Primus: Suck On This [PRAWN SONG]

Why you'll love it

This Prawn Song LP brings back the band's own label for the record that started it all. Les Claypool, Larry LaLonde and Tim Alexander had been playing together for about two months, and the album helped push alternative metal out of the underground.

This edition

• Stereo mix

About the album

Most bands make a studio album first and a live record once they're famous. Primus did it backwards. In February and March 1989 they set up a TASCAM 8-track Portastudio at the Berkeley Square club, played their hearts out, mixed the results on hi-fi VHS and pressed a thousand copies on their own Prawn Song label with $3,000 borrowed from Claypool's father.

The songs are the early blueprint for the whole Primus catalogue. "John the Fisherman" kicks off with a nod to Rush's YYZ, "Tommy the Cat" later landed on Sailing the Seas of Cheese, "Pressman" turned up on Pork Soda, "The Heckler" waited until Antipop and "Jellikit" went to the Airheads soundtrack. Claypool's slapping bass, LaLonde's twisted guitar and Alexander's busy drums already sound like nothing else in the Bay Area, or anywhere else. Matt Winegar and Bob Cock produced, and Paul Haggard designed the sleeve.

AllMusic praised its Funkadelic-meets-Rush explosions and a crowd that was already rabid. The original sleeve thanked Claypool's dad for kicking down the corn, which remains the finest record-label funding arrangement we've come across.

Also at Kops: more Primus on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Prawn Song (cat# PSR-0011), a reissue of the 1989 live album.