The Meat Puppets
are an American rock band formed in January 1980, in Paradise Valley, a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona. The group's original lineup was Curt Kirkwood (guitar/vocals), his brother Cris Kirkwood (bass guitar), and Derrick Bostrom (drums). The Kirkwood brothers met Bostrom while attending Brophy Prep High School in Phoenix. The three then moved to Tempe, Arizona (a Phoenix suburb and home to Arizona State University) where the Kirkwood brothers purchased two adjacent homes, one of which had a "shed" in the back where they regularly practiced. This same house would years later be the scene of at least two tragedies.
One of the more notable groups on the roster of SST Records (who released most of their albums), the Meat Puppets started as a punk rock band, but like most of their SST peers, the Meat Puppets established their own unique style, blending punk with country and psychedelic rock, and featuring Curt's warbling vocals. The Meat Puppets later gained significant exposure when the Kirkwood brothers served as guest musicians on Nirvana's MTV Unplugged performance in 1993. The band's 1994 album Too High to Die
subsequently became their most successful release. The band broke up twice, in 1996 and 2002, but reunited again in 2006.
The Meat Puppets have influenced various rock bands such as Dinosaur Jr, [1] Nirvana, [2] Pavement, [3] and Soundgarden. [4]
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MEAT PUPPETS TICKETS
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History
Early career (1980–1990)
In the late 70's, drummer
Derrick Bostrom played with guitarist Jack Knetzger in a band called Atomic Bomb Club, which began as a duo, but would come to include bassist
Cris Kirkwood. The band played a few local shows and recorded some demos, but began to dissolve quickly thereafter. Derrick and Cris began rehearsing together with Cris' brother
Curt Kirkwood by learning songs from Bostrom's collection of
punk rock 45s. After briefly toying with the name
The Bastions of Immaturity
, they settled on the name Meat Puppets in June, 1980 after a song by Curt of the same name which appears on their first album. Their early works were made up of
hardcore punk, and attracted the attention of
Joe Carducci as he was starting to work with legendary punk label
SST Records. Carducci suggested they sign with the label, and the Meat Puppets released their first album
Meat Puppets
in 1982, which among several new originals and a pair of heavily skewed
Doc Watson and
Bob Nolan covers, featured the songs "The Gold Mine" and "Melons Rising", two tunes Derrick and Cris originally had written and performed as Atomic Bomb Club previously.
[5]
By the release of 1984's
Meat Puppets II
, the bandmembers "were so sick of the hardcore thing," according to Bostrom. "We were really into pissing off the crowd."
[6] The band experimented with
acid rock and
country western sounds. While the album had been recorded in early 1983, the album's release was delayed for a year by SST.
[7]Meat Puppets II
turned the band into one of the leading bands on
SST Records, and along with the
Violent Femmes, the
Gun Club and others, helped establish the genre called "
cow punk".
Meat Puppets II was followed by 1985's
Up on the Sun
. The album's sound resembled the folk-rock of
The Byrds more than punk, and some of the group's fans accused the Meat Puppets of sounding dangerously like
hippies and abandoning their punk roots. In keeping with their unconventional way of doing things, both Cris and Curt purposefully sang the entire album off key.
Over the next decade, the Meat Puppets remained on SST and released a series of albums while touring relentlessly. Between tours they would regularly play small shows in bars around the Phoenix area such as "The Mason Jar" and "The Sun Club" in Tempe. After the release of
Out My Way
in 1986, however, the band was briefly sidelined by an accident when Curt's finger was broken after being slammed in their touring van's door. The accident delayed the band's next album, the psychedelic
Mirage
, until the next year. The final result was considered their most polished sounding album to date.
Their next album, the heavier
Huevos
, came out less than six months afterward, in late summer of 1987. In stark contrast to its predecessor,
Huevos
was recorded in a swift, fiery fashion, with many first takes, and minimal second guessing. These recordings were completed in only a matter of days, and along with a few drawings and one of Curt's paintings taken from the wall to serve as cover art (a dish of three
boiled eggs, a
green pepper, and a bottle of
Tabasco sauce), were all sent to SST shortly before the band returned to the road en route to their next gig.
