Les Claypool

You either love or hate Les Claypool—there's no real middle ground. He plays his bass in a mixture of flamenco, slap, and finger-tapping styles, which is either extremely off-putting or pure divinity depending on who you are. Claypool's voice, while universally acknowledged as "original," is so nasal it might drive even Minnesotans to cringe. All that said, when Claypool was helming Primus, he was the driving force behind the accumulation of a beyond-rabid fan base that would gleefully declare "Primus sucks!" when asked (think extreme sarcasm here). Since Primus's demise in 2000, Claypool has fronted less commercially successful (but no less inventive) projects like Oysterhead and Colonel Les Claypool's Fearless Flying Frog Brigade. He has also added novelist (2006's South of the Pumphouse was compared to the work of Hunter S. Thompson) and filmmaker (he wrote and directed 2006's Electric Apricot) to an ever-growing résumé. 18+.
Thu., March 20, 6 p.m., 2008