On "temporary snooze" from his band Primus, bassist Les Claypool [ tickets ] has kept busy with his current project, the Flying Frog Brigade, which will soon be releasing a live album on Claypool's own Prawn Song record label. Claypool formed the group after the May 2000 Oysterhead show (with Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio and drummer Stewart Copeland) at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.

"Frog Brigade sort of spawned from that Oysterhead thing," Les explained. "Oysterhead was massively huge--we sold out 3,000 seats in, like, 12 minutes. Tickets on eBay were going for two grand. Francis Ford Coppola was out in the audience--actually he was sitting on the side of the stage. It was just an insane scene. I was freaking out.

"So, from that, I was asked to put together various projects for various events, and one of them was for the Mountain Aire Festival at Angels Camp, which is the Calaveras County frog-jumping contest. So I put together a band and called it Les Claypool's Frog Brigade. It was me, Jack Irons [Pearl Jam and Red Hot Chili Peppers] and Tim Alexander [Primus] on drums, and then M.I.R.V. [Bay Area guitarist] and Skerik [saxophonist of Critters Buggin]. From there, it just sort of evolved into what Frog Brigade is now. It was a floating band there for a while, but now it's pretty solid."

The current lineup is an amalgamation of Bay Area musicians, from guitarist Todd Huth and drummer Jay Lang (both formerly members of Primus) and keyboardist Jeff Chimenti (En Vogue, Pharoah Sanders), to Skerik and guitarist Eenor of Critters Buggin.

"We just started playing and doing gigs and a little mini-tour," Claypool continued, "and the band was just sort of built from me wanting to find the best musicians I could possibly find. I ran an ad in some local papers and got hundreds and hundreds of tapes and videos of different players."

Claypool certainly needed the right kind of players to perform the eclectic material he wanted to do. "This band sort of solidified from me wanting to do Pink Floyd 'Animals' in its entirety," he confessed. "So I needed all these guys to do 'Animals,' and when we did the first tour, we just bonded. It was never like, 'Okay, this is my band, I want you in my band.' It was more like, 'Well, I've got another show coming up, who wants to do it?'"

The impending Frog Brigade live album comes on the heels of the relatively lackluster sales ("maybe a quarter million") of Primus' 1999 album "Anti-Pop," and the curious MTV ban of the video for the Fred Durst-produced song "Lacquerhead."

"They said it was too violent. So go figure," he said. "The animation was done by the same guy that did 'The Devil Went Down to Georgia.' It's no more violent than a Road Runner cartoon--in fact, it's not even as violent. I think they just didn't want to play it, and they were looking for an excuse.

"The unfortunate thing is that 'Lacquerhead' itself is a very strong anti-drug song. There's a very poignant point to be made there about people who sniff glue and other chemicals, about how dangerous it is. [MTV] just didn't get it. MTV is there to sell you Pepsi and Nike tennis shoes. That's what they're about. They want safe, soft crap, and that's what they're pushing you. Right now they're pushing all these anger-rock bands and, you know, it's all about image and whatnot."

That being said, Claypool is still optimistic about the future. "I think the whole music scene in general is in a strange state," he concluded, "but I'm sure it will come back around. It always does. Art always finds a way of weaseling through a crack in the sidewalk. In fact, I'm sure that, because of all this, there's going to be an incredible backlash; some really cool scene will come from it, against it, because of it."

Claypool's Frog Brigade, Galactic and others will be on the bill for the SnoCore Icicle Ball, which opens in Las Vegas on Jan. 17.