[ATTENDED: October 1, 2021] Primus [rescheduled from June 19, 2020; and July 10, 2021]
Three years ago I saw Primus for the first time in 30 some years. The show was featuring their then new EP The Desaturated Seven. So, it wasn’t the ideal way to catch up with them, since they spent a lot of time playing that EP in its entirety. The rest of the set was a mix of songs, with a bunch of songs from Pork Soda and some of their “hits.” I was a little annoyed by the crowd at the show (when did tough guys start liking Primus?). And in my post I wrote
Maybe in 2020 they’ll be back for a big two set career-capping tour.
Interestingly, they did come back in 2020, with a two-set show, but rather than career capping, it included a cover of the album A Farewell to Kings by Rush. If I was there only for Primus, I’d have been annoyed at losing 40 minutes to another band. However, A Farewell to Kings is one of my favorite albums of all time and knowing how Primus feels about Rush, I knew that this would be an amazing experience. The show had been postponed a few times but finally, October 1 arrived and I headed to the Met in Philly.
The show was supposed to start at 7, so once again, I left from work and arrived quite early. Early enough to get one of the night’s posters. But boy was it ugly. I didn’t want it on my wall, so I passed (there have been some really nice posters this tour, so I was bummed about ours). Then I stood by the fence and waited with some remarkably loud and rather unpleasant characters.
In my head, Primus is for oddballs who like weird music. But clearly they have struck a nerve with an unexpected crowd–people I would never hang out with intentionally. So that sucked. But once they got their nonsense out of their system after a few songs, people settled down and just enjoyed the music.
I asked someone at the show if the sets were different every night and he said that Primus always mixed up their setlists so it was worth seeing them a bunch of nights in a row. Indeed, the night after ours, they played several songs that I would have really liked to hear–although our set was pretty great too. (more…)