[The following interview is transcribed from John Sekerka's radio show, Tape Hiss, which runs on CHUO FM in Ottawa, Canada. Each month Cosmik Debris prints one or two of these interviews. This month, John goes into his archive for a chat with The Meat Puppets.]
Some ten years ago The Meat Puppets were on the verge of jumping their indie ship and heading for the majors. The power boogie punk trio shared space on the Eclectic SST label with Husker Du, Black Flag, The Minutemen, and Dinosaur Jr., but brought with them a truly distinct take to the hardcore scene: psychedelic guitar jams , country twang and long hair. In the intervening years The Meat Puppets have logged time on the charts, shared a stage with Nirvana and self-destructed. Guitarist Curt Kirkwood has resurrected a new version of the band without his long time drummer Derrick Bostrom and rock'n'roll casualty, bassist and brother Cris. The Meat Puppets may exist in name, but really.... as a reminder of what once was, RYKO has re-released all of the SST back catalogue, along with lotsa bonus tracks and a long lost live record. Here's a time capsule chat dating back to 1988 when the phoenix boys were touring in support of their superb "Huevos" album at the old RPM Club in Toronto, contemplating major label offers, and pondering their future. The Kirkwood brothers in true stereo.
John: I think you two are one and the same. Who is the Id and who is the Ego?
Cris:: I'm Alley, he's Oop.
Curt: I don't think I know Freud or myself enough well enough to answer that.
John: Musically, you started out as a pretty trashy band, and now...
Curt: From our perspective, the beginnings were very beautiful, not trashy at all. The music on the first disc is some of the only real psychedelic music recorded in the eighties, outside of the Butthole Surfers. It has nothing to do with punk rock or hardcore. You gotta drop acid, otherwise you won't get it.
John: Among all the advantages of being on SST, do you find it a hindrance? Some naive radio bigwigs may disregard your records because they may associate SSt with hardcore.
Curt: That's their problem. It upsets me 'cause if I had their money I'd get addicted to junk that I can't afford right now. My job at Circle K won't support it.
John: Let's uncover this great art scam you have going. Are your records just decoys to sell your paintings in the guise of album covers? 30,000 albums sold means 30,000 prints sold, and a viewing far exceeding that which any gallery can provide.
Curt: Very true, but that's only gravy. Art is just a hobby. Music is our advocation. It's our calling. It comes naturally. We were amazed when we first tried to put bands together and they sounded like shit. Then we got together with Derrick Bostrom and immediately we had cohesive magic. We realized that it wasn't in our hands. Punk rock made it easy for us. It was acceptable to hate idiots that were popular at the time. It was this illogical hatred of anything. Fun hatred.
Cris:: Giving a shit about something means responsibility. Responsibility means stagnation. You put a fucking stake down in the moving earth, and I'm not saying that I don't do that in my own life, but artistically it doesn't make any sense. Although the stake in the ground is very beautiful. There are a lot of contradictions in art.John: You're renown for frantic recording sessions, how long did it take to cut "Huevos"?
Curt: About forty hours. We never take that much time. We don't go in and hone the thing.
John: Do you aspire to be the next Grateful Dead? With a slew of Meat Puppet Heads following you around the country?
Cris:: Meatheads! Yeah, they exist....
Curt: (interrupting) I don't think that could happen. We didn't come out of an era that is conducive to that scene.
Cris:: But it does happen. People travel around to see us, but not to that extent.
Curt: I don't think it's something that needs to be more than one of. The Grateful Dead are unto themselves. They're granted their space. There's nothing like them. Although when we started out we saw they were the only punk thing around. They were the only ones doing what they wanted to do. A lot of punkers were saying, "We're doin' what we wanna do", but those words were meant for other people's ears.
John: Is there any band you consider to be in the same class?
Curt: Not really. I've seen most of the highly touted rock bands. It inspires such "wanna be rockstars" weirdness. (about two minutes of head scratching then...)
Curt: I think that Prince is pretty awesome.
Cris:: Yeah, I like what he's done, yeah. Somebody whose used the amount of fame to do that...
Curt: Amount of fame? How about talent? Something as piddly shit as fame couldn't get in the way of talent like that. Out of all the million motherfuckers out there, you can pick him out and say... that's Prince.
John: Where do you see yourselves in ten years?
Curt and Cris: (alternating): Movies... At home... TV... With fifty pounds of scrambled eggs in my lap ... film stars ....
John: What's Phoenix like?
Curt: It's like Toronto in the desert. Take away the lake, the boats, the trees, the Canadians, put a desert there, fill it with Phoenicians and Mexicans.
John: Are you influenced at all by the Hispanic culture?
Cris:: Yeah, there's no avoiding it.Curt: That's actually a greater influence than the Grateful Dead. It's important not to paint yourself into a corner. Living right next to Mexico helps. It's Third World. The frontier there is less a frontier than a scar. Mexico is the evil twin of the United States. It's a really beautiful place where people on a capitalistic lust for life binge, without a lot of bucks and oppressive political weirdness, keep the perversions down. It's really a strange thing. Yet the perversions are so biologically prevalent on another level. It's really a great place. You have to go there.
John: It's time for a Spanish inquisition. Does "Huevos" have more than one translation?
Cris:: Well, apart from eggs, it also stands for a universal willingness to become ...er ... it's slang for balls.
Curt: But what hardly anyone has brought up is the beauty of the egg. No one ever called an album "Eggs" before. They're everywhere. They're cheap. They're beautiful.
John: They're the beginnings of life.
Curt: They're the beginnings of peaceful war.
Cris:: Yeah, which came first, the Meat Puppets or the eggs?
....tape hiss....ADDENDUM:
While Cris Kirkwood went MIA (apparently the bit about being able to afford good drugs once the money rolled in was not just a joke), Derrick Bostrom worked on the Ryko re-issue series and started a solo career under the monicker Today's Sounds. Curt Kirkwood enlisted Kyle Ellison from the Butthole Surfers, Andrew Duplantis from the Bob Mould band and Doug's son Shandon Sahm, in what was original called the Royal Neanderthal Orchestra, but now goes under Meat Puppets.
(C) 1999 - John Sekerka