Twenty-two bucks bought a spot inside the Pageant, which includes having smoke blown in your face by people smelling like granola bars and eggs. Most are stoned out of their minds, and the Dead and Phish T-shirts were common. You can bet the mortgage that most of those haven’t been washed in a few weeks.

So, welcome to the SnoCore Icicle Ball, featuring Galactic, Colonel Les Claypool’s Fearless Flying Frog Brigade and Lake Trout.

Lake Trout is composed of five panheads from Baltimore, who somehow landed the opening slot for this tour in order to support their debut, Alone At Last. If Radiohead and Wavy Gravy spawned a misguided, deformed child, Lake Trout would be it.

They certainly thought their jazz, funk, rock and break-beat electronic combinations were important and diverse, but the early part of the set actually sounded like love-crazed whales.

When they tried to apply a bit of muscle to their so-called tunes, we realized that you could run your vacuum cleaner while listening to this music and not miss a thing. Not even a Pixies cover of “Wave of Mutilation” could save them. Perhaps they should change their name to Lake Troutsniffer. I think those jobs at the car wash are still vacant, boys.

Fast-forward two hours to the New Orleans combo Galactic, clearly out of their element in following the Frog Brigade. The group, now whittled down to a sextet, including the most uncharismatic soul man in recent memory, Theryl deClouet, probably earned the headlining spot because of their opening stint with the Counting Crows and Live last summer.

It’s not deserved, as their bounds between instrumental jazz-funk and R&B numbers proves boring, and monotonous. Not even the crowd-pleaser “1,2,3,4” earned any credibility. You could go into any bar in town and see the same crap, any night of the week. Where do bands like Galactic come from? Hell, perhaps?

Colonel Les Claypool and His Fearless Flying Frog Brigade clearly owned the show, and those who understood this go mental. Taking the stage in plaid pajamas and a Naval officer’s cap, Claypool immediately laid into “Riddles Are About Tonight,” as his pummeling, emphasized bass destroyed all chances for Galactic and Lake Trout to make an impact. “Prepare to be amazed,” shouted Claypool.

Indeed, we went throughout the entire seventy-minute set, sometimes with his bass playing, and sometimes with Claypool himself. He donned a pig mask for a Les Claypool and the Holy Mackeral number, another one of his side projects, and tore through a 10-minute version of the night’s only Primus song, “Harold of the Rocks.’

Covers were the focus of the night, beginning with “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” with full on name changes to Colonel Claypool in the appropriate places. Obviously “With A Little Help From My Friends” followed, as the band’s touring drummer took over lead vocal duties, in true Ringo fashion. The upright was brought out for the Tom Waits classic, “16 Shells From A Thirty-Ought-Six,” and the band even went into the Rolling Stones’ “2000 Light Years From Home” off of Their Satanic Majesties Request.

Colonel Les Claypool and His Fearless Flying Frog Brigade just sounds fun, and that’s what his show is all about. It’s not a groundbreaking show by any means, and sometimes the Holy Mackeral material did get a little slow, but we aren’t going to argue about singing Beatles’ tunes with Les Claypool. The show was all smiles, providing some much needed lunacy in a world of Galactics and Lake Trouts.