South of Reality: Claypool and Lennon's Delirious Collaboration

Background, discussion, and review on The Claypool/Lennon Delirium’s South of Reality (2019)

Relevant Links:

A very early posting on Sean Lennon’s Friendly Fire

A post on Oysterhead

Some thoughts on The Monolith of Phobos

Other favorites from 2016, including The Monolith of Phobos

Flashback to the Oughts: 2002

Music often connects to experience in strange, sometimes unpredictable ways, and its capacity to become vividly associated with times and places is, I feel, a given. In this blog, I have recently referred to these flashes of recollection that arise when listening to music from one’s past as “memory episodes,” but I don’t know that I have ever clearly defined what that means or why I think that it happens. As an organizing principle of this series in particular, it seems like that is an oversight worth addressing.

One could argue that recorded music is a phenomenological abomination. A recording tears music from the musical act and flattens it, which results in only half of a full experience for the listener. I theorize that when we listen to recorded music, the untethered aspects of the musical experience latch on to the things we are feeling, thinking, and doing as we listen. Later, if this tethering is strong enough, listening to music can trigger recollections through this association.  As I reconstructed 2002 for this best-of list, my memory episodes were somewhat painful to travel through.



This was the year that I experienced the end of a marriage and desperately sought out a new path for myself.  As a result, my recollections are a jumbled mess of crushing sorrow, indulgent escapism, and, later in the year, self-discovery tinted with desperation.

10. Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Lift yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven: My introduction to the problematic sub-genre “post-rock” also served as the soundtrack to my inner struggle with a friend’s suicide. Its melancholic mood swings still bring back sadness and rage.

9. Coldplay - A Rush of Blood to the Head: Before they became pigeonholed as the darlings of the new adult contemporary, Coldplay resonated with me as a reinterpretation of what was once good about U2. A Rush of Blood to the Head is brimming over with well-crafted melodies and arrangements.

8. Oysterhead - The Grand Pecking Order: Although the material on the album felt a little slipshot at times, listening to Stewart Copeland lock into a groove with Les Claypool made the whole thing worthwhile. Thanks to the influence to Trey Anastasio, The Grand Pecking Order also marks the beginnings of Claypool’s interest in the jam band format, and laid the seeds for his current work with Sean Lennon.

7. Brendan Benson - Lapalco: Benson followed up his criminally good One Mississippi debut with the merely excellent Lapalco. Jason Falkner’s co-writing presence firmly adjoins Benson to the Jellyfish Family Tree.

6. Glass Hammer - Chronometree: A self-aware and somewhat satirical concept album about the pitfalls of reading too much into concept albums. Glass Hammer has made many recordings since this cautionary tale, but it remains my favorite.

5. Happy the Man - Crafty Hands: For a time this year, I was so emotionally devastated that I could barely listen to music with lyrics without twisting their meaning to suit my addiction to self-pity. This mostly instrumental release was in rotation a lot during that time, and actually served to later inspire me to play the Stick, even though there is no Stick on the album.

4. Rush - Vapor Trails: After a significant hiatus, Rush returned to the studio and produced Vapor Trails, which was a great improvement upon its predecessor Test for Echo. Although the album was slightly uneven as a whole, the band’s playing and concept was stronger than ever.

3. Spock’s Beard - Snow: Neal Morse’s final album with Spock’s Beard ended up being a career-defining rock opera with no small amount of religious overtones. Like any rock opera, Snow has its share of filler, but by and large the material is so amazing and is executed with such exhilarating chemistry that this shortcoming can be easily overlooked.

2. Peter Gabriel - Up: In retrospect, there is the nagging sense that parts of this album seemed geared toward radio airplay. These moments are fleeting, however, revealing Gabriel to be at a creative zenith in terms of orchestration and arrangement.

Album of the Year 2002

1. Porcupine Tree - In Absentia: After the relatively polished songwriting approach that Porcupine Tree had been operating with since Stupid Dream, In Absentia represented the first step in a heavier direction. While the guitar riffs were thicker than before, there was no loss of the nuanced melody and texture that had come to be the band’s trademark.

