and rerecording an album that never came out. The Looters signed to Island and put out one record, after one record on Alternative Tentacles. And that did nothing. And Big City broke up. So Brain [Bryan “Brain” Mantia] and Pete Scaturro formed the Limbomaniacs, and there were other bands, like Psychefunkapus, that went on to sign with Atlantic, and Fungo Mungo, who went on to sign with Island. The Limbomaniacs signed with Relativity Records, and had their one album produced by Bill Laswell, and it featured Maceo Parker and Bootsy Collins. And suddenly, this Red Hot Chili Peppers/Fishbone kind of vibe was the most influential thing in the Bay Area.
JAY LANE: We played these little clubs, and it was super packed. It was really relaxed, I remember it being really loose, because Les would have this little banter with the audience. To me, it really broke the whole thing of . . . All the bands I was in, in the eighties, it was like, We’re up here performing. We’ve got to be really good. There was no talking with the audience. It wasn’t like, “Hey, let’s just break it down. What’s up with this guy? Hey!” That was really cool, and it made it really easy to just relax and play. We didn’t make any money, but it was fun.
CHRIS “TROUZ” CUEVAS: Some of those local gigs were selling out, like Berkeley Square and this place called the Omni. All of a sudden, the energy of the fans changed. There was a line around the block and the intensity inside the show was just so crazy, with people stage-diving and going crazy. Back then, the Omni seemed like this major, huge club. And it probably only would hold five or six hundred people. But back then, that was a big deal.
Berkeley Square was small. Y’know, a black-box rock club, kind of. But fairly eclectic, and all the big bands that later became pretty huge came through and played Berkeley Square—from U2 to the Chili Peppers; the Clash one time came through. It was that small club that everybody played, and Berkeley didn’t really have many live music venues. It only had two, I think—the Keystone Berkeley and the Berkeley Square. So there then was this club in Oakland [the Omni], owned by the guy who started the Nady wireless system—one of the first wireless systems back then. It was a big, open space—high ceiling, not a rock club–looking place at all. And it had a big backstage, where you could roll your equipment. It seemed really professional. You go by that building today and you look at it from the outside, and you’re like, “That’s a piece of shit!” [Laughs] But it was amazing back then.
DAVID LEFKOWITZ: I used to create these bills that would draw enough people to warrant us doing a show headlining at the Omni in Oakland. I would call it the Funk Thrash Festival—just so people thought it was this big thing. Typically, it would be four bands—usually Primus and the Limbomaniacs, and then two other bands. And it did great—we would sell a thousand tickets on a regular basis. We could do that at least every other month—sometimes every six weeks. So we were able to make enough money from those shows to not only live on, but channel funds back into the band.
TODD HUTH: Jay came in, and he started playing and all the songs came together real fast. Then we went down and recorded a tape called Sausage. That kind of kicked off people noticing Primus—that tape.
LES CLAYPOOL: The Sausage demo came about because we were doing some shows locally. I think we were doing a show in the South Bay with Fungo Mungo. It was the first time we played with those guys and we were hanging out with them. They took us into . . . I don’t remember if it was my car or one of their cars, to play us their demo. And we were like, “Holy shit, this thing sounds amazing!” Sonically, it just sounded amazing. Mike, the guitar player, was like, “Dude, you’ve got to hook up with our buddy Matt Winegar. He did this on his little TASCAM.” I’m like, “Hell yeah, let’s hook up with this guy.” So we go to their rehearsal space, which was basically this storage unit down in Fremont, I think. We go in the place, and here’s this kid, Matt Winegar. I don’t know if he was fresh out of high school or still in high school. But he was this kid, and he had this little TASCAM reel-to-reel eight-track in this storage unit, and he set up a few mics—nothing fancy, some 57s and 58s. And me, Todd, and Jay played those songs that are on the Sausage demo. And it just sounded amazing. So then we had that demo and we started spreading it around, and it got very popular. That’s where the relationship started between us and Matt Winegar. I have a buddy that works with a lot of major acts and to this day he still plays that demo for folks, claiming it’s the best Primus recording ever.
MATT WINEGAR [Suck on This and Frizzle Fry coproducer]: Actually, I had a cassette tape that was a Primate cassette. I wish I still had that thing. It was crazy—I think it was just Les and Todd and a cheap drum machine. It has a version of “Too Many Puppies” that is the polar opposite of the version that ended up on the record. Super lightweight—almost like the B-52s or something. [Laughs] So Les said, “Let’s meet up on Saturday. What would you charge us? We need to do a five-song EP or something.” I was like, “I won’t charge you anything. Just come by and hang out.” I’m just a sixteen-year-old kid, getting to hang out with other musicians like myself, which was fun. And I always thought that Jay Lane was an amazing drummer too. It’s nice to sit and watch a really tasteful and funky drummer like Jay. So they came by on Saturday, and I remember they brought me a six-pack of Miller High Life. [Laughs] That’s what I was paid to do what’s now known as the Sausage demo.
Man, we just set everything up, threw some microphones on things, and it was maybe the easiest recording ever. It was like, set them all up and get them comfy, and they just did their thing, which I think was the big difference—they had been in all these professional studio environments, and it just altered them so much. Just the environment of being in a professional studio is weird to a musician a lot of times. Sometimes you’re separated and you have headphones. I’m pretty sure we did that thing with zero headphones. I think they felt really comfortable, and they got to play together, like they would in a rehearsal space. So we busted that thing out, and we just got along really good. We liked a lot of the same music and had similar interests.
DAVID LEFKOWITZ: The cover [of the Sausage demo] was no longer black and white, it was brown paper and had an interesting drawing by Les. Les was always very active making T-shirts for the band—his drawings or whatever. Sometimes it would be a shirt just for one show. So not only were the sales for the shows picking up, but they started being able to sell these tapes at shows.
LES CLAYPOOL: I didn’t draw that cover. It was the first of many Lance “Link” Montoya collaborations featuring a sketch of a sweaty bald man with a bratwurst clinched between his teeth.
MATT WINEGAR: The Sausage demo, it really wasn’t like a huge event. We did it in one day . . . we did it in one afternoon, it wasn’t even a day. It was probably a four-hour session, where we did the whole thing, mixed it, and that was it. It was a certain kind of chemistry going on with those guys, right around that point. Jay and Les really had a good thing going on with the rhythm section. I just loved the way Jay played the drums. I was a Jay Lane fan—Jay’s style was something that I thought there was a certain feel he had, where you go, Man, that guy’s got feel. He’s got something else going on besides, hey, he’s a really good drummer. Technically, he plays this and that. They had a personality that I thought was really interesting. And Les and him together, they just had this really good thing going on. I got the feeling that Les really enjoyed playing with Jay, a lot, during that time. And that they were sort of on the same page and not fighting each other, because I imagine being a drummer with Les, Les is going to lay down the tempo and feel, and he’s not going to budge.
That’s always been the thing with Les—most bass players are taught to follow the drums. And Les never did that. In fact, he would stay at one tempo and let the drummer drift off of him, and the drummer would have to come back and meet Les—Les just wouldn’t budge. And I know that it bothered Tim [Alexander] a little bit down the road. I remember Tim saying, “It’s so annoying. If the song starts to move a little bit, Les just stays right where
