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Meat Puppets are a three-piece band, formed in January 1980, in Paradise Valley, Arizona. The brothers Kirkwood, Curt and Cris, played guitar and bass, respectively, and Derrick Bostrom played drums. They began rehearsing together 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 (the In A Car EP and Meat Puppets LP) were wholeheartedly punk, with vocals so feral in their del ...read more
Meat Puppets are a three-piece band, formed in January 1980, in Paradise Valley, Arizona. The brothers Kirkwood, Curt and Cris, played guitar and bass, respectively, and Derrick Bostrom played drums. They began rehearsing together 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 (the In A Car EP and Meat Puppets LP) were wholeheartedly punk, with vocals so feral in their delivery they were often indecipherable, but ultimately humorous and ingenious once discovered. The musicianship was mostly breakneck thrash, yet the songs were tinged with a subtle, haunting element like that of a long abandoned ghost town. Their brand of cathartic, explosive hardcore attracted the attention of legendary punk label SST, who released their first record in 1982. Unsatisfied with the result, the band spent plenty of time in the studio before the release of 1983's Meat Puppets II. The band's exciting experimentation with psychedelia, acid rock, and quieter tunes on top of a core western-style thrash sound, gave them their one acknowledged classic album, and propelled the record to legendary status. The Meat Puppets burgeoning musicality led to more intricate and melodic efforts on 1985's Up on the Sun, which was a cohesive collage of songs that further demonstrated their abilities to capture a sound that had all of the wonder of the desert. The album granted them their first major mainstream exposure, and many fans still consider it to be their masterpiece. Over the next decade, the Meat Puppets remained on SST and released a series of albums. After the release of Out My Way in 1986, 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. Subsequently, their next album, the heavier, power-trio-rooted Huevos came out less than six months afterwards, in late summer of 1987. Monsters was released in 1989,featuring Curt-as-guitar-hero on such extended jams as"Touchdown King"and "Flight of the Fire Weasel." As numerous bands from the seminal SST label, and other kindred punk-oriented indies, grappled with the "going major" decision, so did the 'Pups. 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. A three-year break saw the band's studio return with 1994's Too High To Die, produced by Butthole Surfers guitarist Paul Laery. The album featured "Backwater", a minor hit on alternative radio, and a bitchin' hidden-track update of "Lake of Fire." Too High To Die earned the 'Pups a gold record (500,000 sold), outselling their previous records combined. That same year saw the 'Pups in their brightest mainstream spotlight as the band achieved sudden popularity when Nirvana's Kurt Cobain invited Cris and Curt to join him on MTV for acoustic performances of "Plateau", "Oh Me" and "Lake of Fire" (all originally from Meat Puppets II). The resulting album, Nirvana - Unplugged in New York, served as a swan-song for Nirvana, as Cobain died six months 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" (their only charting single) helped lift the Meat Puppets to new commercial heights. 1995's No Joke! was the final album recorded by the original Meat Puppets lineup. Unfortunately, Cris Kirkwood was now a heroin addict, whose heavy and compulsive use of the drug increasingly dominated his life. This was a major departure from the psychedelic drugs with which the Meat Puppets had always been associated; his erratic behavior soon became too much for the band to cope with. Derrick recorded a solo EP under the monicker Today's Sounds in 1996, and later on in 1999 took charge of re-issuingthePuppets' originalsevenrecordson Rykodisc as well as putting out their first live album, Live in Montana. Curt formed a new band in Austin, TX called the RoyalNeanderthalOrchestra, butthey changedtheir name to Meat Puppets torelease GoldenLies in 2000 and Live in 2002. The line-up was Curt (voc/git), Kyle Ellison (voc/git), Andrew Duplantis (voc/bass) and Shandon Sahm (drums). 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. Around 2001-2002, the Meat Puppets dissolved as Curt has gone on to release albums with the groups Eyes Adrift and Volcano. In 2005, he released his first solo album entitled Snow. His brother Cris was arrested in December 2003 for attacking a security guard at a post office with the guard's baton. The guard shot Kirkwood during the melee. Kirkwood was subsequently denied bail, the judge citing Kirkwood's previous drug arrests and parole violations. He eventually went to prison for felony assault. He was released in July of 2005. Derrick Bostrom began a home page 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. On March 24, 2006, Curt Kirkwood polled fans at his MySpace page[1] with the following bulletin: "Question for all! Would the original line up of the Meat Puppets interest anyone? Feedback is good - do you want are union?!" 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 sited is missed the notion. An April 26, 2006 billboard.com story reported that Cris Kirkwood and Curt Kirkwood would reunite as the Meat Puppets without original drummer Derrick Bostrom. Primus drummer Tim Alexander was announced as Bostrom's replacement. However, the drummer was later changed to Ted Marcus, and the new lineup released the album "Rise To Your Knees" in 2007. « hide |
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