PEARL JAM MUSIC VIDEO DIRECTED BY CAMERON CROWE WORLD PREMIERES ON IMDb
"Not For You," the never-before-seen, full-length Pearl Jam Music video directed By Cameron Crowe and featuring live, archival footage is exclusively presented here on IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/pj20
Pearl Jam, Columbia Records/SONY Music Entertainment and IMDb (www.imdb.com)--the world's most popular and authoritative source for movie, TV and celebrity content--today announced that "Not For You," a full-length, never-before-seen music video directed by Cameron Crowe, featuring live, archival performances and behind-the-scenes footage of the band, is world premiering today exclusively on IMDb.com and IMDb's mobile apps. "We tried to present an emotional scrapbook of what it felt like to be a band member on this twenty-year journey," said Director Cameron Crowe. "The richness of the footage made our path very clear--just tell the story of the band and let the music guide us. It was a joy to make this."
"Who better to tackle a documentary on Pearl Jam, one of the most influential and important bands in the last two decades, than Cameron Crowe, whose experience straddles those decades and bridges journalism and moviemaking," said Keith Simanton, IMDb's Managing Editor. "Fans will be excited to see this full-length cut of 'Not For You,' which is not in the theatrical version of Pearl Jam Twenty, from a raw time when the band was still finding its place in the rock world. It's like Cameron Crowe has unearthed a time capsule for us and found a pulsar inside."
FYI, "Not For You" was released on March 21, 1995 as the second single from Pearl Jam's third studio album, Vitalogy (1994).
photo credit: Danny Clinchsm
Special Thanks to Emily Glassman & Bradley Robinson
An Interrogation of The Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne
Mike Ragogna: Wayne, how are you? How have you been since my last interrogation?
Wayne Coyne: I was laughing the whole time, it's supposed to sound like this great thing, but the longer it goes, I can't help but laugh from behind a curtain. Thank you for having me back, I'm good and I'm sitting in the studio as we speak, getting ready to do this song like you're talking about.
MR: First, can we talk about the six-hour song?
WC: We've done the six-hour song, it was something that came out about three weeks ago. Many people are having a good time with it. When we announced we were doing this six-hour song--the reason it was six hours was because it accompanies this strange little toy we put out. I know it sounds absurd to talk about a song being six-hours long, but you can play with this toy, as we proclaim, for hours and hours at a time. So, part of our reasoning was we would make a song that allowed you to play with this little toy that had a strobe light and these spinning discs for hours. I don't know why we arrived at six hours, we thought it would be a lot of fun...your friends could come over to your house and you could have some sort of experience, all of this in good fun. You would listen to our song and it would be wonderful, right?
MR: Why, of course. And let me plug the name of the song--"Found A Star On The Ground."
WC: That's the six-hour song. Now what we're getting ready to do--because we're moving along at a pretty good velocity of releases and when we record them--we're getting ready to record a song that goes for 24 hours.
MR: The hell you say. Just how exactly are you going to do that?
WC: Well, we don't really know exactly, but having done the six-hour song gives you a little bit of a change of perspective on what you can do and how you can do it. Frankly, because it's such a monolithic thing, you don't really worry about every little nuance being perfect. When we were doing the six-hour song, it's done with a group, but much of it is me and Steven (Drozd) in his bedroom playing and overdubbing and doing it that way. This will be a bigger ensemble and the whole group will be here playing for virtually hours at a time. We will still be doing a lot overdubs and stuff like that, but we have a song that we feel could be a very sad, long, strange journey of a song. The song is about death, it's going to be released in an actually human skull at midnight on Halloween. It's got a lot of power in it in the fact that it's 24 hours long. I'm not sure we're suggesting that everybody stop what their doing and listen to it for that long--I'm sure some people will, some people like this idea of there being an excursion of sound and you get immersed in this thing. There are many groups and many artists that have done things--music, songs, compositions--that are long. I think everybody becomes curious about what's possible when you don't think that this is just going to go for a couple of minutes. What we mean is that it's not meant to be something that you listen to intensely, like your favorite song that plays on your way to work. This is meant to happen while you're having other states of mind. That kind of frees you up as a musician, an artist, and a composer. It frees you up to think that this could be something that frees you up to think that this could be something that goes on for 35, 45, or even 60 minutes and still be about music, but not be about this intense, every second counts, sort of composition.
