Primus bass mastermind Les Claypool talked about the very early days of the band and his musical journey in general, saying on the Let There Be Talk podcast:
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“When I started the band in ’84 we were [called] Primate. It was basically me and a drum machine.
“And then I ended up connecting with an old buddy of mine from high shool. Yeah, we were in the clubs pretty much every single night but I really didn’t really know much about the metal scene. I knew my buddy Kirk from high school was in this band that was doing really well.
“There was this whole world beat scene that was going on in the Bay Area and I used to work for a bunch of those bands, like Big City, The Looters, Mapenzi, Freaky Executives… And it was this whole scene that was going on during the metal thing that was huge. But then it sort of imploded because of the band management.
“San Francisco was a way different place than it is now. First of all, all the places that we used to hang and throw underground parties and whatnot, they’re all gazillion dollar homes now where Zuckerbergs and people like that live. And there were many different scenes and Broadway itself was crazy.
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“The Fab Mab… Primus’ first gig was at Mabuhay Gardens in 1984. Every time we played The Mab we ended up getting in fights with the skinheads in the alleyway. Because I had this guy who was sort of our manager who was an ex-president of La Raza Unida in San Leandro and he was just this big bad ass Latino dude.
“And every time we played there the skinheads would try and fuck with us while we were loading our gear. And he would just smash them. It was crazy.”