Monsters
was released in 1989, featuring a new sound with extended jams such as "Touchdown King" and "Flight of the Fire Weasel".
Major label career (1991–1995)
As numerous bands from the seminal SST label and other kindred punk-oriented indies had before them, the Meat Puppets grappled with the decision to switch to a major label. Two years after their final studio recording for SST, 1989's
Monsters
, the trio released its major-label debut,
Forbidden Places
, on the indie-friendly London Records.
Forbidden Places
is now out of print.
In late 1993, the 'Pups achieved mainstream popularity when
Nirvana's
Kurt Cobain, who became a fan after seeing them open for
Black Flag, invited Cris and Curt to join him on
MTV Unplugged for acoustic performances of "Plateau", "Oh Me" and "Lake of Fire" (all originally from
Meat Puppets II
). The resulting album,
MTV Unplugged in New York,
served as a
swan song for Nirvana, as Cobain died 138 days after the concert. "Lake of Fire" became a cult favorite for its particularly wrenching vocal performance from Cobain. Subsequently, the Nirvana exposure and the strength of the single "Backwater" (their only charting single) helped lift the Meat Puppets to new commercial heights. The band's studio return was 1994's
Too High To Die
, produced by
Butthole Surfers guitarist
Paul Leary. The album featured "
Backwater", a minor hit on alternative radio, and a hidden-track update of "Lake of Fire."
Too High To Die
earned the 'Pups a gold record (500,000 sold), outselling their previous records combined.
1995's
No Joke!
was the final album recorded by the original Meat Puppets lineup. Though the band's drug use included cocaine, heroin, LSD and many others, Cris' use of
heroin and
crack cocaine became so bad he never left his house except to obtain more drugs. At least two people (including one of his best friends and his wife) died of overdoses at his house in Tempe, AZ during this time.
[8] The Kirkwood brothers had always had a legendary appetite for illegal substances and during the tour to support
Too High To Die
with
Stone Temple Pilots, the easy availability of drugs was too much for Cris. When it was over, he was severely addicted to cocaine.
First hiatus and reunion (1996–2001)
Derrick recorded a solo EP under the moniker
Today's Sounds
in 1996, and later on in 1999 took charge of re-issuing the Puppets' original seven records on
Rykodisc as well as putting out their first live album,
Live in Montana.
Curt formed a new band in
Austin,
TX called the
Royal Neanderthal Orchestra, but they changed their name to Meat Puppets for legal reasons and released a promotional EP entitled
You Love Me
in 1999,
Golden Lies
in 2000 and
Live
in 2002. The line-up was Curt (voc/git), Kyle Ellison (voc/git), Andrew Duplantis (voc/bass) and Shandon Sahm (drums). Sahm's father was the legendary fiddler-singer-songwriter
Doug Sahm of
The Sir Douglas Quintet and
Texas Tornados. The concluding track to
Classic Puppets
entitled "New Leaf" also dates from this incarnation of the band.
Break up (2002–2005)
Around 2002, the Meat Puppets dissolved as Curt had gone on to release albums with the groups
Eyes Adrift and
Volcano. In 2005, he released his first solo album entitled
Snow
.
Bassist Cris was arrested in December 2003 for attacking a security guard at the main post office in downtown Phoenix, AZ with the guard's baton. The guard shot Kirkwood in the stomach at least twice during the melee, causing serious gunshot injuries requiring major surgery. Kirkwood was subsequently denied bail, the judge citing Kirkwood's previous drug arrests and parole violations. He eventually went to prison at the Arizona state prison in Florence, AZ for felony assault. He was released in July 2005.
Derrick Bostrom began a web site for the band about six months before the original trio stopped working together. The site went through many different permutations before it was essentially mothballed in 2003. In late 2005, Bostrom revamped it once again, this time as a "
blog" for his recollections and as a place to share pieces of Meat Puppets history.
