Southbound Pachyderm
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| "Southbound Pachyderm" | ||
|---|---|---|
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| Single by Primus | ||
| from the album Tales from the Punchbowl | ||
| Released | 1995 | |
| Genre | Alternative rock Funk metal Alternative Metal |
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| Length | 6:22 | |
| Label | Interscope Records | |
| Writer(s) | Claypool/LaLonde/Alexander | |
| Producer(s) | Primus | |
| Chart positions | ||
| Primus singles chronology | ||
| Mrs. Blaileen 1995 |
Southbound Pachyderm 1995 |
Shake Hands With Beef 1997 |
Southbound Pachyderm was a track off of the Primus album Tales from the Punchbowl. The song is dominated by Larry LaLonde's guitar playing and a repeating bass line by Les Claypool. The song is over 6 minutes long, as instrumental jamming dominates the end of it.
The song is actually a protest song against poaching in Africa, the band specifically addressing pachyderms, as they seem to be more "common targets" for poachers. It is also a direct reference to the 1977 album Animals by one of Primus' main influences, Pink Floyd.
[edit] Music Video
The song was released as the second single of the Punchbowl album. The music video featured poachers trying to hunt down elephants that were being protected by a group of natives. In the end the elephants, rhinoceroses and hippopotomuses escaped. (The elephants had separate airplane-like wings on their backs, the rhinos had helicopter propellers on their backs, and the hippos piled into a dirigible.) Primus themselves only appeared a few times in the video, on the poacher's TV set. It was the band's first fully-Claymation video of several to come.
