Colonel Les Claypool's Fearless Flying Frog Brigade

by Russell Solomon.

Palace Theatre, Hollywood, CA, USA. October 15, 2002.

The show was excellent! This was the first time seeing MIRV. They were really funny. The lead singer, MIRV Haggard, made funny faces which added positively to his stage presence. Two songs that stood out were Million Ton Bomb and the one where he says "Don't make me get out my 50 cal." Les Claypool came out and jammed the whamola stick during this one. He had an alien mask on.

The Frog Brigade started off with Up On The Roof. It got the crowd moving because of its 3/4 time signature. They next played David Makalaster. Other songs I remember them playing are:

• Thela Hun Ginjeet
• Hendershot
• Cohibas Esplenditos (Mirv Haggard came out and played the electric bowed saw! That is exactly what it was - a regular hand saw with pickups hooked up to an amplifier. He used a violin bow to bow it and it produced the shrill high pitched electric guitar-esque wailings. It was really cool to see exactly how he did this because I've been listening to the recording of this song on The Holy Mackarel CD for years)
• Highball W/ the Devil (with a super long percussion jam in the middle between Fish Fisher, Mike Dillon, and Tim "Herb" Alexander), Buzzards of Green Hill, and D's Diner.
• Long In The Tooth (Les sang into an old fashioned microphone attached to the modern one. His voice sounded different - an interesting effect.

That is all the exact songs I can remember. Also, during one jam an asian girl with a sitar jammed with Mr. Claypool. She kinda sucked, but then got into a little more and sounded pretty good. Then, another guy (I couldn't tell if he was asian, or black, or maybe mixed) jammed on a headless bass with Les.

The encore was just weird. The Frog Brigade came back on stage. Another man walked on the stage carrying a Rickenbacher bass guitar. I didn't recognize him, but Les introduced him as Mike Watt. I was like whoa! It's Mike Watt! They then played a cover of Taxman (I believe this is a Pink Floyd song?!?) Mike Watt jammed along but kinda sucked. I think he had just purchased this Rickenbacher because it still had a price tag on it. Rickenbachers are weird basses- and I think Mr. Watt was having trouble with is new bass. Les stopped and said something along the lines that Mike Watt is known for his skills on the old four string. Basically I think Les noticed he was messing up. Mike continued to jam and finally got the hang of his bass - sorta. They kept playing and Les started into Wynonna's Big Brown Beaver. He sang one verse and then went back into Taxman.

It was all very strange indeed, but I've come to expect as much from Les Claypool's Frog Brigade.