ostensibly odd

The Offspring - yummy grungey punk, in the early days at least. It's amusing to watch their decline from serious grunge at the start, through slightly more traditional punk in the Smash era, to the decidedly commercialized pop-punk of Americana. eewww. Americana is the newest album I've experienced - does anyone have a report on their more recent work?

I wouldn't be so harsh with this crew, but I held them in such high regard because they're a band I clearly remember hearing when riding around with the bro when he first got his driver's license. Tim's approval is the highest mark on my grade sheet, so for them to turn into something he would definitely not approve of is very sad.

Those guys from Six Ways 'til Sunday might have covered the occasional early Offspring song...

The Ohio Players - something akin to Parliament before they turned into Parliament. You might know them from the überfunky "Love Rollercoaster", but probably not much else. I think they simply came around a year or two too early to be blockbusters.

The Orb - super-trippy electronica. As we inch closer to the beginning of the alphabet, you might realize that I constantly listen not to heavy metal, but to obscure, weird electronica that is unpleasant to the general public. After Claypool stuff, that is. Tim's fault! :-)

Os Mutantes - odd distorted-guitar mariachi? Something like that. They're currently my best Portuguese study aid, although I don't know if they're continental or Brazilian. This could be part of the reason why my Portuguese is so awful. It means "The Mutants", by the way.

(note: they're Brazilian, which means I won't be able to communicate with anyone in either location. eek, I looked something up!)

Oysterhead - next on the Claypool list, we have a supergroup of sorts in Oysterhead, featuring Trey Anastasio (Phish) on guitar and antlers, Les on bass, and Stewart Copeland (The Police) on drums, pots and pans, and anything else that makes a noise when you hit it. Surely because of Trey's influence, this ensemble seems to mark Les' foray onto the "jam band" scene, as well as a general shift for all Claypool bands away from fairly rigid structure towards longer songs (live, in particular) and unscripted solos on all instruments.

Their one album sounds pretty Phishy, whether it's Les or Trey doing vocals. Though a few songs are profoundly Claypool-grade bizarre ("The Grand Pecking Order", "Army's on Ecstasy"), it's much lighter and not-bass-focused than any other Les album. Thus, I don't find it that entertaining, but that almost universally implies that normal people will like it.

Live Oysterhead was apparently a different story. I never got to see them, but I've picked up plenty from talking to other concert-goers and browsing that one Y-something online video repository. To start, they drew an awful lot of Phish fans, so you know the mental state of most of the crowds. Then Trey rarely played an unmodified guitar - the one I know of has a mount of deer antlers for the body with a regular guitar neck attached... With that one, he could also twist a few knobs and wave his hands around the antlers like a Theremin. Yes, the correct response is "huh??" Combine that with Les' glasses with flashlights attached to the sides and Mr. Copeland's vast array of cooking utensils, and you have a certified crazy concert experience.

Ozzy Osbourne - I am an Ozznovice, but I can't leave out the bat-eater we all know and love.