Frolicking With the Flying Frogs

Swathed in smoke and murky lighting in the Avalon Ballroom on We. Nov. 13th, Les Claypool hunched over to sing into his distorted microphone. Though he resembles the Child-Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, complete with lank hair and bowler hat and a somewhat more modest nose, he is something of a visionary as well. After four decades of bite-sized, digestible songs of appropriate lengths and recognizable lyrics, there may be something of a crisis brewing in certain music circles. What is there left to do? One response is Sigur Ros’ experiments with wordlessness and nameless orchestrally constructed opuses. Claypool’s approach is possibly even more mischeivous.

He is well aware that jam-bands are inherently ridiculous, representing the desire of white college kids to imbibe at one and the same time the sexy cachet and surprises of jazz with the passionate cool of rock. And thus, the former Primus frontman and alumnus of jam-überband Oysterhead, has created the Flying Frogs, a band that embraces their own improbability with undisguised glee.

The songs, at least to the untrained ear, have little lyrical content, and what they do have is largely irrelevant: words are simply a starting point and an excuse to add Claypool’s nasal vocals to the Flying Frog’s sonic stew. Songs are extended almost indefinitely, mutating as they go. It’s as though Sigur Ros got very drunk and woke up in Vermont playing blues for rock fans. Claypool even led the crowd in a Viking chant.

From the turbaned saxophonist Skerik and dreadlocked guitarist eenor, to the headbanging, caveman-muscled percussionist Mike Dillon (who needed no costume to appear right at home amongst the Frogs), outrageous excess is the name of the game. “I’m scared…this could be sodomy by saxophone…,” warned Claypool announcing a solo by Skerik and a sax-playing buddy who appeared for the song before vanishing back into the audience. A percussion solo between the kit and caveman, one of the centerpieces of the set, lasted a good 15 minutes. The kit looked set to implode on the drummer under the influence of his jackhammer strikes, while the caveman leapt about like a man who is certain that he left his rock hammer here only a moment ago.

Claypool himself has clearly spent more time than is healthy with various species of bass guitar, taking great pleasure in the slinky swoops on a fretless upright before demolishing a bow in a brief three-minute solo. His signature fat, swampy bass sound gives way under his fantastically intricate pluckings, strummings and slappings to raucous lead guitar riffs that leave the actual guitar almost redundantly backgrounded.

Crazy? Possibly. Subversive? Almost certainly. Compelling? Ask the smoke-wreathed, rapt, boogying crowd at Avalon. If you can distract them long enough to answer, maybe you’ll get some idea.