Paradise: Land of the Meat Puppets
Dolomite Dialogue:
Meat Puppets
by Bartholomew Green
Sept.24, 1998
History is written by the winners, or by those interested in being winners. In the dirty world of rock and roll, the winners are those who sell the most records and make the most dough for the record company. As a result, most people have only heard about the Meat Puppets as a footnote to the career of Nirvana (who covered three of their songs on the MTV Unplugged Special all those years ago). Which is too bad, as the Meat Puppets are a phenomenon unto themselves. Almost all of their peers (Bad Brains, Black Flag, Husker Du, The Replacements, The Minutemen), have long since folded. Perhaps the only comparable band in terms of longevity and integrity is Sonic Youth.
Formed in 1980 by Derrick Bostrom and brothers Cris and Curt Kirkwood, the Puppets were a band that changed the sound of the American underground, influencing Nirvana, and subsequently every 'alternative' band that reared its unkempt head. The sound they developed reflected the vastness and freedom of their desert home. Sometimes the muse took them on strange trips: they were the first punk band to embrace divergent, 'un-punk' strains of music like country and psychedelia. Later explorations included prog rock, pop, and superheavy, Sabbath-style sludge. Curt Kirkwood is also easily the best guitar player the underground ever produced, in the words of Butthole Surfer Paul Leary "the best guitar player in the world".
Things have been rather quiet lately for the Meat Puppets. Our reporter, who has an unhealthy Meat Puppets obsession, wanted to know what the hell was going on, and got in touch with the eloquent and accessible Derrick Bostrom for an interview. Not one word of his answers have been altered, as he advised us that to do so would be "at our peril".
Dolomite:I read somewhere that you turned the Kirkwoods on to punk rock. Would you mind elaborating a bit?
Bostrom:It's true. They were more into mainstream rock (in the case of Curt), fusion jazz (in the case of Cris) and art rock. I started turning them on to some of the records I'd gotten, like The Damned for instance. Eventually, they came over to the house one day, having learned a bunch of Damned and Iggy songs, and wanted to jam. It sounded good enough to keep us interested. All of us had been playing in one capacity or another with other people, and we all hungered to play live. So we rehearsed fervently and began looking for gigs.
Dolomite:Was there a period when things started to evolve around Meat Puppets II and it surprised you? It seems that the band suddenly left everybody behind around that time.
Bostrom:I don't know about that: there was a nice handful of bands at the time that were doing similar types of "evolving". We had gotten into "hardcore" essentially by accident, and had felt a much greater kinship with the more eclectic bands of the time, our relationship with Monitor being the best example. Though we enjoyed playing the hardest, fastest, most-insane music we could muster, almost an exercise in seeing how far we could push ourselves, we always had quieter material as well. However, it wasn't until around '82 when we'd become exposed to the hardcore audiences and the group that hung around the SST offices, that we made a conscious decision to break with it.
Dolomite:Was there ever a conscious decision to buck the trends around the time that people started imposing rules on the underground? It seemed that when everybody else was playing hardcore you guys got into Sun Ra-type jamming and country.
Bostrom:It wasn't so much rules-imposition - there is no governing body let alone an enforcement arm that could have even made us pay attention to them, let alone follow them -- it was the violence. One show in particular comes to mind most strikingly. We, along with a couple other bands, were opening for The Misfits in San Francisco. We were fans of their's and were anxious to check them out. To our disappointment, they were brutish and thuglike. (At the time, their records were very cartoonish and fun.) And so was the crowd they drew. We opened with "Bali Hai", which was something we often did, especially to a particularly "hardcore" crowd. The beer cans, glasses, spitwads, and even rocks never let up through the whole show. We didn't bother to stay for The Misfits show. We packed our gear and split for Phoenix. It was later that we found out that the crowd had continued its behavior through the Misfits set too, until finally the guitarist smashed a kid over the head with his guitar, almost killing him.
