Meat Puppets S/D, C or D

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.

threeway tie for last and p much everything recorded around then sounds weird and has a weird sheen to it

Yeah, all that 85-87 SST stuff sounds weird, often it feels like they are reaching for something that is just beyond their grasp (technically/finacially) and at the time (or more like 1991-92 when I first heard most of it) I thought it sounded abhorrent, though now I find some of it oddly charming, probably becuz it is so obviously of a very specific era

the most 1987 sst sounding album (or probably ragin full on) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm9U4EBWUsQ

lots of amazing SST records released during that time too of course, it's insane the number of records they were pumping out: 1985 - 24, 1986 - 32, 1987 - 64(!!!)

admittedly half of 1987s output was zoogz rift back-catalogue

I know there's a bit of retrospective kindness for Spot's engineering, but he's a blight to a lot of those records.

A vast back catalogue funded by non-payment of royalties to the handful of bands on the label that sold anything!

I heard the Rykodisc remasters had to be mastered from SST's own CD's because the master tapes were (and still) MIA - is that true?

Anyway, the kindest and more hilarious spin I've seen on SST's practices is that it's kind of like a Bailey Saving & Loan. You know, from It's a Wonderful Life: "Your money's not here Bob. It's in the Meat Puppets new album and Black Flag's next album..."

Or rather Bailey Building and Loan...been too long since I've seen the movie.

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

Monitor lp is excellent west coast art damage

Agree that mirage, 3 way tie, flip your wig, loose nut all have an unfortunate neither fish nor fowl sound to them

Up on the sun sounds perfect though in its kinda slickness

I heard the Rykodisc remasters had to be mastered from SST’s own CD’s because the master tapes were (and still) MIA - is that true?

I don’t know about those, but that has been the case for others: The Dicks’ Kill From the Heart reissue on Alternative Tentacles was mastered from the (deleted) vinyl.

are there any bands that cite Up On The Sun as a major influence. JUst wondering what is in the same ballpark that might have grown out of it. May have some influence from 74ish Grateful Dead I know they have mentioned that band among their own influences. But something about the bubbling bounciness in the sound from that year I'm being reminded of by listening to Up On The Sun.

I can only name precedents (first two talking heads records, some bits of murmur) but no real inheritors. Would love to hear about any as my love for this album is boundless

maybe fIREHOSE?

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

maybe these guys? sort of like mid-period meat puppets transplanted to the grey fog of the pacific NW

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1d3yZOYYwo

june tour dates canceled :(

https://www.themeatpuppets.net/news

I’ve been trying to figure out if maybe it’s not worth the gas to drive across the country to play six small shows because they’ve been playing other shows lately and it’s not like Covid is getting more serious really

That may be what Dr. Fauci thought. Def what some people I know thought 'til recently.

(Fauci tested pos recently.)

Their gig in my town was not even on my radar. And now it’s cancelled.

so bummed, but then again i got covid a couple weeks ago, so i get it

I'd like to see them now, especially in a good club, if nothing else comparison. They are a band I saw a couple times as a kid, it would just be cool to see them now. It never lined up, but I would have loved to see some of the Jesus Lizard shows for that reason. I saw them twice once right after I turned 21 in Bloomington in '91 and a second time a few years later as the opening act for Primus at this cow barn at the Indiana State Fair. Horrible sound and the Puppets did not go over well. The first show was at a good club and they were so tight a band. You can tell the Meat Puppets had played together for a LONG time, just tight.

Minutemen/fIREHOSE was on a similar type of funk groove at points. Ed's tunes have a folky bounce, which is something the Meat Puppets do a lot.

been reading the SST "Corporate Rock Sucks" history and while i've never heard it, the passage about Monsters made it an immediate must hear:

The Meat Puppets also wanted out. After the release of Huevos and Mirage in 1987, the band was worn down from so many years on the road and more than a little discouraged to see bands like Soundgarden blowing up on MTV. The Meat Puppets recorded its next record, Monsters (SST 253), with the intention of getting off of SST and onto a major label. "So we went with the big, ugly-sounding reverb and electronic drums, and the big anthemic chorus crap," Bostrom said. Monsters is a Frankenstein-esque fusion of over-the-top riffs, tinny drums, and prog-country crooning- like ZZ Topp on acid.

“ZZ Topp”(?)

collect your prize for catching a typo in the book!

Haven't listened to it since it came out but Attacked By Monsters and Touchdown King were my favourite things on it