MR: Now, the proceeds for the six-hour track were to be donated to your local Oklahoma foundations. What was the suggested donation?
WC: Well, here's what happened. We were making the song, which took us about three weeks to make. I have a pretty active Twitter audience out there, so we would have been working on the very beginning of it, so people would be listening and making suggestions, and someone said, "You should have a contest where you could put somebody's name in the six-hour song, and the winner of the contest will have their name announced." It made me think that maybe we could raise some money, just another way of having there be things connected to this song. We have a couple of these charities that we're always trying to make people aware of in Oklahoma City. I would say these are all self-interest things for me. In my neighborhood in Oklahoma City, it's one of the worst neighborhoods for stray and homeless animals. So, when I talk to people about this, I say, "Any money you give to this goes directly to that and it will help." There are many animals that are euthanized every day. There's also an Academy of Contemporary Music, and the C.E.O is our manager. He organizes and is responsible for the way that school provides computers and instruments and a place for young people to explore what they want to do for music. So, both of these are dear things that we believe in and love and want to make work. We announced that for a hundred dollar donation, and we would split the money between those two charities. We would put your name into the song; it's a six-hour song, so there's plenty of space. We didn't know how many we would get, we thought if we had ten, that would be fine; we didn't know that we would do a thousand names, so we're lucky that it stopped at about 230, which is still a lot of names. And some of them are in Japanese--it's a difficult task to get all the names organized and said correctly. I believe it all worked out and I get notes from people saying, "Yeah! I heard my name!"
MR: We were talking about the Central Oklahoma Humane Society and The Academy Of Contemporary Music at Central Oklahoma, right?
WC: Exactly. You can no longer donate to get your name in the song. You can always donate to these things, but I always say everybody should have their local things that they support. So, we had it for a certain amount of time and it's wonderful. It raised over ten thousand dollars for each of those, and it's a great thing to connect with our fans. I know it's our fans because you wouldn't really know about it if you weren't a Flaming Lips fan. Some of the names are of people that are yet to be born--there are kids' names mentioned in the songs that will be born in a couple of months from now. Some of them are in memory of friends and relatives that are no longer with us...many great things involved with it. I know it sounds ridiculous to think that we're taking a piece of music and inserting these names over top of it, but again, I think anything is possible. It's not just about raising the money, it's also about doing and trying new things.
MR: We could go over all the experimental music The Flaming Lips created, but this interview has to end today at some point. Wayne, you're out of your mind in such an incredible way, it's really amazing.
WC: Thank you for saying that. If all artists and musicians were as lucky as me, they would do the same things. There are a lot of opportunities and there are a lot of people helping me, but we also don't always fear that it has to be the greatest thing ever or succeed the greatest way ever. There is a lot of music that can really be wonderful but doesn't have to be in the Top Ten of the Billboard charts. So, that's the way we live our lives, it's just an interesting way to do your art. For me, I'm interested in everything. I'm lucky that it's about music, and the way we do music in the way we do lets you explore everything. That's like the things we have like the Gummy Skull, and this song on Halloween where it's an actual human skull To me, it's all fascinating and it's all interesting. It's leading me down paths of discovery I would never think of if I were just pursuing it as sound and music. We want music to not really be about music; we want music to be the sound of an extraordinary adventure.
MR: What a great line. I have to write that down.
WC: (laughs)
MR: Sean Lennon also contributed to the six-hour recording, right?
