Back Cover to Album I'd Listen To If It Existed

Primus - Miscellaneous Debris

This is not necessarily my favorite Primus record, or my favorite covers record, but I think you have to say that it's a pretty successful covers record for Primus, if you consider "pretty successful for a covers record" to mean that it garishly displays your band's eclecticism. Like, 'OK, we're an Afro-futurist folk-metal band with two drummers, and we stick to that pretty much exclusively, but we ARE pretty wide-ranging in what we listen to. Check it out!'

So (more realistically) Slayer covers TSOL on Undisputed Attitude,

Overkill covers Jethro Tull on their covers album, and Prong does Neil Young AND the Butthole Surfers.

But--again, just conceptually, 'cause the songs aren't really that good--Primus has got it going on with this one. Peter Gabriel, XTC, The Residents, The Meters, for chrissake, and Pink Floyd.

It's tough to top, and I don't think it has been, at least on the eclecticism front. On the musical front, well, I think a few do nose past it.

The other thing going on is the Pink Floyd track. Les Claypool LOVES Pink Floyd; he's covered with some of his other projects "Astronomy Domine" and the entire fucking Animals album. The version of "Have a Cigar" on MD doesn't maybe get to the heights reached by the Frog Brigade's cover of "Sheep," that's for sure, but it does sound more different if you know what I mean, and that's not a bad thing. You definitely notice the difference in bass style and the difference in guitar tone ('cause replicating Gilmour's tone is so difficult you shouldn't even try), and you also notice the awkwardly inserted Bob Cock reference, which I guess *is* a little bad.

But mostly what I think about with track five is that this was a Pink Floyd cover from after the time the covered band ended, but before said covered band's bassplayer so sadly and so publicly went completely insane . . . .