Colonel Claypool's Bucket of Bernie Brains

Primus main man Les Claypool is the undisputed king of the weirdo side project. Lessee, there's Les Claypool & the Holy Mackerel, a twisted-pop spin on Primus' chunky alt-prog metal-funk that featured a rant from Henry Rollins and lots of bowed handsaw. There's Oysterhead, his jam-rock collaboration with Phish frontman...

By Michael Alan Goldberg

October 21, 2004

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Primus main man Les Claypool is the undisputed king of the weirdo side project. Lessee, there's Les Claypool & the Holy Mackerel, a twisted-pop spin on Primus' chunky alt-prog metal-funk that featured a rant from Henry Rollins and lots of bowed handsaw. There's Oysterhead, his jam-rock collaboration with Phish frontman Trey Anastasio and Police drummer Stewart Copeland. And who could forget Les Claypool's Frog Brigade, with members of Fishbone, Gov't Mule, and Critters Buggin', which put out a live remake of Pink Floyd's Animals. But his kookiest combo yet has to be Colonel Claypool's Bucket of Bernie Brains, which teams the mad singer-bassist with creepy fret board mangler Buckethead and snare-shredder Brain (both recent Guns N' Roses refugees), and 60-year-old Parliament/Funkadelic keyb-maniac Bernie Worrell for some avant, Zappa-style genre-hopping. Though they've got a freaky, great new album out (The Big Eyeball in the Sky), the foursome is known to play entirely improvisational sets. They've also been known to make sandwiches for the crowd onstage. What kind of deranged fun should you expect this time? Claypool says the tour is like "a traveling, oversized sock-puppet show spawned by the characters of a Tobe Hooper film and scored by Danny Elfman on bad acid." Weirdo.

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