraption with a drumstick, while the pitch shifts as he moves the lever, which changes the string’s tension. The instrument became famous thanks to Claypool himself. You can also hear it in the opening theme of the beloved cartoon ‘South Park’. This time Les didn’t wear a chimp mask on stage, but rather his trusty protective combo of shiny bowler hat, jacket and bell-bottoms, which always makes him look like a character from vaudeville or black-and-white Charlie Chaplin films. Among the most entertaining songs from “Green Naugahyde,” some of us missed the socially critical satire “Eyes of the Squirrel” and the nostalgic burlesque “Lee Van Cleef” most of all, though both would have been half as fun without the animated projections in the background anyway.
Of course, the longtime favorites were there too. Primus didn’t forget to play long-standing staples like “Groundhog’s Day,” “Here Come the Bastards,” “Frizzle Fry,” “My Name Is Mud” and “Jerry Was a Race Car Driver,” which count among their most recognizable compositions. Those were also the moments when the Križanke crowd really came alive. Every so often a group of Croatian fans bellowed “Primus Sucks.” That wasn’t an insult, but the band’s central ironic motto and trademark concert chant, which they outgrew and dropped back in 2003. They wrapped up the show with an encore of the environmentalist “Southbound Pachyderm,” dedicated to elephants and originally released on the third studio album “Tales From the Punchbowl” (1995).
Primus showed up in Križanke in expectedly fine form, especially when it came to consistent and sometimes upgraded renditions of older and newer standards. Those of us seeing them for the first time that night surely didn’t regret the decision. The trio showed off remarkable tightness and chemistry the whole time, while Mr. Claypool’s bass antics were the main attraction of the whole evening. Sadly, the songs weren’t accompanied by funny video projections, a staple of some Primus tours, and given the jokey, satirical content of most of their work, some of us missed them most. The lack of visuals was partly made up for by Les’s witty banter, mostly at his own and Larry’s expense. Far more annoying was the absolutely overlong break in the middle of the show, which stretched to a good half hour instead of twenty minutes. It would have flown by much faster if they’d screened one of those psychedelic cartoons from the prehistoric era that Les absolutely adores. Some were also bothered by the under-optimized sound, although depending on where you stood, it was solid most of the time and not too loud. All in all, Primus in Križanke delivered what all us fans of experimental music expected from them, but with a few of the additions mentioned above, the whole thing could have been a lot more fun.
Author: Peter “Dr. ProgRock” Podbrežnik
Photos: Saša Krajnc / Kino Šiška archive
Primus – setlist:
1. Those Damned Blue-Collar Tweekers
2. Last Salmon Man
3. Groundhog’s Day
4. The Ol’ Grizz
5. Jilly’s on Smack
6. Shake Hands With Beef
7. Bob’s Party Time Lounge
—20-minute break—
8. Too Many Puppies
9. Here Come the Bastards
10. Frizzle Fry
11. Over the Falls
12. Welcome to This World
13. My Name Is Mud
14. Jerry Was a Race Car Driver
15. Over the Electric Grapevine
—encore—
16. Southbound Pachyderm
