Tales From the Punchbowl is Primus' sixth cd and fourth studio album, and it is a cacophony of awesome. Les Ler and Herb return for the followup to 1993's Pork Soda, and attempt to make a musical playground for you (or me) the listener. Punchbowl is enhanced, so when you put it in the computer, you can do stuff. It's a whole actual program, like those, 2nd grade math video games for the computer. You're in the boat of the cheerful captain shiner, who starts off your voyage with "Welcome aboard, I'm Captain Shiner. If you have any questions, stick 'em up your ass". You are then left to navigate through the strange sea filled with 14 or so islands, one for each of the 13 songs (minus captain shiner, which is just part of another song), and an island for the cover of the Residents' "Hello Skinny", and one for "pong hell", an impossible game of pong. I've played through hundreds of rounds of it and never gotten one point. It's programmed not to lose. Each island has a video for each song, Wynona's Big Brown Beaver features the actual video, and the others have computer animation that resemble the "Eleanor Rigby" video on The Beatles' Yellow Submarine. But the songs themselves are colorful and lyrical, and Les' bass lines flow from the speakers. Ler uses his guitar to assist Les, using melody notes and counternotes. Even though I know nothing about drumming, Tim "Herb" Alexander (who left just after the enhanced version of Punchbowl was released) impresses me with his almost native-sounding pounds on the skins. This cd was originally released in 1995, and in 1996 it was re-released with the enhanced material on it. Punchbowl is a tremendously fun album, and I give it 5 out of 5, even if it didn't have the enhanced stuff.
Professer Nutbutter
The song is about a candy shop owner who is also a doctor. It's the longest song, at about 7 minutes, and it starts the cd off with a heavy bang. The song is pure chaos and you can hear it in Les' voice. The video has a rotating picture of Professer's lecture hall, and text at the bottom of the screen that tells the story of a guy who grew up with Nutbutter's son, and how they always had puppies and never dogs, and the son never grew up. It turns out that Professer was experimenting with inchworms ("don't fear the worm" is in the lyrics) that stunted the growth of organisms. "I don't like dogs, but everyone loves puppies".
Mrs. Blaileen
This is a song about Donny, a misunderstood sixth grader. Mrs Blaileen was his teacher, but she doesn't really deserve song titleship. This song is really creepy and better catches the feelings of a depressed child than I've ever seen. The video adds to it, it's a chalkboard where the people are represented by apples. Steven was a bully who picked on kids like Donny, and then don attacked him with his fishknife. It gets creepy when it says "Don lunged forward with his fishknife. He ran all the way home weeping, he gave the knife to his father and said 'I think I hurt Steve!' Oh, what a lonely boy." It shows three little apples, Don Steve and steve's friend, and Don turns into a knife and hits steve, and the apple turns grey. Then it has Don and his father, and as it says "Oh what a lonely boy", the father apple slowly pans out of the screen and it zooms on Donny, giving a chilling sense of isolation and fear. Most songs about children that kill are just like "people made fun of him, so he shot them", but it really doesn't capture the true mood of the attacker, like this song did. This is a really good song.
Wynona's Big Brown Beaver
I doubt this song is the innuendo you think it is, Primus doesn't hide what they have to say. If they wanted to, they could have just released a song called "Wynona's big brown vagina", but primus didn't feel the need to sing about sex all the time, like a lot of other poseur rock bands. It's actually about a beaver, and it sounds a hell of a lot like Jerry Was A Racecar Driver. The video has the three of them dressed like plastic cowboys, you have to see them to know what I'm talking about. It's a funny video and a funny song.
Southbound Pachyderm
A song about flying elephants. I can't really find a meaning to this song, except maybe a song about boredom. It's a mellow song, but not in a ballad sense. It's just slow, but very melodic and lyrical, and the video looks like "Eleanor Rigby". It has a bunch of elephants flying over a bridge. The bass line is complex yet simple, and has a very difficult timing to play along with. After about 30-60 seconds of the intro bass, Herb pounds a really fast descending drum roll and Ler comes in with the trademark Primus wall of sound. The video finishes with a psycadelic Elephant flying around. This song is really moody and easily becomes a favorite.
Space Farm
A short little instrumental with a weird bassline and nothing else, except for sound effects. I don't know.
Year of the Parrot
A song about plaigerism, hence the parrot. It doesn't really name the fiends who did it, but it has something to do with copying Kate Bush and Van Morrison and altering a Zeppelin riff to get a lot of money. It also happened in 1994, but I wasn't exposed to any culture back then. The video has a parrot moving back and forth on a pole, and shitting every few seconds in an ever-increasing pile. The most notable part of this song is the drums, a very African sounding style.
Hellbound 17 1/2 (theme from)
Basically an instrumental, except for the fast spoken "questions deserving answers, answers deserving action. What am I of the populi? I am but a fraction. Is there heaven? Is there hell? Is that a tuna melt I smell? Come on." It's a bunch of sound effects like car crashes and people yelling "Look out below!". The video has a canary in a cage on some vehicle that looks like a crayfish. A bunch of disgruntled animals walk behind it and it doesn't make much sense. Have fun with that one.
Glass Sandwich
This is a weird song, I mean weird by Primus standards. It's about a guy who goes to a strip bar to find his ex-wife there, but not much else. There's a quarter you can click to make porn come up, but the face of captain shiner covers the bare essentials. Don't worry, matt.
Del Davis' Tree Farm
This is my favorite song on Punchbowl, it's really cool, especially with the video. The guitar keep a really steady tone that shifts around, while the bass mirrors it and plays the classic Primus ad libs. At the chorus, the guitar sounds like a chainsaw, and at that point the character on the video whips out a chainsaw and cuts down the 8-ft tall Christmas tree, and it's just cool. In the lyrics, it says "with the help of them 'doogs' there's a lot more joy this holliday". It seems like a drug reference, but on the video it shows a bunch of raindeer. Maybe they're doogs. I've never heard of doogs before.
De Anza Jig
An awesome little banjo ditty about things in life, with that kind of "march" sound going on with the bass. The video shows Les playing his bass banjo and pointing to the lyrics.
On The Tweek Again
It seems to be about a guy who dealt drugs or something, but I can't really tell. Les' nasally voice is really high in this song, and it's mellow except for the chorus and outro. The video shows a cat sitting on a tiger, and they both sing along to the lyrics, but the timing's off so it looks weird. Everything in the background is different shades of red, and it's really hippie-like. There's a bunch of moving squares and diamonds and x's that make you get dizzy. I suggest you don't get stoned and watch this.
Over the Electric Grapevine
A cool melodic song about a road trip with a guy named Adam and another guy who appears to be referred to as "the demon". Like the last song, the ending is really really colorful and psycadelic. But the rest of the song is just black and white, showing two completely insane guys driving around with headlights behind them. This song is my third favorite, after Del Davis and Mrs. Blaileen.
Captain Shiner
A one minute clip of the bass line from De Anza Jig, with ocean sounds accompanying it. It's a pleasant way to end off the cd, reminding you of the ocean feeling it was made to give off.
Tales from the punchbowl is a really good cd, go out and get it now. Get the one that says enhanced though, but I don't know if you can find the original.
This is kal signing off, talkin bout Les Ler and Herb.
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