Paradise: Land of the Meat Puppets
MEAT PUPPETS: THINGS CHANGE
RIP, December 1994
by Jennifer Clay
If you haven't heard of the Meat Puppets, you're either "too high" or you've been hanging in the "backwaters" of Minnesota for the last 14 or so years.
Yes, the Meat Puppets were a viable entity before the commercially successful "Backwater" hit the airwaves. In fact, the Puppets have released an album nearly every year (sometimes two) since their inception in 1980. Their music has been revered and admired by some, respected by their peers (members of both Nirvana and Soundgarden cite the masterful Puppets as a musical influence)... and virtually unnoticed by the masses. Until now.
Ironically, it took a song about things that will never change to change the Meat Puppets' musical careers. The three Puppets--brothers Curt and Cris Kirkwood and drummer pal Derrick Bostrom--accidentally found the pot at the end of the rainbow with the catchy tune "Backwater" on their recent London Records release, Too High To Die.
So where have they been all these years? (Or, a better question would be where has the audience been all these years?)
The Puppets exploded loudly onto the punk scene in their hometown Phoenix, Arizona with an indie-released EP, In A Car, five snippets of mile-a-minute thrash-punk. It wasn't long before they had a steady following and signed with SST Records and released Meat Puppets.
Their second full-length album, Meat Puppets II (1983), saw a shift from thrashing garage rock with a country twang to country-punk, and a blend of the sounds the Kirkwood brothers found familiar.
"I grew up in Phoenix [and] you just can't avoid it," explains Curt of their country influence. "I grew up around the horse track. I was alwasy around the horse crowd. Country music was played a lot. I wasn't into it that much as a kid. I liked certain artists back then. I liked Johnny Cash. He had a TV show. Glen Campbell did as well. I liked both of them. I always thought Glen was a great guitar player, and a great singer. I always loved watching Hee-Haw. I always thought Buck Owens was really great."
His musical tastes expanded to country legends George Jones and Roy Acuff. The Doors and the Beatles became favorites, along with soundtracks to My Fair Lady, The Guns of Navarone and any animated Walt Disney classic. The logical progression? The Misfits, the Minutemen, D.O.A. and the Damned.
Crooner Curt had the gift to sing like a country great, play guitar like hellfire, and write songs that ran the musical gamut. Not letting anyone pull their strings, the Puppets set the stage for their own brand of music. Labels wouldn't stick as each album that followed became an amalgamation of the music they enjoyed--country, punk, rock, blues, you name it.
Rather than die out and fade away as many of the early-'80s punk bands did, the Meat Puppets continued to tour and release album after album of fabulous musical soup, always progressing, expanding, defying expectations... and smoking pot. Although it was a long trip, the Puppets became successful without compromise. "We were largely at the top of our game in underground punk. We made plenty of money. We made it touring. We toured really, really low overhead. I always brought home enough money to get by. We made money on SST, too," Curt says. "Between the two, we got by pretty good for aboutr 10 years. We borrowed money here and there from people. We still owe some people money."
Now with their immensely popular, extremely successful Too High To Die, they're once again defying expectations--and still smoking pot. It's a surprise why Too High was their much deserved pot of gold. Although it's not as slick as their previous major-label release, Forbidden Places, it's just as real, raw and wacky as many of the Puppets' previous albums. After endless miles across the country and 11 released, the Puppets landed in the mainstream without trying.
It was easy to catch up with Curt and find out more about the Puppets as they prepared for a Minneapolis show in support of Too High--just follow the pungent aroma of marijuana.
Loading his makeshift pipe made from a small clear plastic water bottle, Curt contemplated the question of timing and Too High To Die's success. "It's just one of those things that happen. I couldn't have anticipated it. You have to look back at the actual buildup. Just writing the song. All that stuff is really weird. You sit around your house, or whatever, and write this song--which is essentially a pretty small effort and pretty much a piece of fluff. And all kinds of stuff transpires from there."
