Revisiting a Psychedelic Classic: Meat Puppets II

Meat Puppets

I grew up in Casa Grande in the '80s, a small, dusty town in the Arizona desert about 45 miles from Phoenix.  Also, I was only one of a handful in the town who listened to hardcore punk.

Of course, I knew who the Meat Puppets were.  They were a punk band from Tempe, less than an hour from where I lived.  I had neither heard them nor ever seen them play.  Sadly, I was not old enough to drive, not old enough to go to bars or clubs.  But I saw the flyers for their shows all over town, plastered to telephone poles on Mill Avenue, pinned to the motley bulletin boards at Tower Records by ASU, prominently advertising their live shows at the Mason Jar, a small punk venue in Central Phoenix.

Plus, they were on the SST label.  Everyone who knew anything about SST knew that all of the best punk bands were signed to SST - Minutemen, Black Flag, Descendents, Bad Religion, Overkill, and Saccharine Trust.  By 1984, Meat Puppets had released two albums - the eponymous "Meat Puppets" and "Meat Puppets II".  I went to a local Zia Records and bought a "Meat Puppets II" cassette from the used bin, usually a harbinger that the album was not good.  But I was only fifteen years old and didn't have a lot of money.  I had to spend my money wisely.

Meat Puppets circa 1984

Little did I know that this album would eventually be a seminal influence in my life and change my perception of what music was.  At first, I hate it.  I popped the cassette into my Walkman, and WTF?!  This wasn't hardcore like their first album!  It was some kind of weird country, hippie shit!

And when I say country, I mean straight-up country!  Songs like "Magic Toy Missing", "Lost", and "Climbing" were twangy in a weird kind of a way.  They a campy kind of country, like an old-timers' square dance complete with Western shirts, bolo ties, and ruffles dresses.  This wasn't punk!

And when it wasn't country, it was hippie stuff - long psychedelic jams like "Aurora Borealis" or "I'm a Mindless Idiot".  Or songs with nonsensical lyrics sung in an off-tune warbling voice, singing Dada-esque phrases like "Plateau":

"There's nothing on the top but a bucket and a mop

And an illustrated book about birds

You see a lot up there but don't be scared

Who needs action when you got words"

Or "Lake of Fire":

"Where do bad folks go when they die?

They don't go to heaven where the angels fly

They go to the lake of fire and fry

Won't see them again 'till the fourth of July"

This wasn't punk!  Well, there was one hardcore song - "New Gods".  But all in all, it was a hard listen, often dissonant and harsh, the instruments and vocals rarely in sync.  It was like listening to really drunk music for people who are really drunk.

I don't know where it changed for me.  I think I was listening to "Plateau", and at the end, there are a few chords were the music actually becomes beautiful.  This is a little hard to understand for a fifteen year-old, but it finally dawned on me that their off-key music was deliberate.  At the end of "Plateau", it was like the guys were saying, "Yeah, we can play, if we want to!  But we're not going to!"

Cover for "Meat Puppets II"

That was the changing point for me.  I grew to love this album for what it was.  Meat Puppets was one of SST's bands - just like Sonic Youth or Husker Du - that were pushing beyond the limits of hardcore and trying to make audible art.  Not too much later, I bought their third release, "Up On the Sun", which I also loved.  And not too soon after that, I got to see them live for the first time at the Mason Jar.  One of the benefits of living in Arizona, I have seen Meat Puppets live more than any other band.  We pulled up into the small parking lot of Mason Jar, and it was already full.  So my friend Steve tried to park in back, and the band was out back smoking weed.  Curt Kirkwood came up to our car and told us we couldn't park there.  We were ecstatic.

Their live shows are something else.  The level of energy is astounding.  They will launch into ponderous improvisational jams, inhabiting the stage while their families sat in the wings.  Next they would launch into a rendition of "She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain", each verse becoming faster and faster until the song ended in a frenzy, in a blur of noise.  I saw them live many, many times.

They were like Arizona's best secret.  Until 1993 when Nirvana's Kurt Cobain invited Meat Puppets to play with him on MTV Unplugged.  Cobain admitted that "Meat Puppets II" was a huge influence on him, even though Courtney Love hated the album.  Meat Puppets joined him onstage for the songs "Plateau", "Lake of Fire", and "Oh, Me".  Suddenly, everyone in the world knew who Meat Puppets were, and the secret was out.  Since then, the Puppets have broken up twice and got back together twice, changed their lineup, and relocated to Austin.  (Bastards.)  But they are still together and still making music.  But nothing will match the magic of falling in love with their second record.

For this review, I downloaded the album digitally, since all I have is the cassette.  The digital version is nice with a bunch of extras - several demo recordings of songs like "New Gods" and "Lost", as well as an old song, "Teenager(s)" from when they were still hardcore.

This record is an essential for anyone who cares about underground music in the '80s.  Released in 1984 at a time when Van Halen was jumping, this obscure, little-known, crazy record went on to influence and set the tone for practically the whole '90s, and, yes, you need it in your collection.  I did.