WC: Well, in the beginning, when I thought of the names being announced...this is a strange coincidence, but I'm fifty years old and when I'm reminded of this music when I was young, one of the songs that me and my brothers would play all the time would be "Strawberry Fields Forever," which was the pinnacle of John Lennon's psychedelic creations. Well, at the very end of the song of "Strawberry Fields Forever," he does this strange announcement. We all know now since the song is called "Strawberry Fields Forever" and he's saying cranberry sauce. We were young and it was a part of this mythology that Paul McCartney had mysteriously died. If you want to think or hear John saying this, it sounds like he's saying, "I buried Paul." This is a very strange connection to make to John Lennon's actually son. We spoke about it briefly and Sean is a very wonderful, open-minded, creative person, who, when I told him, said, "That's just great." He's crazy like that. When I told him that was my reference, and I told him to act like he's this voice from beyond reading a list of people being abducted by a UFO or something like that, he giggled the whole way through it. We did it over the phone, I called him at his studio that he was working in, and we did it mostly in two sections. He would slash them in 45 minutes at one o'clock in the morning one night. I would send him the list and he would go through some of the more difficult ones. Luckily, he's familiar with a lot of Japanese names--his mother is Yoko Ono. The ones that would be difficult for me, he got right through them. It wasn't a lot of Japanese names, but it was about twenty or so. He was wonderful. We know each other and we're friends and we've played shows earlier in the year, and you're always looking for opportunities for something with people that are crazy like you. I figured he would go for it and it sounds wonderful. At the end, there's this 7 or 8-minute section that ends the whole six-hour thing, and it's Sean Lennon saying, "We will always love, we will always love you." It's haunting but it's powerful.
MR: Beautiful. While we're talking about The Flaming Lips, are you on tour?
WC: We're kind of always playing. We never think of it of necessarily being on tour because it sends the impression that you're out there traveling the world for two years; it's not like that. We're always playing shows, we're always recording, we're always doing things. Playing shows is a part of our normal week, and recording is a part of our normal week, not recording and doing other things is a part of our week. So, I will say, "Yes," but I don't want people to get the wrong impression. We don't play 250 shows a year, we probably play 70 shows and a lot of those shows are strange unique places we've never been before. We've been around for almost 30 years, and we want to play places we've never seen, people we never met there. There are a lot of our own reasons to go to these places.
MR: As far as this 24 hour recording, when is it starting?
WC: We're starting to record it even as we speak, but it's going to be released at midnight on Halloween. It should be fascinating.
MR: As you're recording, you're not going to let sequenced parts ramble on for an hour, right? I mean, there will actually be a person in the studio always making music?
WC: To me, it's all possible. If for some reason...there are millions of little devices that can play without the aid of any humans there. To me, it doesn't matter, there are bits of things that we do in live performance that are machines making a great noise and we stand in front of it, adding to it. We're not really thinking that it's going to be repetitive material like that--it's not meant to be hypnotic, it's meant to be a moving composition. I would never rule out in any way if something happens and goes on for 20 minutes and happens to be generated by a computer and we all think it's great, I say let it happen. To me, it's all about listening. As much as it's about creating and playing music, it's about listening. It would be like a chef in the kitchen endlessly making food; in the end, he would want everybody tasting it and worth making it. I'm always listening, and I don't always know if it was a machine doing it or a musician.
MR: Trash all boarder lines.
WC: Of course, not out of disrespect--this is what you do when you're creative, you accept anything and not worry about it. I would say that it's art and music; we're not trying to create laws, we're not trying to get medicine for children. This is the realm where anything is possible. A lot of the world is restricted. I think that's why people find so much freedom and joy in music, because it's not restrictive. I would never want to tell anybody that you can't make music in that way. You can't do that, I say do anything you want if you can get away with it. (laughs)
MR: (laughs) Thank you for allowing me to be devil's advocate with that question.
WC: I love when people do that better...it reminds me of these things to say.
MR: Like, I don't know, what advice do you have for new artists?
