Primus Pops Up at No. 7 With ‘Soda’ : ‘To me it was funny,’ says singer-bassist Les Claypool of the album’s chart premiere. The band’s music is alternative even to alternative rock.

Les Claypool, the silly voiced singer and slap-style bassist of the Bay Area band Primus, was as surprised as anyone when the trio’s latest album, “Pork Soda,” premiered last month at No. 7 on the Billboard pop album chart.

“To me it was funny,” Claypool, 29, said from his San Francisco home. “It was more humorous than anything. It seems so ridiculous. I mean, nobody expected it. It doesn’t really make sense, yet this is pretty damn cool.”

Those same words could serve quite well as a description of Primus’ music. Disjointed and willfully odd, it balances show-off instrumental skills and bizarre, stream-of-consciousness lyrics, sort of a cross between Rush (the most-acknowledged Primus influence) and some of Frank Zappa’s most offbeat moments. Claypool attributes the high showing not to wide musical appeal but to “persistence and perseverance that kept us in the ballgame for so long.”

Primus’ music is not just strange by Top 10 standards, it’s even alternative to contemporary “alternative” rock. Yet not only did it make the Top 10--following such relatively mainstream jobs as opening for Rush two years ago and U2 last year--but now Primus, which is rounded out by guitarist Larry Lalonde and drummer Tim Alexander, has taken the role as the closing band on “Lollapalooza ‘93,” the traveling alternative-rock festival that begins Friday in Vancouver.

Claypool cautions, though, that this is not a headlining slot.

“We’re just playing last,” he says, noting that the other bands on the bill didn’t want to go on at the end of a grueling rock marathon. “We have all these crazy films and lights we wanted to bring, and it was conducive to us to play after dark. It’s not the greatest slot to have. People will be tired, so we may be the traffic buffer, the band playing while people are driving home.”

In fact, Claypool, though a big fan of the “Lollapalooza” concept, is distancing himself from some of its fashion and style elements.

“I have no desire to be pierced at all,” he said, referring to the plethora and variety of body piercings associated with tour attendees. In some ways, that attitude serves to deflect the mounting pressures that have come with the raised visibility and expectations of the band, which began in 1984 and has now released four albums, the last two on major Interscope Records. It’s almost as if people expect the band either to ascend to full pop star status--like “Lollapalooza ‘92” acts Pearl Jam and the Red Hot Chili Peppers--or to collapse under the weight of success.

Claypool confidently asserts that neither will occur, and can’t imagine Primus having Pearl Jam-like adoration.

“I definitely don’t see us as a band that is going to ride a wave of popularity for a long time,” he said. “If we stay together and persevere, we’ll always have a cult following, unless we do something stupid like a Pepsi commercial and make everyone mad. I hope the part of my brain that keeps that from happening doesn’t fall to the wayside, like with other musicians I’ve seen after drugs or having kids.”