The All-Music  Guide's entry for Primus begins with: "Primus is all about Les Claypool."    Certainly Les has taken that group to international stardom,  including albums in Billboard's Top Ten, worldwide arena tours, a headlining  slot on Lollapalooza '93, and even a well-known animation anthem with the  South Park Theme Song.   Too artsy to be grouped with the funk-punk  outfits, too psychedelic to be punk-rock, and too rocking to be post-punk,  Primus has always paved a path for themselves in a genre all their own.

      Perhaps Primus, as a  group, share an unknown kinship with jambands, with their spirit of adventure,  their willingness to take risks and their Zappa-like quirkyness.  The band  even named their latest album "AntiPop" - a slogan entirely worthy of the jamband charge. 

    More directly, Les Claypool  has been shadowcasting jambands for years, making guest appearances  with Phish several times in the mid-90's and forming alliances with Charlie  Hunter, Rob Wasserman, Jay Lane, Jeff Chimenti and other popular jamband  personnel.   And but of course: his boy wonder bass playing and signature  slap-and-pop style lends itself naturally to this ever evolving and permanently progressive landscape.

   This past May, Les formed  Oysterhead - a supertrio of himself, Phish's Trey Anastasio and ex-Police  drummer Stewart Copeland.   For the Mountain Aire Festival he assembled The  Les Claypool Frog Brigade. At the Jammys he joined the Disco Biscuits for a heavily-segued set of music. Two nights later he performed at Gathering of the Vibes with The Les Claypool Rat Brigade, offering a set which featured the members of Ratdog (at the end of which Bob Weir, introduced as "Eddie Van Halen" stepped up and kept pace during a furious rendition of "Tomorrow Never Knows.") Claypool then joined Rob Wasserman for a dual-bass exhibition and later came on stage during Ratdog's set to perform such Grateful Dead classics as "The Other One" and "One More Saturday Night."     

   In the midst of all this  activity, Les took a few minutes out backstage at the Gathering of  the Vibes to relax on a couch overlooking a pond and contemplate his newfound footing in the jamband world.

Benjy: In the past two months,  you've been popping up in the jamband world quite a bit.  How do you  feel about doing these improvisational jamband shows versus a Primus show?

Les:  I think it's incredible.   It's the direction that I very much enjoy going in and it's something that  I sort of came up from when I was young, playing nightclubs three to five  nights a week, four sets a night, doing James Brown, Booker T. and the MG's, Sam and Dave, things like that.     And I try to stretch quite a  bit with Primus, but it's not necessarily something where you can just really,  really stretch - I guess you could...and I think I will more now,  because I'm getting into this whole thing.  I feel it's a lot healthier  for me as a player and it's a lot more fun for me as a player.  I can  play events like the Gathering and the Mountain Aire Fest and actually have  an environment where I can bring my kids and not have to worry about some drunk guy throwing a beer can and hitting them in the head.  You know what I mean?

Benjy: I do know what  you mean.  How do you approach these jamband shows versus Primus shows?   Do you have a tight setlist?  Do you let the jams go where they will or do  you have more of a set idea of where you want things to go?

Les:  It depends on what  it is.  I mean, like, today our setlist is basically more waypoints  than it is a setlist.  It's our A to H to M to T and then finally getting  to Z, which would be the end of the set, and a lot of zig-zagging in  between.  No real structure as much as just waypoints - places to touch off on and go from there.

Benjy:  You seem to have  done a lot of side-projects lately, a lot of one-offs...

Les: I do a lot of ten-offs.  [laughing]

Benjy: Okay, ten-offs.   Once you put these projects together, do you have a bunch of  rehearsals?   Do you work a lot of stuff out, or is it more cuffed?

Les: Well, with Primus  we've always been too lazy to rehearse so...You know it's not so much  rehearsals as much as it is just getting together, jamming and feeling everybody  out as players.  And developing our little skeletal perimeters of waypoints,  I guess.  I don't know, I'm getting too...I think I'm thinking about it  too much.  Basically we just get together and have some fun and then  come bring it to the stage, you know?

   Rehearsal always to me is  like 'Rehearsal?  Arrgh!' - it doesn't seem like fun.  But this stuff is  all about just jamming.  And I've been doing a lot more of that in San  Francisco these days, or in that general area. I did some stuff with Vinyl  recently, who are great guys, great band. I'm just trying to become more  a part of the - especially the Bay Area - community, like I used to be. 

Benjy: Like with Charlie Hunter and...

Les: Well, I mean, I've known  Charlie for a long time but you know I've got feelers out and I've actually  run a couple ads just trying to hook up with some monster young musicians,  just for some jams and to have some fun, you know?  Because when Primus  was coming up we had this whole community in San Francisco, with us,  with the Limbomaniacs, with Psychefunkapus and Mr. Bungle and even  Faith No More and it was just like this, we had this thing - we all knew each  other, we knew what clubs we were playing and it was just community.   Since I started traveling the world and, you know... I've been out of that  pond.  And I want to get back in that pond and become a part of the local  scene again, as opposed to being a guy who just pokes his head in every now and again. 

Benjy: You played a 40 minute set with The  Disco Biscuits at the Jammys in NYC the other night.  Had you heard them before that?

Les:  Never heard them live before.  The first  time I experienced them was at soundcheck.  I thought they were awesome.  Jon is an incredible guitar player.  It was great.  I'm hoping our paths will cross again.

Benjy:  With  the whole jamband scene being what it is, you have bands like the Disco  Biscuits who are bringing electronica and aspects of that whole culture into  it, and you have bands who are squarely in the wake of the Grateful Dead,  and then you have the whole jazz-groove thing going on and a million things  in-between and just-beyond all of those.  So, with that in mind, do you  think that the idea of a "jamband" is going to stretch out as an umbrella  over a lot of different genres and styles of music, or do you think that  all these different styles are going to somehow try to unify and adopt a more common musical standpoint?

Les:  Well, for one thing this  whole jam scene is so new to me, I'm walking in wide-eyed.  To be  honest with you, for the past couple of years I've been extremely bored  with music.  People ask me, "Well what do you listen to?"  I'm like "Uh, I don't know." Then they'll ask "What's inspiring you these days?"  "I don't know.  Sanford and Son."  You know? What the hell is inspiring me?  I don't know.  And I did that  thing with Stewart [Copeland] and Trey [Anastasio] and went to Jazz Fest  and I was just like - I'm excited to play again!  And I'm like a kid in  a candy store.  I'm jamming with everybody and I'm having a fuckin' great  time. So I have no idea what it's going to do because I just don't know  enough about it but you know it's got me going.  And I do a lot of... obviously  I'm known for a lot more heavier stuff and weirder stuff or whatever but  there's no reason why there can't be a whole... there might be a whole  bunch of my buddies coming to this thing. 

Benjy:  I know that everybody is really embracing the idea of Les  Claypool being a part of the jamband scene...

Les: Well cool!  I like being embraced.

Jambands.com Correspondent  Benjy Eisen is suing 300,000 Napster users for reasons he has yet to understand.