WC: The music business is changing a lot, so depending on musicians you admire and which ones you feel like you want to be like, I would say for the world of music and people who are allowed to make it and live in that world, I think it's working for the better. It's becoming a place that's not about fame, it's becoming a place that's not about money. It's about a place where people who really love music and if you're like me--obsessed with music and ideas and creating--if you're lucky, you can get to do that for a living. A lot of people are driven by other things. My advice is if you don't live, breath, and love music, do something else. I don't think it would satisfy you if you wanted to get into fame and all of these other things that were connected to it before. That's just me. To me, the idea of being creative and doing that for your life, as opposed to doing some traditional job...to me, that's the miracle of my life.
MR: I guess people should ready now for Halloween and this 24-hour event.
WC: Exactly, and you'll find some space in your life somewhere along the way to listen to it--if not all of it, some if it--and get this other experience. That's really what it is, it's not just about music; it's about this experience, and this sound that accompanies it.
MR: Wayne, all the best, it's always a lot of fun talking with you. I guess we will be talking again in the next week or so.
WC: Excellent! Well, thank you sir, I will see you then.
Transcribed by Theo Shier
A Conversation with Primus' Les Claypool
Mike Ragogna: Hey, Les.
Les Claypool: Hey.
MR: So. Green Naugahyde. Explain yourself.
LC: I've been trying to explain myself for twenty years, I'm tired of it.
MR: (laughs)
LC: I can't explain myself anymore. (laughs) You want me to explain the notion of Green Naugahyde?
MR: Please, sir.
LC: Well, the title comes from a line in one of the songs called, "Lee Van Cleef," which was me reflecting on elements of my youth. The line is, "A yellow Studebaker with a 302 and I see the green naugahyde." That was my father's pickup truck when I was a kid.
MR: There was a car show here yesterday and I fell in love with a '57 Chevy. Just thought I'd say that.
LC: An early '60s Studebaker pickup is very different from a '57 Chevy, but it was still a pretty interesting hunk of machinery. Unfortunately, it's probably being smashed up into a cube somewhere, because I inadvertently ran into the side of a liquor store one evening with it. I think that sent it down its path of being on the planet no more as being a Studebaker champ. It wasn't my fault though because the old Studebaker, now and again, the driver's side door would fly open because the latch didn't work properly. So, as I was making a right turn, the door flew open, and by the time I got back up into the truck, I was up on the sidewalk. It either hit a telephone pole or hit a building, and I tried to go between the two of them and I ended up hitting the building.
MR: Good choice, I guess.
LC: (laughs) I don't know.
MR: With Primus, you can't really predict what's in the creative mind of Les Claypool. I want to get some stories behind the songs. For instance, "Last Salmon Man."
LC: Well, most of my friends are contractors and trades people, or fisherman. So--I've written about this times before--this is the fisherman's chronicles, chapter five or six. I'm watching the fishing industry, especially the salmon fishing industry of Northern California, fading away. I see these poor bastards losing this legacy that their grandfathers built for them as we send all of our water down to make more golf courses in Palm Springs. It's a little frustrating, so I wrote about this legacy of the "Last Salmon Man."
MR: What are some other topics that were important to you on Green Naugahyde?
LC: There are quite a few tracks on the record that have some various perspectives of what's going on with our planet, socially and politically. I've always been a fan of people like Frank Capra, and the Coen brothers, and Elia Kazan that use these different characters in their films, these dark disturbing characters to convey various viewpoints. That's sort of what I've done throughout the years with my music. Something like "Jilly's On Smack," which has become a very powerful song for us on this record. People have been really drawn to it, and it tends to be a song, live, that stands out. It's somewhat based on an individual that we knew and lost to the world of substance abuse. I wrote the song from the perspective of the family, "Jilly's on smack and she won't be coming back for the holidays." This family, that's used to someone being there on special occasions, and now she's not there because she's somewhere else, doing something else that's taken her priorities away from her.
