Meat Puppets are an American rock band formed
in January 1980, in Phoenix, Arizona.
The group's original lineup was Curt Kirkwood,
his brother Cris Kirkwood, and Derrick Bostrom.
The Kirkwood brothers met Bostrom while attending
Brophy Prep High School in Phoenix.
The three then moved to Tempe, Arizona where
the Kirkwood brothers purchased two adjacent
homes, one of which had a shed in the back
where they regularly practiced.
One of the more notable groups on the roster
of SST Records, Meat Puppets started as a
punk rock band, but like most of their SST
peers, Meat Puppets established their own
unique style, blending punk with country and
psychedelic rock, and featuring Curt's warbling
vocals.
Meat Puppets later gained significant exposure
when the Kirkwood brothers served as guest
musicians on Nirvana's MTV Unplugged performance
in 1993.
The band's 1994 album Too High to Die subsequently
became their most successful release.
The band broke up twice, in 1996 and 2002,
but reunited again in 2006.
Meat Puppets have influenced various rock
bands such as Nirvana, Soundgarden, Dinosaur
Jr, Sebadoh and Pavement.
History
Early career
In the late 70's, drummer Derrick Bostrom
played with guitarist Jack Knetzger in a band
called Atomic Bomb Club, which began as a
duo, but would come to include bassist Cris
Kirkwood.
The band played a few local shows and recorded
some demos, but began to dissolve quickly
thereafter.
Derrick and Cris began rehearsing together
with Cris' brother Curt Kirkwood by learning
songs from Bostrom's collection of punk rock
45s.
After briefly toying with the name The Bastions
of Immaturity, they settled on the name Meat
Puppets in June, 1980 after a song by Curt
of the same name which appears on their first
album.
Their early works were made up of hardcore
punk, and attracted the attention of Joe Carducci
as he was starting to work with legendary
punk label SST Records.
Carducci suggested they sign with the label,
and the Meat Puppets released their first
album Meat Puppets in 1982, which among several
new originals and a pair of heavily skewed
Doc Watson and Bob Nolan covers, featured
the songs "The Gold Mine" and "Melons Rising",
two tunes Derrick and Cris originally had
written and performed as Atomic Bomb Club
previously.
By the release of 1984's Meat Puppets II,
the bandmembers "were so sick of the hardcore
thing," according to Bostrom.
"We were really into pissing off the crowd."
The band experimented with acid rock and country
western sounds.
While the album had been recorded in early
1983, the album's release was delayed for
a year by SST.
Meat Puppets II turned the band into one of
the leading bands on SST Records, and along
with the Violent Femmes, the Gun Club and
others, helped establish the genre called
"cow punk".
Meat Puppets II was followed by 1985's Up
on the Sun.
The album's sound resembled the folk-rock
of The Byrds more than punk, and some of the
group's fans accused Meat Puppets of sounding
dangerously like hippies and abandoning their
punk roots.
In keeping with their unconventional way of
doing things, both Cris and Curt purposefully
sang the entire album off key.
Over the next decade, Meat Puppets remained
on SST and released a series of albums while
touring relentlessly.
Between tours they would regularly play small
shows in bars around the Phoenix area such
as "The Mason Jar" and "The Sun Club" in Tempe.
After the release of Out My Way in 1986, however,
the band was briefly sidelined by an accident
when Curt's finger was broken after being
slammed in their touring van's door.
The accident delayed the band's next album,
the psychedelic Mirage, until the next year.
The final result was considered their most
polished sounding album to date.
Their next album, the heavier Huevos, came
out less than six months afterward, in late
summer of 1987.
In stark contrast to its predecessor, Huevos
was recorded in a swift, fiery fashion, with
many first takes, and minimal second guessing.
These recordings were completed in only a
matter of days, and along with a few drawings
and one of Curt's paintings taken from the
wall to serve as cover art, were all sent
to SST shortly before the band returned to
the road en route to their next gig.
Curt revealed in an interview that one of
the reasons for the album being called Huevos
was because of the multitude of first-takers
on the record, as similarly eggs can only
be used once.
Monsters was released in 1989, featuring a
new sound with extended jams such as "Touchdown
King" and "Flight of the Fire Weasel".
