The bigger question: Are we just Meat Machines?

 I don't know that I have hidden my attraction to odd and quirky music particularly well - it is indeed true. One of my favorite musicians is Les Claypool, bassist and singer in Primus - as well as a host of other side projects: Colonel Les Claypool's Fearless Flying Frog Brigade (their cover of Pink Floyd's Animals album is spectacular), Duo De Twang (Stayin' Alive never sounded more redneck), Oysterhead (with Stewart Copeland of Police fame and Trey Anastasio from Phish - all three of them are really institutions in themselves), and, finally (although this list is not extensive), The Claypool Lennon Delirium. Les Claypool is the unlikeliest of frontmen - he has a well-cultivated quirky look, often enhanced with costumes and masks, he has a nasal voice that for some is a very acquired taste, especially when singing, and if any bassist ever strutted around on stage, it is him. But it works. It works because of a history of being self-effacing (the chant of love for Primus fans is "Primus sucks"), a nerdy approach to both instrument and lyrics, and a genuine likability that you can't put a price tag on (check out Geddy Lee's Paramount show Bass Players Are Human Too - the episode with Les Claypool is fantastic and showcases a personality that is as free from artifice as you can get (unless I simply buy the hype and he has me completely fooled (and yes, I know that parentheses inside parentheses are not proper writing - but as long as I put enough closing parentheses, you know what I mean (thank you Excel for the many lessons in nested parentheses)))).

There is no accident that I was able to bring in Geddy Lee when I talk about Les Claypool. Claypool is a die-hard Rush fan, and Primus even went on tour playing Rush's seminal A Farewell To Kings album (part of a stretch of albums that really defined their career, starting with 2112 and to me running through Grace Under Pressure, although most Rush fans would probably end it with Moving Pictures) in its entirety. I can also recognize some of Lee's bass tone in Claypool's bass - when he plays it more traditionally. But Les Claypool isn't about tradition - he is about invention and pushing the instrument further. His combination of the funky slap style from the 70s and 80s, a chordal approach to his playing, and speed and agility on his runs (Wikipedia also suggests a flamenco influence) is completely his own. While John Entwistle may have played the bass as a solo instrument and Geddy Lee and John Paul Jones filled out a ton of space to support guitar work that sometimes was ethereal, Les Claypool combines that - but also finds a way to fill the sonic landscapes with lush cascades of runs, chords, and, yes, melody. And when he started out, nobody approached the bass even close to how he did. 

In the mid 2010s, he paired up with Sean Ono Lennon and formed The Claypool Lennon Delirium, and their approach to what Lennon labeled "progadelica" fits Claypool's quirkiness and the ethereal tone of Lennon's voice. Their music ranges from songs sounding like Danny Elfman's The Nightmare Before Christmas (Troll Bait) to trippy prog (Boomerang Baby, South of Reality), to more straight up psychedelia (Amethyst Realm). They have released three albums: Monolith of Phobos (2016), South Of Reality (2019), and just recently, The Great Parrot-Ox And The Golden Egg Of Empathy, and I love all three of them. You can clearly hear Claypool's influence all over them, but it is equally clear that Lennon has his own musical vision here as well. He is a solid guitarist, but to me, it is the voice he brings - and a sense of melody that clearly harkens back to that very famous band from the 60s. But I will not dwell on his heritage here, because Sean Ono Lennon stands very competently on his own two feet. And paired up with Claypool, we get a combination of two great but distinctively different musical approaches, much like Pink Floyd had in Gilmour/Waters and that other band had in Lennon/McCartney. Here, Lennon has the melodic and fluid style of Gilmour and McCartney, while Claypool is the counterpart bringing an edge (or, more accurately in this case quirkiness (yes, I like the word a lot (what is it with me and nested parentheses today?))) similarly to Waters and Lennon in the aforementioned songwriting pairs.

On the album The Great Parrot-Ox And The Golden Egg Of Empathy, there is one track that just has etched itself onto my brain like a Nerve Tattoo (thank you, Motorpsycho), and that is the song Meat Machines. It has a long synthesized intro for a little over a minute before the guitar comes in - and then there is Claypool's bass anchoring it all with a tone right from Geddy Lee's playbook. It is filled with treble, which really makes it pop, but when the pre-chorus sets in, the rich bottom appears as well. It may not be earthshatteringly original when it comes to the melody, but it is wonderfully constructed, and even more so, it is wonderfully written, both musically and lyrically. It asks the question "is there more to us?" - "are humans nothing more than meat machines?" It is filled with standout lines, like "It's such a very precarious line between stoned and petrified" and "when you can't see the maze you're in, how can you escape it?" It asks many big questions - and what I love is that it doesn't try to answer them. And I would argue that this is a case of asking the questions itself is answering them.