MR: Addiction is a topic which is difficult to address from a parental perspective, because it's very hard when it's your child going through that. On the other hand, do you sweep it under the blanket?
LC: Addiction has been a huge source of fodder for many of my writings over the years because it's been a huge part of a certain portion of my family. I lost my uncle when he was fifty because he did speed for thirty years. My cousin, who I spent every day with till I was about 13, he has been in and out of prison for the past 30 years because of speed. All of these things have been very prevalent in my family, and subsequently prevalent in the music. Like my family, I hadn't seen my 96-year old grandfather in several years and went and saw him last week, and he's hilarious. He's funnier than hell, sharp as a tack, and I see the elements of how my family has always dealt with these things--these downfalls and tragedies--through humor. Both of my grandfathers are hilarious, and it's sort of been the self-defense mechanism of my world since I was a little kid.
MR: Les, I want to move on to the song "Eternal Consumption Engine," I love that because I think collectively, we are.
LC: We definitely are. That riff was a riff that Ler has been kicking around for about at least 15 years, and I finally said, "Let's put that thing on a record man, I love that riff." The wheels started clicking, I was looking through my notes, and I found "Eternal Consumption Engine"--which is obviously a play on "internal combustion engine." Just the notion of how we are a nation of consumers these days, and far less a nation of producers. Because of that, our economy is obviously suffering, people are unemployed, and China's economy is obviously booming and bolstering from our addiction to going to Wal-Mart and Costco.
MR: Yes, the culturally accepted addiction.
LC: I'm totally addicted to shopping...that's what my mom used to do when we were kids. She would go buy things, keep them for a day or two, and then return them. The process of purchasing satisfied a need. I'm the same way, but I'm a Craigslist guy; I'm a Craigslist junky. I remember Tom Waits once called me a Pawn Shop Weasel. Now, I'm a Craigslist Weasel because it's easier than going to the pawn shop. I will obsess over the strangest things until I find them. (laughs)
MR: Is that something that can be turned around? (laughs)
LC: I think it's fine, there are far worst things I could be addicted to, I suppose. (laughs) When I go, my family is going to have a hell of yard sale.
MR: Do you remember when after 9/11 we were told if we wanted to support America, go shop.
LC: Yeah, I would take that a step further and (say) if you really want to be patriotic go buy something that's still made in the United States, by American workers.
MR: Nicely put. So, we know that this economy is shot and Obama is getting hammered as far public opinion polls. Where do you see this going? Is there any shot at this economy recovering, in your opinion?
LC: Well, I would like to hope so, but there is a lot of political manipulation going on right now. We have a couple of football teams here, some people are rooting for the Raiders, some people are rooting for the 49ers, and they are going to do whatever they can to keep the opposing team from winning, gaining any yardage, so they can't ultimately win the game. Unfortunately, the fans in the stands are waiting for a touchdown or two because it's beginning to be a pretty dull game.
MR: Does it take an inspiring leader to turn people around?
LC: I think that's a huge part of it. The notion of having someone that you can believe in and learn from and trust is an amazing thing, but that's subjective. One person that a certain group of individuals may think is the greatest thing since cream cheese, another group of individuals is going to think is a moron. That's just life, but I think we need to become a nation of manufacturers. That's what built this country after WWII. I remember my grandfather working as a firefighter down in Richmond. It was a huge port for shipyards and building, there was always this sense of pride and everything that we did as a family as workers. I just don't see that anymore.
MR: We may not know how to work anymore, but we sure know how to buy.
LC: I also think those opportunities don't exist anymore. I travel the states all the time. Some towns that were thriving 30 or 40 years ago are now ghost towns because a certain candy bar isn't made there anymore or piece of machinery isn't made there anymore, when that town was built on that industry. It's frightening.
MR: In the end, is this something where you just have to go with the changing tides?
