Frizzle Fry

Background

Released in 1990 on Caroline Records, it features the band's first single and minor radio hit "John the Fisherman". It was remastered in 2002, after the original had been out of print for years, and was released on Prawn Song Records. The remaster includes an extra track, named "Hello Skinny/Constantinople", a cover of the tracks "Hello Skinny" and "Constantinople" by The Residents.

"You Can't Kill Michael Malloy" is an excerpt from the Spent Poets song of the same name. The album's producer, Matt Winegar, who also recorded and produced Suck on This, was a member of the group, and a clip is featured just before "The Toys Go Winding Down". The beginning of "To Defy the Laws of Tradition" is an excerpt from the song "YYZ" by the band Rush on their album Moving Pictures, sampled from the live version of "John the Fisherman" which appears on Suck on This. Another Suck on This sample also appears at the end of "Groundhog's Day"; the "Hey hey, Bob Cock here!" spoken intro from that album's version.

"Too Many Puppies" has been adopted by some sports venues as bumper music. The track "John the Fisherman" was used in the video game Guitar Hero II.

Live performance

The album was performed live in its entirety on their Hallucino-Genetics Tour in 2004 and few more times in 2010. During Primus' 2004 Hallucino-Genetics Tour, where Frizzle Fry was performed as the second set, "You Can't Kill Michael Malloy" was used in its entirety as a short set break, as opposed to merely the excerpt.

Critical reception

Reviewing the album for Allmusic, Ned Raggett notes that "it's pretty easy to see in retrospect how much of a melange went into the group's work. Nods but thankfully few outright steals to everything from Frank Zappa's arch humor and Funkadelic's sprawl to the Police's early, spare effectiveness crop up and, indeed, so does plenty of Metallica." He contends that "something about Frizzle Fry is ultimately and perfectly of its time and place." Robert Christgau simply describes the album as "Don Knotts Jr. joins the Minutemen."

Public reception

Frizzle Fry was well received by the public. On Rate Your Music the album has an average rating of 3.75 of 5, based on more than 2,550 ratings, and on Sputnikmusic the album has an "excellent" average rating of 4.2 of 5, based on more than 850 ratings.

Track listing

All lyrics written by Claypool; all music composed by Primus, except where noted.

Credits

Writing, performance and production credits are adapted from the album liner notes.

Primus

Additional musicians

Production

Visual art

Studios