I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: COLONEL LES CLAYPOOL’S FEARLESS FLYING FROG BRIGADE-Live Frogs Set 2 (2001).

After few months after releasing Set 1, Claypool released Set 2.  At the end of Set 1, he concluded by saying that the next set would feature: “more Pink Floyd than any human being should ever withstand.”

And indeed, Set 2 is the entire Pink Floyd Animals album.

Do the Flying Frog Brigade still includes former Primus guys Todd Huth (guitar) and Jay Lane (drums) in addition to guitarist Eenor, Jeff Chimenti on keyboards and Skerik on saxophone.  And of course, Les on bass and vocals.

Les says he always wanted to get a band together that could do justice t o Pink Floyd and he certainly found one.  The album sounds great here.  All five songs sound spot on.  I believe someone other than Les sings lead on “Sheep,” but I see no evidence of that.

There are some lengthy jams, and of course, sax where there isn’t any, but this isn’t meant to be a note for note recreation.  Rather it a respectful rendition with some excellent musicians who are willing to have a little fun with the songs too.  It’s a great release.

[READ: January 20, 2014] “Lamb Stew”

This week’s issue of the New Yorker was its semi-annual food issue.  As such there were four food-related essays by writers who I’ve written about before.  The section was called “Rations.”

The second was by Will Mackin.

Mackin was a soldier north of Basra.  And he talks about ow the desert cooked everything.  Iraqis call it “the date cooker,” the British soldiers call it “the face cooker,” but in his experience it cooked everything.

He talks about so many initials (I.E.D., L.Z., B.F.H. (big fucking holes) and of course M.R.E.).

There’s not a lot about food in this one, actually.  He says that the desert environment messes with your system so that even after 36 hours with neither, he didn’t want sleep or food.  So they took a trip across the desert in which they narrowly avoided falling into a B.F.H. That snapped him out of not being hungry anymore.

Sadly, al that was left was an M.R.E. of lamb stew (which didn’t even taste good in his deprivation).