Meat Puppets S/D, C or D

Creator, for that scrambling guitar, the languid matter of fact vocal delivery, and the line
"Some say openly, I don't know. Some build eleavators"

five year later, this still sounds gorgeous and amazing to me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIFx2_Se8R8

I agree. Great tune. I hadn't heard it before.

New podcast interview with Cris Kirkwood

https://soundcloud.com/theair-raidpodcast/air-raidnet-episode-263-meat-puppets

Here 15 golden greats.

Great list! I'd have had Light and Like Being Alive from Monsters in there I think.

Saw them several times, first at this show in Bloomfield NJ, summer of '85. I don't remember Derrick Bostrom looking this friggin' hot:

https://pooneilblog.wordpress.com/tag/the-jetty/

Springsteen was playing a Born in the USA show a few miles away, so during their encore someone (in a crowd of maybe 30) yelled "Bruce." So they did a loud, fast version of "Dancing in the Dark."

was just listening to Up On The Sun last night, it sounded great.

I think I'd add a few more of the 1st lp tracks as my favourites but that list isn't bad.

love the demo tracks included in the 'up on the sun' reissue, some of it is the most stoned sounding music I can think of

UotS still and forever in my top 5 rock records

This is one of those bands where Cobain farted in their general direction once, so YouTube comments for their songs are full of stuff like: “KURT’S FAVORITE BAND!!”; “KURDT HAD GOOD TASTE, MAN”; etc.

It used to be the cool thing was not telegraphing that you learned about something that way, lol

Haven't seen the Meat Puppets play in years, but they sound really good on some of the semi-recent video clips online for radio sessions.

They were doing some shows with Mike Watt and someone else pretty good from the old SST scene out on the west coast recently too.

xxp Meat Pups covers and participation on Nirvana's Unplugged show add up to more than farting in their general direction: more like meaty-aromatic otm. Repost of the review-interview I did for long gone Paper Thin Walls in '07, had a really nice conversation (they were in a Texas truckstop, I was on the phone):
https://papercomet.blogspot.com/2017/03/meat-puppets.html

Derrick Bostrom is back in the band, it seems???

great news!

Seriously great/immediate new song (with Bostrom on drums I guess?). Hits all their best note-vibes; you can ride this one a long way out into the desert. (Trust me on that: I live there, haha) I never would've expected them to regain their particular stride, but here it is

https://youtu.be/-gny-gp8J9A

Wow that's pretty good!

There’s a recent set on archive.org with the bostrom on drums new guy on keys lineup and it’s really cool. Hear what the keys element is doing on Seal Whales - super interesting. It’s like the keys are taking up some of those chiming pinging Curt overdubs from the studio recording.

Here's the URL for that show: https://archive.org/details/mp2018-11-24

Elvis, thank you, I'd figured that was the one to download. I shoulda gone to that show, it's in the neighborhood — had no idea Bostrom was back in the mix. This song is so good I'm figuring I need to work thru their last coupla albumss.

Hope we see a new full length and I would be super delighted if the current five piece w bostrom came northeast. Pups are so deep in my blood.

There is a new full length, it's out in March! The song in the video linked above is on it.

fuuck yeahhh

* Everything * about this 1985 local TV in-studio appearance (even the limo commercial) is so damn adorable. Amazing treasure moment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKMtKD-aw1I

Thanks for that loveable live video!

This is, word-for-word, line-for-line, story-for-story, joke-for-joke one of the best music interviews I've come across in a while. Meat Puppets, 2007.

https://music.avclub.com/meat-puppets-1798212463

I don’t know how long it’s been up but it looks like their full discography is now streaming, save the Out My Way EP I think.

So glad I opened this thread and discovered that video of them.

