These days maybe Primus are best known for the theme music to South Park, but their early funk-metal experimentation probably exerted an influence on everyone from Faith No More to the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Apparently this DVD/EP package resulted from the original Les Claypool/Larry LaLonde/Tim ‘Herb’ Alexander line-up reforming in May 2003. It’s interesting that this is called the ‘original’ line-up when rare 1980s footage on the DVD features previous guitarists and drummers, but then Primus always were a little odd.

The DVD is mainly a collection of 13 of the band’s videos, which generally show a mixture of live footage and amusing animations, most of which are slightly grotesque, although the exception (‘The Devil Went Down To Georgia’) apparently won an award for a short animated film. In addition, the band have packed in so many extras (photos, live footage, commentary, etc) it took a four page press release to cover them all, so they can hardly be accused of not giving you plenty for your money.

Unfortunately, the extras seem to suffer from an emphasis on quantity rather than quality. The supposed ‘making of’ documentaries are spectacularly uninformative – mostly they just seem to be whatever happened in front of a camera left rolling while setting up the videos.

Commentary is provided by the band to most of the videos, but this is little more revealing. Indeed, it seems almost as if the band were surprised by what they were seeing, so they generally only offer a few reminiscences (less interesting to those of us that weren’t there) or banal observations ("That’s Kirk Hammet", "The P on the belt stands for Primus", "This is the view from the boat"). At times, they sound a bit like Beavis and Butthead, but at least their commentaries are slightly entertaining, if not informative.

In general though, the main content isn’t too bad and the bonus EP (with five new songs) is actually very good. The main problem for me is the menu selection.  Maybe I’m just too thick to work a DVD player properly (says he with a first class in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from Oxford - Ed), but it just wouldn’t let me watch the whole thing through.  Instead I spent half the time watching ‘John The Fisherman’, ‘Too Many Puppies’ and ‘Jerry Was A Race Car Driver’.  All the features are hidden away on sub-menus according to each album too, which makes them hard to find for someone not so familiar with the band’s catalogue.

In sum, an average package let down by poor co-ordination. I hope the EP’s available separately.
(2/5)

Release Date: 15 December 2003

Animals Should Not Try To Act Like People