Primus. Poutine. Poles (Totem).

We were casually nursing a coke in the McDonalds across the road when Primus started their set.  Unknown to us, Primus started the show at doors opening time.

Noise Road’s good friend, Bexter (you may know her by one of her many aliases – uzBECistan, Stan, Izzy etc) won tix to Primus.  So I spent my final night in Vancouver at another gig!  Win!

The day after the Corrosion of Conformity gig ended unexpectedly loose.  It started innocently enough with a traditional Canadian thinly-sliced meat sandwich and poutine…  but it ended many hours later at 3am in a suburban bar.

Poutine is a mix of chips, curd and gravy.  Curds?  I don’t think I’ve heard of Curds since the childhood poem:

Little Miss Muffet

Sat on her tuffet

Eating her curds and whey…

Firstly was that Muffet chick on some kind of muscle-building whey-protein kick?  Secondly what the feck is a curd?  Whatever they are, they do not sound tasty.  In fact I heard that Saddam Hussein so hated curds, that he tried to exterminate every single last one of them….  Hmmm, maybe I should delete that last line.  Genocide is never cool.  In fact nothing to do with Saddam Hussein is cool – including the internet snuff film of his execution.

Anyways…  Curds don’t sound delicious, but trust me, poutine is delicious.

The options for the afternoon were either a walk through the park for the stunning views… or the Granville Island Brewery.  The die was cast as soon as we made the decision to sample some beer.  Why do Canadians do a shot with every beer?  We drank beer in the brewery. We drank beer and Jameson on the water.  We ate dinner and drank beer in a cooking school in Jericho.

As far as I can tell Jericho is a Vancouver suburb owned by Canadian wrestler, Chris Jericho.  Y2J.  It could have been worse.  We could have had dinner and drinks in Benoit.

The night ended in yet another bar.  I have no idea where we were.  All I know is that I left a swag of recently purchased Canucks souvenirs there.  I also left the contents of my wallet in their till.  Late night drunken taxi rides from bar to bar in a strange city are never a good idea.

Feeling a little sore the following morning, I dragged my remains around the sea-wall that encircles Vancouver.  As Noise Road has said before, Vancouver is a beautiful city.  The sea wall walk allows you views of the densely wooded mountains, totem poles and seaplanes regularly landing in the bay in front of the city skyscrapers.

Primus

I am not a massive Primus fan.  I struggle with virtuoso musicians, whether they be guitar or on bass.  With bass superstar and Primus main man, Les Claypool, I was fearing something a kin to that awful Red Hot Chilli Peppers gig where Flea w@nked himself off with a bass for 90 minutes, occasionally broken up by some 3-note-range singing from Anthony Keidis…  but it can not be denied that Primus put on a good show.

The venue itself was somewhat odd, as it was a fully-seated traditional theatre.  Even coming in 20 minutes late, the usher saw us to our seats.  Punters had to groove to Primus’s frenetic bass work standing in front of their designated seat.

The stage was set up spectacularly with giant astronauts guarding stage left and stage right.  A video of a man’s face disturbingly looped in the astronaut visors.

With no opening acts, Primus played 2 sets of nearly 90-minutes length each.  The stomping funk fest only paused to screen a hilariously un-PC Popeye film.

Throughout the night, main-man Les Claypool produced all manner of bass guitars.  When utilising the stand up bass, Claypool donned some kind of pig mask.  Primus are weird, dude.  Fittingly, I smelt weed for the first time at a gig for a long time.  If there was a gig that I associate with weed, it is this one.

I am no Primus expert, but I am guessing that these were far more jammy renditions of their tracks, as the song lengths was long.  The set was highly enjoyable, but 3 hours of jammed-out tracks was just a bit much for a non-hardcore fan.

A couple of familiar tracks, Jerry Was a Race Car Driver and Winona’s Big Brown Beaver did keep me interested in the funked-out jam fest.

The following morning my time in Vancouver was up.  My quiet week in Vancouver turned out to be extremely eventful and extremely fun.  Many thanks to my awesome hosts, the Count and Bec.

Go to Vancouver.