meat puppets
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'There's nothing at the top but a bucket and a mop and an illustrated book about birds'
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If you've heard of these guys, it's most probably for one reason - the appearance of the Brothers Kirkwood with Nirvana at the latter's famous Unplugged session in 1993, performing songs from the Meat Puppets second album. If this is true for you, then you probably didn't know that the Meat Puppets began WAY back in 1980, and between then and 1995 they recorded a whopping NINE albums (six for SST - recently rereleased by Rykodisc, and three for London), none of which can be called a dud.
But if you already knew all that, well, good for you.
But I digress - my first contact with the Meat Puppets only happened a couple of years ago, through their listing in the SST catalogue. I thought 'What the hell?' and got their third album, 'Up On The Sun'. This was an unusual record from the beginning - the summery, colourful artwork; the liner notes on the back cover stating that the whole album was recorded in three days! I couldn't wait to play it, and when I did, it was a revelation. Twelve simple tunes - just a jangly guitar and unforced, monotone vocals from Curt, fluid bass from Cris, and simple drumming by Bostrom - but executed with such heart, evoking an atmosphere of warmth, and affecting me in a completely different way to anything else in my music collection. It was part punk, part country, part psychedelic, and all good! I couldn't wait to hear more, and soon after that I got their debut album, 'Meat Puppets'.
What a difference.
'Meat Puppets' is a cacophony of sound and anger spat out at ferocious speed - completely at odds with their later material - but still possessive of a certain melody and a fundamental cohesion that sets it well above the thrashings of your average garage band demo.
It wasn't long before I was filling my CD rack with Meat Puppets music - 'Mirage', 'Huevos', 'Monsters', 'Forbidden Places', 'Too High To Die', 'No Joke!' and of course, 'Meat Puppets II', the perfect blend of punk and country exemplified by the songs everyone knows: 'Plateau', 'Oh Me' and 'Lake Of Fire'. Although their sound differs, evolves as the years progress, there's a certain indefinable, timeless quality to their inventive songwriting and sometimes-nonsensical, always-thought provoking lyricism.
Anyway, this is just my way of saying that the Meat Puppets rule. I might add some more stuff to this page in the near future (the whole site, as a result of my laziness, is in a state of constant construction), but I'll close up for now with a link to the official band website, www.meatpuppets.com - with information about the NEW Meat Puppets and their exploits, and which happens to be maintained by Mr. Bostrom himself, so it must be good - and to a cool fan page run by SACKzilla, one of the guys on the Meat Puppets mailing list at ONElist.com (if you want to join, just sign up and search for 'Meat Puppets')
Oh, and don't forget to check out their entry in the Rough Guide to Rock - I'm sure there's others (probably better ones too) out there so use a search engine like the Google one at my entrance page. You don't expect me to do everything for you, do you?
Follow this link to the Meat Puppets section of my Lyrics Archive.
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