They should add Out My Way, it rules

yes that video up there is magical xp

From my Nashville Scene ballot comments on 2019 releases:
...those Dusty Notes come flying, and the dust doesn't come off, but they're still somehow plenty shiny, in this heavy jangle drone rock with country crosscurrents at the right times--incl. Floyd Crameresque sparkling piano waters, never abusing their spotlight comp time---the possibly Buddhist truck-driving man seemingly tells everything he sees, while, like the song says, "Lookin' at the world through a windshield," and vice-versa: for instance,"The Great Awakening" did even more to this land than for it, making for a real nice theme song in my mind, as he sings through it and all else, not scurred of those In Through The Out Door-reinforced juxtapositions, or that yowling tom cat guitar tail under---has he got a rocking chair in there? Rock the nation, big 'un, rolling through suggestions of Grateful Dead karma ballads too, in a poise I can only envy----Serenity Now!

Also once again: anybody who likes Curt will prob enjoy this long-ish truckstop conversation (following a brief review of Rise To Your Knees)--originally from 2007 Paper Thin Walls:
https://papercomet.blogspot.com/2017/03/meat-puppets.html

discography is now streaming

...through my head, anytime the sun is out? been that way forever

Wherearetheystreamingwherearetheystreamingwherearetheystreaming----Spotify? Don't see 'em on bandcamp, alas.

That tv show appearance is amazing

i'd never heard this until recently cos i never bought the ryko reissues but i'm super-into this weird demo version of 'hot pink' off the expanded Up On The Sun. Glockenspiel melody line, weird echoey percussive noises, a dubby bassline going wubba-wubba the whole time, and just a general feeling of falling through a dream backwards. it's kind of like they'd been listening to husker du and thought it would be neat to fuse 'the baby song' with 'reoccurring dreams'. are there any other pups tracks out there that are like this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9SSELVxdvY

Pretty sure that demo predates “The Baby Song” by a year, at least; it might be the other way round.

oh i'm sure that was the case, wasn't a serious hypothesis i was putting forward there. just that childlike instrumentation and melody brought it to mind

If I recall correctly, they mention in the Ryko liner notes something about that demo being their original vision for Up on the Sun – something like Pet Sounds.

They apparently stuck themselves playing Sloop John B way too frequently in later years. At least according to the complaints of somebody I knew who followed them for years.

They were the kings of tacky cover versions, first time I saw them play they busked through 'A White Sports Coat & A Pink Carnation', like some sort of wedding band, it might have been their opening song too iirc?

I think that's what you call the final soundcheck if it's the opening number

They were infamous for starting a set with the overture to South pacific to a hardcore audience when they supported one of the bigger bands, was it Dead Kennedys? Always seemed to be a maverick streak that I quite enjoyed but it could go too far into cheesiness in places.
Just seems like they were playing Sloop John B every night when they could have played something less cheesy.

Damn that first record is really something totally unlike anything else, I listened this morning for the first time in forever and had my gourd blown all over again. "II" is unimpeachable, after that my interest...err...ebbs & flows.

W/r/t to the cheesy opening song, even as late as sometime in the 00s when I last saw them, the crowd was pretty much just backward white baseball cap wearing jocks. I don't remember what exactly they started with (UMS might recall) but what it was it was really weird and wrong-footed the whole room in a good way, it ended up being a really great gig.

yah first record is incredible just wow

First e.p. is quite incredible for a different direction. even more bluegrass based hardcore.
But my introduction was the vinyl version of that first lp and it is still something I would love to hear a lot more of.
NOt sure if anybody did take that as a starting point and get even more into getting stuck in the mud and actually stretching things out like not just for a couple of minutes. I did hear that it has been cited as a major influence on grunge. I remember the NME review comparing it to the ballroom sound of SF . Also sounds like pretty advanced playing heavily disguised as extremely amateur.
Well glad i got the Rykodisc version which expands it out to twice or 3 times the length.

Now I need to get the rest of the Monitor lp.

Oral history book was really interesting, not sure if you can still get that.

that ryko disc first album with all the bonus tracks is essential. i tried to listen to too high to die last week and its wack. oh damn i posted on this thread 16 years ago and just found myself agreeing with myself before i knew it was me lol.

Interesting that the later SST records, esp "Mirage" even though the music & playing is definitely more mersh, the vocals are...worse? Kudos for that at least.