It's nothing the Puppets did musically that's changed?
Curt expels the inhaled smoke and leans back. "I don't know what you could do."
Too High To Die is a whimsical musical road trip. Not claiming to be a "musicologist or ethnomusicologist," Curt says he "just hears things now and then" that he likes and incorporates the style in his music. It could make for a jumbled mess, but Curt has mastered the blend with the essential contributions of co-crooner and bassist brother Cris and Derrick's percussive rhythm.
"It's all kind of the same thing," Curt said of the mix of country and punk. "It's just like the same symphony will play different pieces in one night. We just play different pieces. I don't think what we're playing is actually country. We're fake country and we play a fake blues song now and then. I think what we are is basically a garage band. We just have a lot of different types of songs. It's easier to get a certain feeling going with some sort of song with one tempo... it just depends what kind of feeling it's supposed to have really."
Too High To Die captures it all... from "Shine," the psychedelic little ditty with some pretty picking; to "Backwater," the catchy tune with a rock groove; to the Appalachian stomp of "Comin' Down"; to the nihilistic punk rock vibe of "We Don't Exist."
Main songwriter Curt creates the majority of his melodious music at home over a cup of coffee... and a couple of hits of pot, of course. "I'm usually stoned. So if I write, I'm probably stoned. Music has its own thing. It really doesn't need an inspiration to me. That kind of grosses me out when people write these little odes to 'she' or 'her' or whatever. I mean, that's cliche. They're singing about anything, it's just like, 'oh, listen to the little monkey howl about its special thing.' It's irritating. I try not to let that get in the way, really. I try and make it completely worthless in any way. If I find worth or vlue in something that I was trying to write down; if I find meaning that's obvious, I immediately change it."
Lyrics by both Cris ("Pigs are sheep and cats are dog/And thoughts are made of Lincoln Logs/To tend to the mice and wood/Where black is blue and bad is good") and Curt ("Sparks fly from their eyes/Birds fly from their mouths/Echoing off this procession is a sound/Never to be found") tend to avoid the obvious. Rather than dictate meanings, they let the listener conjure up images and impressions from their life experiences. Perhaps that's why their fans cross generations--from the original punkers to kids who made their first scream in the hospital the same year the Puppets made their first scream on vinyl.
"I want [fans] to draw their own meanings, which is pretty easy because I usually write it in the proper syntax that would convey the semblance of a cohesive thought. But upon closer inspection, you'll find that there really hasn't been anything conveyed at all. That's just from my point of view," Curt explains. "People will obviously find their own meaning in it, because when you string words together, that happens. That's just my own particular slant on it; When I read it back that's how I like it to read. I'm aware that in doing that, if I'm anticipating not sending any messages then that's a message in itself, and that's not really what I'm trying to do either."
Curt adds: "Ultimately, the words have to have the right tonal quality and the right meter to fit in with the music and that's where I make my final choices."
The final choices seem to have worked. The Kirkwood brothers and Bostrom are flying higher than ever before without straying too far from reality. The Puppets' newfound success has enabled them to purchase additional instruments, to add a guitar player on the road (Troy Meiss), to fly to an occasional show, and to play in front of ever-increasing crowds.
The audience, including tonight's in the Twin Cities, is a mix of diehard Meat Pupets fans, newcomers who grooved to "Backwater" on the radio, or kids who are just killing time before the headliners (in this case, Stone Temple Pilots) hit the stage. No matter what, the Meat Puppets are doing what is now second nature to them--cranking out awesome live shows night after night. It'w what got them where they are today.
Though Curt's childhood dream of being an elf was shelved for his love of painting and drawing and his dream of being an animator didn't come to pass in the traditional Disney sense, he and the Meat Puppets provide plenty of real animation through their live shows. They've spend much of their "adult" lives touring and playing music, with a little time off to draw and roam the desert. To quote the Puppets, when they "wake up in the morning to feel the daybreak on their faces," they have to be feeling pretty good these glory days.