The Lennon/Claypool Delirium and Homelessness

Almost immediately after I got back from the cruise, I began to transition into my new position in the North Texas area. Within a week, I was commuting from Austin to Denton, effectively homeless and relying on the hospitality of friends for a place to sleep. I spent a lot of time driving up and down I-35, and it would seem like a prime time to crank through a whole bunch of music, but my in-car CD rotation has remained basically static since the June roundup. This is partially because the CD collection is  still in boxes, but admittedly, I also have had a hard time letting go of this run of music. In retrospect, this collection of albums seems like a thread of continuity though that period.

And it feels as if I am still clinging to them, as they also represent the last vestiges of my Austin life: Weezer [white], A Moon Shaped Pool, The Force Awakens OST, Plastic House at Base of Sky, Some Boots, The Invention of Knowledge, Bottomless Pit, Get to Heaven, and The Monolith of Phobos. These albums all contain frozen moments from those long commutes. Rather then do an extended roundup of albums that I have mostly already addressed, however, the curious case of The Lennon/Claypool Delerium’s The Monolith of Phobos deserves specific mention (also because some readers asked for it).

Although I am a fan of both Les Claypool and Sean Lennon, I would never have predicted them collaborating. Over the past few years, Lennon waded through introspective pop waters into 60’s tinged psychedelia while Claypool, when not fronting Primus, seemed fully committed to the jam-band paradigm. Still, the two have found some common ground and despite the seeming oddness of their pairing, it works.



Any project that includes Les Claypool has to deal with the fact that no matter what happens, comparisons to Primus are inevitable. Despite being far more mercurial in his musicianship, however, Lennon’s nuanced songwriting and melodic strengths provide a compelling counterbalance to Claypool’s penchant for groovy ditties about all the freaks and weirdos he knows.

Furthermore, A quick look at the liner notes shows that the album is, indeed, created and performed entirely by Claypool and Lennon. Lennon has his share of convincing guitar and keyboard leads, but Claypool clearly bears the shredding burden. His bass playing is at an all-time high in terms of its melodic content. Lennon’s greatest strengths shine through as an arranger, but as a drummer, his performance is adequate, if sometimes frantic. While it works pretty well in the classic psychedelic style that they are shooting for, I can’t help but wonder what might have happened if the drums were outsourced - especially if Claypool is still on good terms with his old Oysterhead cohort and former Police drummer Stewart Copeland.



His presence, however, would endanger the project’s early Pink Floyd feel that, with some reinterpretation, the Delerium is pretty successful at capturing. This takes a little imagination to see: let’s say that if Roger Waters had an affinity for the Isley Brothers and Syd Barrett had not had a psychotic break, they might have developed a similar writing partnership as Claypool and Lennon.  Bubbles Burst is a good example of the way in which their unique characteristics mesh.



The video earned Lennon a bit of ire for its macabre characterization of Michael Jackson. It's important to note, however, that Lennon is not speaking as an outsider. He was one of several young celebrities that was invited to hang out at Neverland back in the day, which earns him the right to describe the experience however he sees fit.  Truth of the matter was, Jackson WAS weird, and just because he has passed on (due in part to his eccentricities) I don’t think that it is necessary to sweep Lennon’s perception of that whole scene under the carpet because it doesn’t portray Jackson in the most positive light. In fact, I think it's even more important because it is an honest recollection of a closed-door scene. Plus, it’s a actually a pretty good song.

And that’s the really impressive thing about The Monolith of Phobos. Despite all its quirkiness, it's an accessible listen. During one of our many family road trips during that month of homelessness, I put it on, fully prepared for the request to take it off and put in Everything Everything’s Get to Heaven again. I was surprised to watch the wife and kids bobbing their heads to the infectious funk shanty Captain Lariat. It became a family favorite that, like the Lennon/Claypool Delirium itself, I could not have predicted.  

