Primus: Sailing the Seas of Cheese Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		1.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		4.0

Primus: Sailing the Seas of Cheese Blu-ray Movie Review

Staying afloat in the treacherous music industry.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 19, 2013

What 1991 album by a trio would you credit with jump starting the Alternative Rock movement? Chances are many of you would instantly choose Nevermind, Nirvana’s second album which cemented their status as leaders of a new movement, but there was actually another candidate that appeared several months before Cobain and Company’s album did. Primus had been tooling around since 1984, much longer than Nirvana of course, releasing their first independent (and live) recording in 1989. The band matriculated to Caroline Records (which had optioned its live album) for its first studio album Frizzle Fry in 1990, and then hit what passed for the big time in the nascent Alt Rock world with a deal at Interscope, releasing their first major label album, Sailing the Seas of Cheese, in May 1991, some four months before Nirvana stole the limelight. Though Primus’ anarchic approach might seem to be perfectly suited to capture the young and rebellious, but perhaps people weren’t quite ready for Primus’ level of goofiness, something that was most definitely missing from the relatively more formal, if Lithium fueled, work of Kurt Cobain. Primus’ members were jokers, almost Jungian Tricksters who didn’t just pull their listeners’ legs, they virtually tugged them off at the hip joint. Even the album’s name is a thinly veiled reference to the band’s attempt to survive in a musical industry dominated by artists that they themselves found to be remarkably cheesy (in the excellent liner notes included on this release, the band cites Whitney Houston and Phil Collins as prime offenders in this category). Listening to this album now from the vantage point of some twenty-plus years (wow!) of hindsight, Sailing the Seas of Cheese holds up surprisingly well, at least if you come to it without any expectations of 32 bar songcraft.

Primus’ kind of in your face ethos has always reminded me in a way of some of Frank Zappa’s pieces. Zappa used to just thumb his nose at both the music industry as well as rock tropes, as if to say, “Yeah, I can do that, too—so what?” Zappa was also often deliberately politically incorrect and incredibly provocative, two elements that also creep into Primus’ albums. Now I for one don’t expect Primus to be churning out quasi-classical masterpieces or aping Edgard Varèse the way Zappa did with considerable élan, but there’s much the same spirit in the band’s work, something that comes through the churning, sometimes repetitive, riff driven pieces of Sailing the Seas of Cheese.

The album has several highlights, including Primus’ first single for Interscope, “Jerry Was a Race Car Driver”, an outing which serves as a near perfect example of the band’s penchant for dry humor and some really inventive musical performances. Les Claypool’s distinctive bass stylings drive the song, but it’s Larry LaLonde’s incredible guitar solo that really elevates the tune above its patently weird story (and vocals). Live performance favorite “Those Damned Blue Collar Tweekers” is another standout, featuring a fairly laid back Claypool but another great solo from LaLonde. The tune almost seems like a slightly skewed, Alt Rock flipside of outings like Billy Joel’s “Allentown” or even some of the themes explored on Springsteen’s Darkness At the Edge of Town, albeit obviously in a completely different musical vocabulary.

Primus is a band that doesn’t really invite the listener in, and in fact the band tends to put up some sonic obstacles, including lots of information like audio snippets from tv shows and films, that play out as sound bites in at least a couple of songs on the album. Especially on the Blu-ray rendering of Sailing the Seas of Cheese, however, it becomes very clear just how ambitious Primus was, carefully layering riffs and ideas to build a rather awesome edifice. Perhaps more importantly, the band’s frankly opaque lyrics offer a kind of kaleidoscope of free association that makes repeated listening reveal new implications, if not exactly outright meanings. The cheese may indeed be thick, but bands like Primus continue to cut through the morass with requisite energy and innovation.

The track listing of the audio Blu-ray is:

• 01. Seas of Cheese
• 02. Here Come the Bastards
• 03. Sgt. Baker
• 04. American Life
• 05. Jerry Was a Race Car Driver
• 06. Eleven
• 07. Is It Luck?
• 08. Grandad’s Little Ditty
• 09. Tommy the Cat
• 10. Sathington Waltz
• 11. Those Damned Blue Collar Tweekers
• 12. Fish On (Fisherman Chronicles, Chapter II)
• 13. Los Bastardos

Primus: Sailing the Seas of Cheese Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Sailing the Seas of Cheese is for all intents and purposes "only" an audio Blu-ray, but Primus has included a rather peculiar assortment of video elements, presented via an AVC codec in 1080i and 1.78:1. It probably shouldn't come as any great surprise to the band's fans that the band has taken a rather nontraditional approach toward these video elements. These are as lo-fi in their way as the Blu-ray audio is hi-def in its way. Four "Visualizers For Your Ocular Pleasure" are included here (kind of clunkily authored, with lots of submenus that then need to be closed after choices have been made). There is everything from stop motion animation to film clips to quasi-hallucinogenic animation to what look like oscilloscope waveforms wafting in and out of all of these so-called Visualizers. The video quality here is pretty shoddy almost all of the time, something that one must assume was an intentional choice. Primus may have provided something to look at it, but the obvious implication is that they want the bulk of your cerebral activity to be given over to listening.

Note: All of the screenshots accompanying this review are from the four Visualizer options.

Primus: Sailing the Seas of Cheese Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Primus has included this note on the back of the trifold case holding both the Blu-ray and the CD:

With this disc you are now able to hear at home what we hear in the studio. This disc contains all 13 tracks from Sailing the Seas of Cheese in high resolution 96kHz 24-bit PCM stereo, PCM 5.1 surround sound and Dolby TrueHD 5.1 surround sound. It is primarily an audio-only disc with basic navigation. The 96kHz 24-bit audio on this disc has 256 times more resolution than a CD, providing greater detail and reproducing the music's full dynamic range, from the softest to the loudest sounds.

The album is a rather dense (and at times intense) sonic experience, and the new clarity and precision afforded by these astounding high res audio mixes are really remarkable. With the glut of unison riff work throughout the album, it might not seem intuitive that a surround mix could add much to the listening experience, but there is very wide separation now that doesn't exist even in the new stereo mix done by Les Claypool himself on the enclosed CD. The biggest boost here might be in the lower midrange and low frequencies. The bass heavy pieces simply have new propulsive energy now that is almost palpable at times, especially in the 5.1 mixes. Despite the crowded low end, things remain remarkably clear and transparent. The "samples" have a bit more sonic presence in the Blu-ray mixes, and Larry LaLonde's amazing guitar work has impeccable fluidity and presence.

Primus: Sailing the Seas of Cheese Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The only "real" supplement on the Blu-ray is Saga, a text based extra that gives some background on the band and the album. The CD includes three bonus tracks, Those Damned Blue Collar Tweekers (Live), American Life (Live) and Here Come the Bastards (Bassnectar Remix).

Primus: Sailing the Seas of Cheese Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Sailing the Seas of Cheese didn't exactly storm the charts when it was first released, and in fact it took several years for the album to be certified Platinum (it even took a while to make Gold). But listening to it again now, it's really a remarkably visceral piece that may pummel the listener at times, but which also provides some really fantastic moments for the three main players, Claypool, LaLonde and vigorous drummer Herb Alexander. This new Deluxe Edition has a great CD remixed by Claypool himself, but the real allure here is the incredibly punchy audio Blu-ray. Primus' music doesn't just reach out and touch the listener, it can virtually throttle the listener at times, albeit with a cheeky sense of humor, and the lossless audio offers a really stunning way to experience this perhaps underappreciated album in a whole new way. Highly recommended.