Major label career
As numerous bands from the seminal SST label
and other kindred punk-oriented indies had
before them, Meat Puppets grappled with the
decision to switch to a major label.
Two years after their final studio recording
for SST, 1989's Monsters the trio released
its major-label debut, Forbidden Places, on
the indie-friendly London Records.
Forbidden Places is now out of print.
In late 1993, Meat Puppets achieved mainstream
popularity when Nirvana's Kurt Cobain, who
became a fan after seeing them open for Black
Flag, invited Cris and Curt to join him on
MTV Unplugged for acoustic performances of
"Plateau", "Oh Me" and "Lake of Fire".
The resulting album, MTV Unplugged in New
York, served as a swan song for Nirvana, as
Cobain died 138 days after the concert.
"Lake of Fire" became a cult favorite for
its particularly wrenching vocal performance
from Cobain.
Subsequently, the Nirvana exposure and the
strength of the single "Backwater" helped
lift Meat Puppets to new commercial heights.
The band's studio return was 1994's Too High
To Die, produced by Butthole Surfers guitarist
Paul Leary.
The album featured "Backwater", a minor hit
on alternative radio, and a hidden-track update
of "Lake of Fire."
Too High To Die earned the 'Pups a gold record,
outselling their previous records combined.
1995's No Joke! was the final album recorded
by the original Meat Puppets lineup.
Though the band's drug use included cocaine,
heroin, LSD and many others, Cris' use of
heroin and crack cocaine became so bad he
rarely left his house except to obtain more
drugs.
At least two people died of overdoses at his
house in Tempe, AZ during this time.
The Kirkwood brothers had always had a legendary
appetite for illegal substances and during
the tour to support Too High To Die with Stone
Temple Pilots, the easy availability of drugs
was too much for Cris.
When it was over, he was severely addicted
to cocaine.
First hiatus and reunion
Derrick recorded a solo EP under the moniker
Today's Sounds in 1996, and later on in 1999
took charge of re-issuing the Puppets' original
seven records on Rykodisc as well as putting
out their first live album, Live in Montana.
Curt formed a new band in Austin, TX called
the Royal Neanderthal Orchestra, but they
changed their name to Meat Puppets for legal
reasons and released a promotional EP entitled
You Love Me in 1999, Golden Lies in 2000 and
Live in 2002.
The line-up was Curt, Kyle Ellison, Andrew
Duplantis and Shandon Sahm.
Sahm's father was the legendary fiddler-singer-songwriter
Doug Sahm of The Sir Douglas Quintet and Texas
Tornados.
The concluding track to Classic Puppets entitled
"New Leaf" also dates from this incarnation
of the band.
Break up
Around 2002, the Meat Puppets dissolved as
Curt had gone on to release albums with the
groups Eyes Adrift and Volcano.
In 2005, he released his first solo album
entitled Snow.
Bassist Cris was arrested in December 2003
for attacking a security guard at the main
post office in downtown Phoenix, AZ with the
guard's baton.
The guard shot Kirkwood in the stomach at
least twice during the melee, causing serious
gunshot injuries requiring major surgery.
Kirkwood was subsequently denied bail, the
judge citing Kirkwood's previous drug arrests
and probation violations.
He eventually went to prison at the Arizona
state prison in Florence, Arizona for felony
assault.
He was released in July 2005.
Derrick Bostrom began a web site for the band
about six months before the original trio
stopped working together.
The site went through many different permutations
before it was essentially mothballed in 2003.
In late 2005, Bostrom revamped it once again,
this time as a "blog" for his recollections
and as a place to share pieces of Meat Puppets
history.
Second reunion
On March 24, 2006, Curt Kirkwood polled fans
at his MySpace page with a bulletin that asked:
"Question for all ! Would the original line
up of the Meat Puppets interest anyone ?
Feedback is good — do you want a reunion!?"
The response from fans was overwhelmingly
positive within a couple of hours, leading
to speculation of a full-blown Meat Puppets
reunion in the near future.
However, a post made by Derrick Bostrom on
the official Meat Puppets site dismissed the
notion.
In April 2006 Billboard reported that the
Kirkwood brothers would reunite as the Meat
Puppets without original drummer Derrick Bostrom.