Second reunion (2006–present)
On March 24, 2006, Curt Kirkwood polled fans at his
MySpace page with a bulletin that asked: "Question for all ! Would the original line up of the Meat Puppets interest anyone ? Feedback is good — do you want a reunion!?" The response from fans was overwhelmingly positive within a couple of hours, leading to speculation of a full-blown Meat Puppets reunion in the near future. However, a post made by Derrick Bostrom on the official Meat Puppets site dismissed the notion.
In April 2006
Billboard
reported that the Kirkwood brothers would reunite as the Meat Puppets without original drummer Derrick Bostrom.
[9] Primus drummer
Tim Alexander was announced as Bostrom's replacement, a role that was later attributed to drummer
Ted Marcus. The new lineup recorded a new full-length album,
Rise to Your Knees
, in mid-to-late 2006. The album was released by Anodyne Records on July 17, 2007.
On January 20, 2007, The Meat Puppets brothers performed two songs during an
Army of Anyone concert, at La Zona Rosa in
Austin, Texas. The first song was played with Curt Kirkwood and Cris Kirkwood along with Army of Anyone's
Ray Luzier and
Dean DeLeo. Then the second song was played with original members Curt and Cris Kirkwood and new Meat Puppets drummer Ted Marcus. This was in the middle of Army of Anyone's set, which they listed as
Meat Puppet Theatre
on the evening's set list. The band performed several new songs in March at the
South by Southwest festival. On March 28, 2007, the band announced a West Coast tour through their
MySpace page. This is the first tour with original bassist Cris in eleven years. The tour continued into the east coast and midwest later in 2007.
In 2008 they performed their classic second album live in its entirety at the
ATP New York festival and are set to perform it again in London during December.
The Meat Puppets entered the studio in the winter 2008 to record their next album. For the recording of the new album, the band recently parted ways with
Anodyne and is currently signed to
Megaforce. The new album, entitled
Sewn Together
, was released on May 12, 2009.
[10]
As of the summer of 2009 the band continues to tour in America. They recently appeared in Rochester Minnesota outside in front of over 5,000 fans, after playing in Wisconsin the night prior. The Meat Puppets are confirmed to perform at the 2009 Voodoo Music Experience in New Orleans over the Halloween weekend.
[11]
Lineups
Dates
| Members & prominent instruments
| Notes
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(1980-1996)
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- Curt Kirkwood - vocals, guitar
- Cris Kirkwood - bass
- Derrick Bostrom - drums
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The original Meat Puppets line-up.
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(1996-1999)
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SPLIT
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(1999-2002)
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- Curt Kirkwood - vocals, guitar
- Kyle Ellison - guitar
- Andrew Duplantis - bass
- Shandon Sahm - drums
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(2002-2006)
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SPLIT
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(2006-present)
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- Curt Kirkwood - vocals, guitar
- Cris Kirkwood - bass
- Ted Marcus - drums
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Discography
Studio albums
- Meat Puppets
(1982)
- Meat Puppets II
(1984)
- Up on the Sun
(1985)
- Mirage
(1987)
- Huevos
(1987)
- Monsters
(1989)
- Forbidden Places
(1991)
- Too High to Die
(1994)
- No Joke!
(1995)
- Golden Lies
(2000)
- Rise to Your Knees
(2007)
- Sewn Together
(2009)
See also
- List of alternative rock artists
- List of musicians in the second wave of punk music
Notes and references
- Dinosaur Jr at Allmusic.com
- Nirvana at Allmusic.com
- Pavement at Allmusic.com
- Soundgarden at Allmusic.com
- Reynolds, Simon. ''Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984''. Faber, 2005. ISBN 0-571-21569-6, pg. 469
- Reynolds, pg. 470
- Reynolds, pg. 471
- Shooting Star article at the Phoenix Times
- Kirkwood Brothers Reuniting In Meat Puppets
- Meat Puppets to release album of new material 'Sewn Together'
- http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/eminem-kiss-flaming-lips-to-headline-voodoo-1003988174.story