LC: The thing is I'm a bass player, so I don't have all of these answers. (laughs) But I think a lot of it is common sense. The tide turned a long time ago to send a lot of these companies overseas. Until we can bring a lot of that back, I think it will be a tough road.
MR: Okay, that in no way brings us to the song "Moron TV." Or maybe it does in a bigger picture. Anyway, what went into that topic?
LC: Well, I was a kid of the '70s that had divorced parents, and I went to visit my father and knew none of the kids in the neighborhood. I would hang out and sit around watching old creature features and whatnot on television. I would spend a lot of time in front of the television. I'm sure some of it was beneficial to my intellect and a lot of it was not. (laughs) There were only four or five channels back then, and a couple of cable channels. Now, there are hundreds of channels, there is so much dogs**t on these channels. The flip side of that is that there are a lot of golden nuggets, there are a lot of outlets for things where you can actually learn something and expand your horizons. It amazes me how we glorify some of this moronic behavior, but it's nothing new. I'm sure it's been going on for hundreds of years, but it's more abundant now.
MR: We're in the age of reality TV, and when you think it's dying down, here comes another "make your fellow human look like an idiot" television show.
LC: Well, the unfortunate thing is you get a group of individuals and you put them in front of a camera and folks look at it and see the craziness of it. That's where they gain the entertainment aspect. Unfortunately, there is a slew of individuals--and I'm constantly trying to educate my kids on this--that look at these same people and feel that they are being glorified. They don't see the irony in it, they see it in glorification. That, to me, I find a little unsettling.
MR: I mean take something like American Idol where somebody looks at it and wants to be that character instead of actually training to be great.
LC: But American Idol is American Idol, it's pop culture being amplified. That doesn't bother me nearly as much as a group of people living in a house somewhere and they are acting imbecilic. There's an element of watching it and understanding that the behavior is so over the top and moronic that it's humorous and compelling. Then there is my daughter watching it and actually thinking it's cool. There are a lot of people on this planet that will take fame in any context or take fame in any form no matter how compromising that may be because it's fame. The glory of fame--whether it's a positive thing or a negative thing--people are still drawn towards it.
MR: Speaking of one of the smartest shows ever, there's South Park. It's still going strong.
LC: Well, Matt and Trey they are a couple of sharp fellas. (laugh) They just had their 15th anniversary party the other night, so we were just down there. Those guys never cease to amaze me. They are good friends, fairly normal guys, and they keep hitting home run after home run. This whole Book Of Mormon thing won nine Tony's.
MR: Les, are you inspired by something and that's the moment you write it or do you work on things for a long time?
LC: It's a little bit of both. I have notebooks scattered all over the place with various writings and ramblings, in different stages of completion. Whether it's a short story or a notion for a film or a song or just a line. Some of it comes to fruition and completion and a lot of it doesn't and probably never will. What was the question again? (laughs)
MR: (laughs) What is your creative process?
LC: The creative process, it's always different. As long as it's casual, I don't like forcing things. If I have to sit down and force myself to write something, I just don't do it. If it doesn't come naturally, I feel like it's in my own head but it's not going to be nearly as good. The stuff that sticks with me over the years was the stuff that just flowed, but that could also be a long-term process. "Jilly's On Smack" was a line in a notebook that expanded to what it is now. It may be a picture, it may be one little line, it may be three lines, you never know.
MR: Are there any songs on the album that took a long time to complete?
LC: Not really. I was very insistent that everybody bring in material on this record because Primus records in the past have been things I've brought in or things we've jammed on in a rehearsal space. I didn't want it to be all that. After doing the Oysterhead record, I liked starting on somebody else's thought, so having Ler bring in the riff for "Jilly's On Smack" and then building off of it is amazing, or "Eternal Consumption Engine" and building off of that and trying to support his vision, that's a whole new portion of your brain that you're using for this creative element. That, to me, was exciting.
MR: Les, what was the approach recording-wise?
