Primus ripped through Louisville, Kentucky, last Monday with their original lineup of Les Claypool, Larry LaLonde and Jay Lane. I’ve seen them over the years with each of their three drummers (Tim “Herb” Alexander” and Brian “Brain” Mantia) and I can honestly say that Jay Lane is my favorite. After all, he was the one that helped develop the original Primus sound in the late-1980’s and he did co-write most of the songs on Frizzle Fry & Sailing The Seas of Cheese. To me, his playing is groovier and tighter than the other drummers. Also, to his credit, his return to the band rekindled the Primus spark and inspired Claypool to write and record a new album, so you can’t fault him for that.
Early in the afternoon of October 10, 2011, Primus entered the studio at our favorite independent radio station, 91.9 WFPK Radio Louisville. Here I bring you the exclusive recording of their interview and performance. You can stream it at the top of this page, or press the down arrow on the soundcloud bar to download the 83mb lossless FLAC file (Sidenote: Although it was recorded from the webstream, which was most likely a lossy MP3-quality stream, I chose not to downgrade the quality further by compressing it to MP3 again. And that’s why you get a FLAC file and not an MP3. But really is that extra 60mb really gonna tip the scales and fill your hard drive to the bursting point?).
Here I also present the videos I shot from the front row. The audio has been upgraded with my friend’s recording with schoeps microphones, which is available to download over at etree. The video starts out with Extinction Burst (one of my favorite tracks off the new album), and then there is nearly 5 minutes of Those Damned Blue-Collar Tweekers, including most of Claypool’s bass solo jam middle part. It ends abruptly about 1.5 minutes before the end of the song due to “security.”
Bootsy Collins has assembled a monster band of P-Funk alumni (calling them the Funk Unity Band) for his 2011 Funk Unity Tour in support of his new album, Tha Funk Capitol Of The World. And if that sentence didn’t have enough Funk for ya, I’m about to hit you off with even more!
You can start by pressing play on the above audio track. Then move on to the full course, this 2 hour pro-shot video of the full show from July 9, 2011 in Vienne, France:
When you’re done with that i’ve got some downloads for you. I’ve ripped the above video and you can download the 800mb flash video file via: MEGAUPLOAD or TORRENT.
I’ve also got audio of the next night’s show at North Sea Jazz Festival in Rotterdam, Netherlands from July 10, 2011. It’s a 103 minute untracked audio file and you can download it in either MP3 or FLAC. I recorded it from the NSJF webstream, so it is soundboard quality, although it was only streaming at 192kbps.
Bootsy Collins & The Funk Unity Band:
Bootsy Collins: space bass, vocals
Frankie “Kash” Waddy: drums
Bernie Worrell: keys
Joel “Razor Sharp” Johnson: keys
DeWayne “Blackbyrd” McKnight: guitar
Keith Cheatham: rhythm guitar
T.M. Stevens: bass
Brian Hardgroove: bass, vocals (of Public Enemy)
Garry Winters: trumpet (of the NastyNattiHorns)
Sarah Morrow: trombone (of the NastyNattiHorns)
Randy Villars: saxophone (of the NastyNattiHorns)
Dani “Razzberry Hershey” Cox: vocals
Candice “Candi-Yam” Cheatham: vocals
Kyle Jason: vocals
Ouiwey Collins (Bootsy’s son): MC