In many ways, The Meat Puppets are pinnacle American music. Noise rock, fused with folk & punk— they were the beginning of the end of punk in the 80’s, employing a brand of punk & psychedelia of their very own. They were of the first bands to truly know how to provoke & piss off the punk & hardcore crowds out west. They were over that scene. With 15 studio albums under their belt over their 30 year career, this author believes that 1994’s Too High Too Die is still a top record of the 90’s.
You cannot mention The Meat Puppets, headed up by Cris and Curt Kirkwood, without their rampant drug use. Their first two releases, Meat Puppets I (1982) & II (1984) are disorienting in approach & execution, with the Butthole Surfers serving as their only contemporaries coming close to the unhinged chaos felt upon these two releases (Paul Leary of The Butthole Surfers produced the later Too High to Die).
Drug use and first takes were fundamental to their process in making records on SST; I done on acid, II on MDMA, Up on the Sun on beer and weed & so on. Kurt Cobain obviously brought their second release into the mainstream, covering songs Lake of Fire, Oh Me & Plateau with the Kirkwoods on MTV’s unplugged in 1993-94.
Then there is Mike Watt & The Minutemen, SST label mates with The Meat Puppets, who disbanded upon the death of guitarist & vocalist D. Boon in 1985 after 5 years of their stylistic econo-touring. The Minutemen embodied the DIY nature of punk rock with song structure (& the morals around it) thrown out the window allowing for a fusion of narrative based, sardonic lyricism mixed with catatonic pounding rhythm. The sporadic pummeling of guitar riffs, sometimes country, sometimes surf rock, is always infected with disillusionment of an American culture in the 1980’s.
For those embroiled in this sound, May 12th at the Brighton Music Hall was a very special occasion. The house was packed, & I regrettably missed Grant Hart’s performance, the past drummer of Husker Du (also an SST label mate) & now solo musician. I took my spot in the audience as The Mike Watt & Tom & Jerry Show took the stage to perform original material as well as Minutemen covers journeying seamlessly through the decades of the very busy, indefatigable originality of Mike Watt.
Looking back, Watt and the Kirkwoods spit beer in the face of an underground hardcore scene in a sense akin to the unfettered & gnarly humanist sensibility put forth by the Dadaists. The Meat Puppets showcased this attitude in their prime when during interviews they would speak with the rhetorical intensity of Nietchze after dabbing & what is now hippie philosophical garble always tinged with confused hatred of the not only the music industry but all industry. Whether they know what Dadaism is or who Nietzsche was, is unimportant. What is important is both Watt and the Meat Puppets ability to hold onto the south(west)ern charm, addressing the audience as ‘brothers & sisters’ in evangelical overtones while ripping some of the filthiest punk that you’re likely to hear.
The Minutemen confronted war and politics head on, in a more literary sense than musical. The voices that spring from their music sound more like exhausted sports broadcasters in extra innings making fun of the crowd in a Royals vs Indians game in the 1980’s mixed with the military commander from Full Metal Jacket. But this allowed The Minutemen to breech subject matter that helped shatter rhetorical ceilings for the next three decades of punk and underground musicians.
The similarities between The Meat Puppets & The Minutemen end with SST & their south(west)ern twang. The Kirkwoods moved onto London Records for their bigger label release which replaced their method based approach to songwriting, with one more technical. Mike Watt went on to an extensive solo career after The Minutemen disbanded, forming bands, and playing with bands like The Stooges & Dinosaur Jr..
As Blues musicians of the past did for their listeners, punk & grunge music made human, social and cultural limitations okay. The Meat Puppets & The Minutemen stripped away the complacency & music industry greed with ethics more & more accessible to middle & working class suburbia. While The Meat Puppets & their predecessors make no attempt at beauty; their parody is an essential element of what makes their art & stories accessible, yet intimate & provocatively numb.
‘We don’t exist/ We eat our time/ We don’t resist/ It’s not alright’ from Too High to Die’s ‘We Don’t Exist’ is a smart approach to a major label release; to play to their strengths, to shine a mirror back in the faces of their fans while making songs daring yet inviting & simple. But it was right around this time that Cris Kirkwood’s drug habits were seriously catching up with him, becoming addicted to both heroin and cocaine. Tours had to be canceled and The Meat Puppets went on hiatus.
Although they are a part of the music industry that created & was Nirvana, their attitude towards the music industry & fandom is the long remembered disposition of the Meat Puppets. Now labeled as ‘Cow Punk’, ‘Country Punk’ or ‘Cattle Punk’ The Meat Puppets picked up where punk nihilism ended & rode the wave through the 90’s to create a more diverse, embattled sound that is easily glossed over as ‘Cow Punk’.
The Meat Puppets & Watt ooze with the idea of what Ann Chernow, a famous Lithographer, describes as ‘all art fighting the great arts’, but to me their music feels like a tender kick in the ass.
