When Primus’ Les Claypool allows you to take your hat off while onstage with predominantly hat-wearing individuals—including Claypool, who would eventually switch headgear to a literal disco ball helmet—you know that you’ve made it as a jam-band legend. Sure enough, Sean Ono Lennon, who has been wanting to do a show without one of his fancy hats, tossed his dark, peaked cap aside, in front of the keyboard rig that Harry Waters—son of Pink Floyd’s Roger—stood in front of.
“I feel free now,” Lennon softly admitted.
“I think there are gonna be some panties thrown on the stage, or maybe boxer briefs.” Claypool replied.
The presence of John Lennon’s beautiful boy and the young Waters in Claypool’s Fearless Flying Frog Brigade isn’t too much of a shock. But then again, neither was percussionist Mike Dillon spending a good chunk of time going to town on a marimba. Needless to say, when Claypool is in the room, he doesn't have to explain anything. If it makes sense to him, it makes sense to everyone else, damn it.
The plan for this summer—the Flying Frog Brigade’s first together in 20 years—was to run through two mysterious-as-always sets of Claypool material (in front of some really harsh lighting situations). Squished in between would be a full performance of Pink Floyd’s Animals. Primus recently did cover-to-cover performances of Rush’s A Farewell To Kings, so why not take a crack at another prog-rock giant?
Lennon—a comrade of Claypool’s since 2015—was the only guitarist onstage, so many non-devotees in the sold-out crowd were worried about whether or not he would do David Gilmour’s inimitable guitar work justice. Sure enough, between Claypool’s distinctive, twangy bass licks and plenty of shared lead vocals from Waters, Lennon’s masterful shredding sounded like he might as well have been trained by Gilmour himself. Not to mention his youthful vocals that took on both, bookending, parts of “Pigs On the Wing.”
The Flying Frog Brigade seldom ever plays Primus tunes, so it was a treat when Claypool started the intro to “Southbound Pachyderm” (with a “Maple Leaf Rag” intro from Waters). But then longtime King Crimson singer Adrian Belew and ex-Talking Head Jerry Harrison—who opened the show together—joined in the fun for a few minutes for respective keyboard and guitar solo spots. Their drop-in was probably to replicate the “Crosseyed and Painless” jam session they had with Lennon and Dillon two songs into their dual opening set.
Tampa Bay hasn’t had a Talking Head in town since David Byrne brought his dynamic “American Utopia” tour to St. Petersburg in 2018. This year, Harrison and Belew—while backed by nine-piece funk outfit Turkuaz—are finally celebrating the 40th (well, at this point, 43rd) anniversary of both appearing on the Talking Heads’ 1980 Remain In Light album, originally planned for 2020. Mixed in with live performances of the record’s first five tracks are also selections from the band’s other cuts, and a handful of covers by those who came before.
Like during his time with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-inducted art-pop giant, Harrison differentiated between a minty green Telecaster and his own trio of synths. As for Belew—who will be back in town on Halloween night, for the Celebrating David Bowie tour stop at the Mahaffey Theater—had the more flexible lead vocals between himself, Harrison and baritone saxophonist Josh Schwartz. He even got a chance to take over for a version of King Crimson’s “Thela Hun Ginjeet,” which Lennon—who has previously admitted to not being a fan of that era of Crimson—watched from the stage-left wings.
