Meat Puppets Album: “Meat Puppets”

As with Flipper's classic trainwreck "Generic Flipper", "Meat Puppets" elicits a type of knee-jerk reaction along the lines of "What the hell were these guys thinking?!". After a few listens, however, the album reveals a level of depth, creativity, and humor that few of the Puppet's contemporaries could ever dream of approaching.

This isn't the militant, humorless, paint-by-numbers hardcore being churned out by the majority of bands at this time. Rather, it's a hallucinogenic blur of blazing drum beats, brilliantly sloppy guitars, and manic, unintelligible vocals.

If "Meat Puppets" had been recorded during his lifetime, it probably would have been Salvidor Dali's favorite record.

BWAAA! JEKOLIMONYFHTPTHHTTPPTHHH....ZAKASOWERYU TIUN Y HUIY BWAAAAAAHHHHHPPPPHH!

There's your prize for buying this little stinker. Completely incoherent jizzmajazz set to fast and squirrely music. The music's great. The vocals twist and squirm through mazes of mush. Make your own soundtrack! You get to decide what the hell's going on with the lyrics.

Besides that, Meat Puppets struck a reverberating originality chord here. Get your friend to buy it first and then laugh and enjoy it together.

Although I'm not sure rock history will consider this disc to be a "seriously good" record by the group (everyone champions II and Up On The Sun, although I might love Huevos even more), if you are a musical adventurer, this record belongs in your collection. These days the world needs more of this kind of music - with balls & a sense of humor!

Recently I saw the reformed Meat Puppets play live and shouted out requests for some early covers from In A Car ("PLAY DOLPHIN FIELD!!!"), and Cris Kirkwood jaw dropped open in befuddled shock, as though he was truly suprised anyone would want to hear his early music. Cris dude, the world NEEDS music like this! How I miss the whimisical crazy & unpredictable nature the band had in this early era (hunt down the many bootlegs of their early shows, especially the 1981 live at the Mardi Gras club).

After the above show I was inspired to compile my personal "meat puppets history" detailing how I heard of them and got into them. Here are my Meat Puppets I entries, which may provide some insight into what is good and challenging about this CD and give you some idea what to expect...

FROM APPLE-O's MEAT PUPPETS DIARY 1988-2009:

* September, 1989[not sure of exact date but sometime around here] - Get a really really lo fi copy of Meat Puppets I. I listen to it once, and don't like it. It neither has the hilariously out of control thrash of In A Car or the weirdness of "Out in the gardener" or the eclectic melodic approach of II. It seems more of an awkward adolescence between the two. The 2nd time I listen to it, I achieve some kind of breakthrough, and experience a moment of musical nirvana on one song. The 3rd time I listen to it, I fail to repeat the experience of the 2nd listening. I don't listen to this album more than one other time for another 10 years[4] but eventually end up loving it

* 1999 - Meat Puppets I marathon (listen to the album for 2 weeks straight!)

[4] in 1999 when the reissue CDs come out, the 1st one I get is Meat Puppets I, which stays in my CD player / tape player for something like 2 weeks straight. To this day I love that album hell yeah (and the outtakes CD too, that bostrom put up online[a] )

[a] that's right, there exists a great collection of out-takes from the studio sessions for this album, with liner notes too (thank you Derrick Bostrom!) Go hunt it down if you like Meat Puppets I / In A Car and want more.

The extra tracks on this CD are great too, a standout being the off-kilter demo of "meat puppets" that sounds like Curt Kirkwood recorded using some cheap cassette tape overdubbing. I would love to hear a whole album of that stuff.

In sum, if you don't have this CD already, get it, and drink and be merry.

Apple-O 10/3/09

The first time I heard this album, it was quite reminiscent of the first time I heard the Dead Kennedy's In God We Trust Album when a friend of mine tried 33 RPM and 45 RPM since it just didn't sound quite right. This album IS punk rock at its raw unnerving and disturbing fiery passion. This Meat Puppet's album just simply continued to grow and grow on me. I originally put it on one side of a 60 minute cassette (am I dating myself or what?!?) with the Suicidal Tendencies first album on the other side. This tape played over and over in our tissue culture area of our research laboratory at UCLA. This is how I kept my sanity listening to these albums. Even the polished Institutionalized was an eternal favorite, the Meat Puppets album became the timeless classic of pure raw punk beauty. Every track of this album stands alone. Buy it and you will not regret it. And beware, it is not for the squeamish.

Brilliant early artsy-hardcore: it doesn't get any worse - or any BETTER - than this. You'll either love it or hate it, it's certainly not for all, but it is just as certainly a H.C.punk CLASSIC on par with early Bad Brains, Husker Du's "Zen arcade", or even the Minor Threat albums (requisite unavoidable name-drops), and i CANNOT believe i'm hearing this for the first time in 2004!!! A lot has been written about the vocals, but if you give it a couple discerning listens, you're bound to start appreciating them more - they work on multiple levels, after all: The retardo-teen angst shines through immediately, but the self-mocking rejection of the formulaic inanity of so much of the other punk music being played during this era only becomes obvious after hearing the entire body of the work. In spite of all appearances this is SMART music, and the MPs remained intensly critical of the status-quo of their chosen genre for this record. They remain true to the spirit - but disdainfull of all the common pitfalls - of early hardcore music. The guitar playing alone elevates the songs to a level far beyond that of most other (generally more popular) punk bands of the time: just as original and even more skillfull than even Greg Ginn's finest moments (that's the final closing name-drop and now i'm done).