A footnote to this type of thing came in fall of 84. In a show of poor judgment on the part of the promoter, we were paired with a popular hardcore band, this time in New York City. (I can't remember which one. If you think the names blended together back then, you can bet they really do almost 20 years after the fact.) The crowd was rowdy and stupid. Curt unveiled his new composition "Up on the Sun". The reaction was so violent that management closed the curtain on us, terminating our performance after only ten minutes.
Dolomite:Do you think that being in the band has enabled you to see almost every aspect of human life? By that I mean that it seems your experience would be more varied than that of, say, a stockbroker.
Bostrom:Not being a stockbroker, or anyone but myself for that matter, I can't really make any valuable comparison. I can suggest, however, that for the artist who opens himself up to it, a road education can offer him a side of life he'd never see if he just stayed at home and worked in seclusion. And I'm not just talking about the instant feedback that comes from playing in front of an audience, but also the experience of having to get it all together for a month or more on the club circuit. Since "Too High to Die" we have been able to play in larger venues, and hire roadies, busses, accommodation, etc. But for the entire decade of the '80s, it was all-night drives, Denny's food, sleeping on floors, bars, and low attendance. Enough of this kind of life can make one either decide to quit, or to hone his or her craft to point of succeeding.
Plus, you get to travel a lot. And you get to be the head of your own business. And here I do notice the difference between myself and "the stockbroker" (or anyone who works 9 to 5 for a paycheck). I do feel that I've done and seen a lot.
It is unfortunate, then, that nowadays, with the "indie" network that we worked in during the '80s being long-dead by this point, that more bands have to play the game the major label way. Even we, after so long, were made short work of by the music business machine, which grinds you up and spits you out. Career nurturing? It's a thing of the past. How can it not be, when every kid and his sister wants to be in a band. It's like working in the only cool record store in town. So many people want to do it, that the owner would be a fool to pay a decent wage. The job itself is compensation enough. (Hitler would have approved.)
Dolomite:I remember being miffed a few years ago when I saw an article in Rolling Stone that called the Pups "described by many as the best underground band in the world". As far as I could tell, up until that time, aside from a few reviews, that was the extent of their coverage. I thought, why aren't they writing about them then? Did you guys ever feel frustrated at the media's marginalization of the Puppets?
Bostrom:Everybody's entitled to their opinion. Success destroys a good band more often than not. One of the things that made us "the best underground band in the world" was just that: we were "underground". We've got a much longer list of releases than most of the other Underground Marvels. That's because we liked what we were doing and where we were. Until, that is, we got too old and tired for all-night drives, sleeping on floors, etc.
Dolomite:Is there much unreleased Meat Puppets stuff in the can?
Bostrom:Depends on what you mean by "in the can". There are tons of tracks recorded in various states of sonic usability. I hope that a lot of it, even some of the more ragged stuff, sees release one day.
Dolomite:Does it makes you feel proud to know you inspired other bands?
Bostrom: Sure. Some of them I even liked a little.
Dolomite: What are you listening to these days?
Bostrom:I guess my favorite bands working currently are AIR from France and Teenage Fanclub from Scotland. Most of what I listen to are either reissues or out-of-print stuff I find around. it's mostly non-rock. The releases on Caroline's Scamp label are probably my favorites: the "Music for TV Dinners" and "Sound Gallery" CDs. I like disco a lot, too, though not so much the hits as the more generic, instrumental club fodder that nobody seems to remember or care about. I'm also excited about the Beach Boys reissue series that's supposed to commence next year.
Dolomite: What music stuff have you been getting up to lately? I understand that both you and Curt have solo projects.
Bostrom:I released a solo 45 in 1996 on the Amarillo label I called the band "Today's Sounds" and called the record "Songs of Spiritual Uplift as sung by Today's Sounds". It featured four cover tunes. I sang and played everything but the bass, the lead guitar, and the keyboards. I put up a web site, which goes into greater detail about the project. Curt has a band called the Royal Neandrathal Orchestra. He has begun to play more and more gigs, and they are talking to various major labels about getting a record out.
Dolomite: What are you reading?
Bostrom:I got "The Proud Highway" the collection of Hunter Thompson letters for my birthday, and I'm slogging through that. I read a lot of comics too (DC variety; sorry, no indies; anything by Jack Kirby).