Meat puppets - Mirage

the police??? nick i almost always agree with you but...the police? (haha i like the revalation in the reynolds book that up on the sun was inspired by duran duran(

Not to say that it's not good. It's good.

It's just, II & up on the sun, were, like, sooooooo good.

And some of the stylistic changes were pretty annoying.

not that I dont love rawk and zztop - is just a matter of attachment to II and sun. Which did sound quite different from each other.

basically I have no point.

(Back to the pathology of my odd Police thing -oh no!- take 'Mirage' and something like 'Tea In The Sahara' and there is this same sound, basically a choppy funk chord thing but given a bit of sustain... Did Boss make a special pedal that people were obliged to use on all desert songsin the 80s? I don't mean that clever picking pattern though, cos that reminds me of err... do you know Blues for Allah?)

Agreed on the love for "Confusion Fog", but given how much it reminds me of "Lost" that makes sense. Also, I really dig "Mighty Zero"'s building chorus, don't care much for the verses though.

And, by that time the band had lost their stoner charm (and songwriting skills?) and settled for a sound I can only describe as "choogling".

Granted, "Meat Puppets II" and "Up on the Sun" were hard acts to follow, probably nver to be equalled again by the band butCris Kirkwood's descent into drug addiction probably had something to do with the lackluster nature of everything they recorded after 1985.

I think Mirage was recorded in 1986, Huevos in 1987. Meanwhile, across town, the Sun City Girls were making Horse Cock Phepner...

I've heard he ate nothing but cherry garcia for a year.

I have a live bootleg of a 1987 Pupps show in New Jersey, and I have to admit I've never heard this album, but all the songs from there sound terrific! Love Your Children! The Mighty Zero! Leaves kind of sounds like Aurora Borealis but with words...maybe they sound different on the album (no trace of synthesizers on the live cuts) but this album seems to me like it would be like everything I liked from II/Up on the Sun rolled into one!

Did you get it off that all-Pups live show sharing site?

no, slsk.

I love Mirage. didnt know people hated it

Huevos is great too

funny, i just deleted this album off my computer today (to make room, still have it on CD), otherwise I'd probably listen to it right now. it's OK, but it definitely suffers from being released the same year as a much better album and I kinda consider it in the 2nd tier of MP albums.

this thread is like bizarro world to me, I like Mirage as much as anything except maybe Up On the Sun & had no idea people viewed it as a downward turn - to me it's a peak

Did you get it off that all-Pups live show sharing site?

link pls

j0hn otm

Here's the Meat Pups live page mentioned upthread. I posted it to the C/D S/D.
http://www.wohlers.org/puppets/

much much much appreciated

alright listened to the album...the album versions of these songs do sound both overproduced and a tad dumbed-down...plus they're slower, which shouldn't have come as a surprise considering how fast the songs from II/Up on the Sun were being played...good stuff but the live versions are in fact superior...

awlright the live show I have is not on the repository that Trip Maker posted...:(

You should send it to them.

and to me

yeah, i'm curious abt the live show too. will look around for. and while i love mirage, i guess i agree it's maybe a slight n tiny step down from the II/Out My Way/Up On the Sun PEAK peak. Like more a satisfying consolidation/refinement than the head-spinning constant expansion that preceded it. as a result, lacks the moments of total leftfield WTF brilliance (and whistling), though the songwriting is totally solid, sometimes great.

huevos is where they really changed their basic sound/style, and while i mostly like that record, i lost interest soon after.

love how strong the singing is on this.

i love this album

Me too. The Meat Puppets are the only band I like where I think I can dig every era of their evolution almost equally. Chaotic noisy early stuff? Love it. Shambling noisy cowpunk? Love it? Mutant psychedelia? Love it. ZZ-Top boogie worship? Love it? Synth-drum poptunes? Love it? Hair metal freakouts? Love it. Grunge-style power pop? Love it (admittedly not as much as the rest, but still).

Left a few too many ?s in there, sorry.

You know what Pups record is TRULY overlooked is the Out My Way EP. It came between Up On The Sun and Mirage and when it came out I remember thinking they hadn't slipped from UOTS at all. 'Mountain Line' in particular has some of Curt's hottest 'clean' guitar playing ever.

God I read the band name as Peat Muppets for a second.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2a/PeatMarwickLogo.jpg

Ha I used to think about the idea of 'Peat Muppets' all the time...

Synth-drum poptunes?

what era is this?

There's one song on Mirage with syndrums, believe it or not.

Out My Way is the bomb

dont know about the new new one but Rise to Your Knees had some great stuff on it; its a safe bet that they still got it

i wanted so much for the new MPs albums to be good but the first 2 left me so cold that i never even checked out the 3rd. which is a big contrast to, say, the last 3 Dinosaur Jr. albums.

man I've repped for it in other MP threads, but "On the Rise" is def one of my favorite post-Out My Way songs, and the video is p grand as well

There's one song on Mirage with syndrums, believe it or not.

ALL the songs on Mirage have syndrums. Derrick switched to using a MIDI hit with those hexagonal pads for that album, and maybe even on Monsters too. He's written about it before on his blog.

Kit not hit aargh.

You know what Pups record is TRULY overlooked is the Out My Way EP. It came between Up On The Sun and Mirage and when it came out I remember thinking they hadn't slipped from UOTS at all. 'Mountain Line' in particular has some of Curt's hottest 'clean' guitar playing ever.

This is one of those "Why have I never checked this out?" releases, I normally really like the idea of EPs too.

xpost really? Wow! I guess I should say then that there's one song with in-your-face-obvious syndrums on Mirage.

Derrick's blog is amazing, I've spent like 6 hours on there and only scratched the surface. Can you link me to the post you're referring to?

He writes a bit about it here - I misremembered the drum pads, he says they were triangular!

http://derrickbostrom.com/chaton-sessions-part-two-mirage/

why does everyone hate this record?
― mullygrubbr (bulbs), Friday, July 1, 2005 9:36 AM (eighteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

discomfort with the outright frippertronics (which for me is a plus)?