Although Primus drummer Tim Alexander was
announced as Bostrom's replacement, the position
was later filled by Ted Marcus.
The new lineup recorded a new full-length
album, Rise to Your Knees, in mid-to-late
2006.
The album was released by Anodyne Records
on July 17, 2007.
On January 20, 2007, The Meat Puppets brothers
performed two songs during an Army of Anyone
concert, at La Zona Rosa in Austin, Texas.
The first song was played with Curt Kirkwood
and Cris Kirkwood along with Army of Anyone's
Ray Luzier and Dean DeLeo.
Then the second song was played with original
members Curt and Cris Kirkwood and new Meat
Puppets drummer Ted Marcus.
This was in the middle of Army of Anyone's
set, which they listed as Meat Puppet Theatre
on the evening's set list.
The band performed several new songs in March
at the South by Southwest festival.
On March 28, 2007, the band announced a West
Coast tour through their MySpace page.
This is the first tour with original bassist
Cris in eleven years.
The tour continued into the east coast and
midwest later in 2007.
In 2008 they performed their classic second
album live in its entirety at the ATP New
York festival.
The band parted ways with Anodyne, signed
to Megaforce and began recording new material
in the winter of 2008.
The resulting album, entitled Sewn Together,
was released on May 12, 2009.
In the summer of 2009 the band continued to
tour across America.
They appeared in Rochester Minnesota outside
in front of over 5,000 fans, after playing
Summerfest in Milwaukee, Wisconsin the night
prior.
The Meat Puppets performed at the 2009 Voodoo
Music Experience in New Orleans over the Halloween
weekend.
As of November 2009, Shandon Sahm is back
as the drummer in the Meat Puppets, replacing
Ted Marcus.
The band was chosen by Animal Collective to
perform the album 'Up on the Sun' live in
its entirety at the All Tomorrow's Parties
festival that they curated in May 2011.
The band's thirteenth studio album, entitled
Lollipop, was released on April 12, 2011.
The Dandies supported the Meat Puppets on
all European dates in 2011.
The Meat Puppets have played several gigs
in their hometown since 2009, such as the
Marquee show in June 2011 with Dead Confederate.
As of early 2011 Elmo Kirkwood, son of Curt
Kirkwood and nephew of Cris Kirkwood, was
touring regularly with the band playing rhythm
guitar.
The Meat Puppets also contributed to Spin
Magazine's exclusive album Newermind: A Tribute
to Nirvana, playing Nirvana's Smells Like
Teen Spirit.
In June 2012, a book titled Too High to Die:
Meet the Meat Puppets by author Greg Prato
was released, which featured all-new interviews
with band members past and present and friends
of the band, and covered the band's entire
career.
In October 2012, it was announced that the
group had just completed recording new songs.
Rat Farm, the band's 14th album, was released
in April 2013.
In March 2013 the Meat Puppets played arguably
their biggest gig since reunion, opening for
Dave Grohl's Sound City Players at the SXSW
Festival in Austin, TX
In April 2014 the Meat Puppets completed a
tour with The Moistboyz.
Members
Discography
Studio albums
Meat Puppets
Meat Puppets II
Up on the Sun
Out My Way
Mirage
Huevos
Monsters
Forbidden Places
Too High to Die
No Joke!
Golden Lies
Rise to Your Knees
Sewn Together
Lollipop
Rat Farm
See also
List of alternative rock artists
List of musicians in the second wave of punk
music
Notes and references
External links
Interview with Curt Kirkwood by Jarrod Dicker
Meat Puppets reunited band's official web
site, maintained by the band and Anodyne Records
Flipside Interview - Meat Puppets interview
from 1982
A concert to download of May 9, 1987
A Conversation with Meat Puppets' Curt Kirkwood
Shooting Star Article on band from Phoenix
New Times
Moonglampers Ramble - a music blog primarily
focusing on live Meat Puppets.
Trouser Press entry
Interview with Curt Kirkwood on groundcontrolmag.com
The Second Supper Interview with Curt Kirkwood
Orange music video directed by Mike Etoll
from the 2011 album Lollipop. on YouTube
Meat Puppets collection at the Internet Archive's
live music archive
Meat Puppets Live Repository
Shandon Sahm on the Meat Puppets