I Remember 9-11: Oysterhead and Marillion

I was walking out of first period after a pretty good jazz band rehearsal when one of my students approached me and said “New York is on fire.”  Now, it’s not unusual to hear weird things like that in the halls of a 7-12 grade campus, so I was a little incredulous.  This kid was a senior who played lead trumpet in my jazz group, though, so I found it difficult to believe that he would spread exaggerated and unfounded rumors.

Judging from the buzz in second period, it was apparent that something was, indeed, going on.  In 2001, however, my campus was not equipped with a TV in every room, and certainly not in the band hall.  I had no way to confirm or refute what was happening.  I would glance in the library every period when I took the roll sheets to the office, but I couldn’t connect these brief glimpses of billowing smoke and chaotic streets into a cohesive narrative.

As teachers, we were instructed to continue with regular classes unless explicitly told otherwise.  As a result, I experienced 9-11 mostly through the students’ eyes as they struggled to make sense of the fractured images and soundbites of the day.  By 7th period, I certainly believed the gravity of the situation, but remained skeptical of the details.  I rushed home at 4:00 and, on my dial-up internet, I downloaded footage (and probably a few viruses) of the two towers going down using Kazaa.  Mortified, I repeated them endlessly.  I finally tore myself away and turned the TV to anything my antenna could pick up (I still don’t believe in cable, by the way) and remained glued to the set for the remainder of the evening.  While I struggled to comprehend the events and reactions on 9-11, I numbly began to work on a painting of Thelonius Monk that I never finished.

 While the American world was changing, I was coming to terms with another change that seemed important at the time, but receded in light of the events of the day. Primus, one of my favorite bands, announced a “permanent hiatus” earlier that year.  Although I was increasingly ambivalent about the band’s output, I certainly did not want to see them break up.  Later in the year, however, bassist Les Claypool formed the “supergroup” Oysterhead with Police drummer Stewart Copeland and Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio.  If any band were to be a home for Claypool outside of Primus, it would have been Oysterhead.

I was fascinated by the chemistry between these three very distinctive musicians as it played itself out on their singular release The Grand Pecking Order.  I thoroughly enjoyed seeing Copeland redeem himself on the drum throne after his stint with 90s yawn-rock outfit Animal Logic.  The material on the album was a little slapdash, but since the band billed itself as a “jam-band” outfit, the band’s fans considered it a loose frame of reference for Oysterhead’s mission statement. 

Connecting with the fans through newly emerging virtual conduits was becoming more common in 2001, and the other album that was rolling when the towers fell owed a lot to these new connections.  Marillion’s Anoraknophobia was funded entirely by fan donations through the band’s website, which was a pretty innovative approach for the time.  Distribution of the album was still patchy in the US, but, merely months before flying changed forever, I picked up a copy in a UK record store during a summer trip in Europe.  I was carefully considering the the ways in which the band's hard-fought financial independence gave them the opportunity to make an album relatively free of executive expectations. 

After original vocalist Fish left Marillion in the late 80s, the band’s track record had been spotty at best.  Singer Steve Hogarth took over in 1990, and since then they made a couple of great albums, a few bad ones, and very little in between.  In 2001, Anoraknophobia made a good impression on me, and even today I think that it is more poignant than cliché.  Still, it doesn’t represent the pinnacle of Marillion's work, especially with Hogarth at the helm.  It's pretty good, but not the best.

I once alluded to music’s capacity to provide a space away from the everyday, and I think that my memories of these albums are whitewashed with this escapist potential.  Both The Grand Pecking Order and Anoraknophobia seem to float oddly aloof from my emotional effort to come to grips with 9-11 and its aftermath, even though I remember listening to them.  They seem to remind me of the life I had surrounding 9-11 rather than the catastrophe itself.  The images of New York and my concern for the friends I had living there seem starkly silent in my mind as I look back today, ten years later.