LC: My studio is full of vintage gear. I have an old API 2488 console from the early '70s, I have a two-inch, 16-track that we would track to. Once it was all tracked, it did go into Pro Tools and we did our mixing off of Pro Tools and back into the vintage equipment. It was a combination of vintage and modern technology.
MR: You guys got back together again after 10 years to record Green Naugahyde. I guess after the collaborations, etc., you brought some of your new knowledge and new looks at music into this project.
LC: Well, I think the last ten years have had a lot of growth. Hopefully, we've all grown over these last ten years. For me, particularly, it was a period of experimentation--growth in many different ways as far as playing with different musicians. The more you play with other people, you gain different perspectives. It's like having a conversation; the more conversations you have with different people with different perspectives than yourself, then the better conversationalist you will become. And I've had a lot of conversations over the past ten years I was able to bring to the Primus fold. I would have brought it to any fold I would had gone to, even if we had done an Oysterhead record. As you move through life, hopefully, you're gathering not only moss but some barnacles and experiences that you can bring with you into any creative situation.
MR: You mentioned Oysterhead, which was with Stewart Copeland and Trey Anastasio. How does it work when you're working on other projects? Is it open-ended as far as the future?
LC: I would like to hope they are. I'm a very fortunate individual. There are a lot of creative opportunities out there and I like to take as much advantage of that as much as we can, because we're only on the planet for a certain amount of time. I would like to get as many punches in my sandwich card as I can. Fill my repertoire and having something that looks good on my tombstone when they put me in the dirt. Why wouldn't you want to go revisit some of these things that were pleasant and creatively satisfying?
MR: Plus you've had a nice cast of characters to play with like Adrian Belew, Tom Waits...
LC: ...yeah, playing with people of that caliber both musically and socially is spectacular. For me, that's what defines success more than anything for me, besides having a good family is working with and befriending, not only my heroes, but people I respect as creative people.
MR: Do you see yourself maybe creating another concept in the next couple of years?
LC: I would like to hope there is something on the horizon. Right now, I have a lot of pots on the stove. I use the stove metaphor a lot. The Primus pot is on the front burner. At some point in time, I will be pulling the Oysterhead pot forward, or I will go do another project with Eugeine Hutz. There are a lot of things, and I'm sure there are a lot of things around the corner that I'm not even anticipating.
MR: You mentioned family before, I just wanted to ask you how your nephew's doing?
LC: He's a tough little guy.
MR: Of course, you had that benefit for him a while back. Did that generate enough support?
LC: There's been extraordinary support for my brother and his family. So, it's greatly appreciated and heartwarming.
MR: Les, what advice do you have for new artists?
LC: You've just got to play. Play as often as you can with as many people as you can in front of as many people as you can. Playing in your bedroom and in the basement is limiting. You need to go out and play in front of other people with other people. Again, it's back to the conversation thing. You can either read a speech or you can have a conversation. To be a good conversationalist, you need to talk to a lot of people.
MR: What's touring looking like for Primus?
LC: We're just starting the States tour. We're about a week into it and I think we're going to South America later this year and then back to Australia and then in Europe next spring. And it's all via hot air balloon.
MR: (laughs) How are you pulling that off?
LC: It's old school.
MR: Your new album came in at #14 on the Billboard charts. After all these years, people still love Primus. Feels good?
LC: It feels absolutely horrible. (laughs) What am I supposed to say? It's good that's great, fantastic. I'm clicking my heels together.
MR: Yeah, lame question. Les, I appreciate your time and thank you for talking with us.
LC: Yeah, no worries.
Tracks:
1. Prelude to a Crawl
2. Hennepin Crawler
3. Last Salmon Man
4. Eternal Consumption Engine
5. Tragedy's A-Comin'
6. Eyes of the Squirrel
7. Jilly's on Smack
8. Lee Van Cleef
9. Moron TV
10. Green Ranger
11. HOINFODAMAN
12. Extinction Burst
13. Salmon Men
Transcribed by Theo Shier