0 Meat Puppets @ Chop Suey (9-23-09)

The Meat Puppets rolled into town last Wednesday and played an inspired show at the Chop Suey. The legendary Arizona alt-rock band played an extended set of songs covering their 12 album catalog, while relying heavily on fan favorites and choice selections from their most recent release “Sewn Together”. The best part about seeing the band at this point in their almost 30 year existence was witnessing the Kirkwood brothers on the same stage together again. It has been no secret that bassist Cris Kirkwood has had a long battle with drug addiction. Cris’s escalating issues with drugs around the time “Too High To Die” was released in 1994 caused the band to go on hiatus when they were starting to reach mainstream ears, thus hampering the bands push towards a larger audience. Instead the band has been more or less relegated to cult status, having a huge influence on a number of great alt-rock bands such as Pavement, Dinosaur Jr, and most notably Nirvana but never reaching the same household name status. I suppose I don’t need to mention this, but both Curt and Cris were asked to sit in as guest musicians for Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged in New York show, as the band covered early Meat Puppets songs “Lake of Fire”, “Plateau”, and “Oh, Me”. This performance by one of the biggest bands on Earth finally gave the Meat Puppets some of the mainstream recognition they deserved, and “Plateau” and “Lake of Fire” have since become two of the most celebrated songs from that session. Unfortunetly, this is still the biggest moment for the band to date.

In 2007 the Kirkwood brothers reunited and have once again become a solid unit. Cris has made a miraculous turnaround and has cleaned himself up after a stint in prison after which he attacked a security guard with his own baton in 2003. Cris has contributed to the last two Meat Puppets records including the 2009 release “Sewn Together”, and the band shows no signs of slowing down while currently on a tour that is hitting many of the major markets in the US. Pounding the skins these days for the Meat Puppets is multi-instrumentalist Ted Marcus. Original drummer Derrick Bostrom hasn’t drummed for the band since their original break-up in 1996, though he has since resurrected a blog about his adventures in the Meat Puppets.

Guitarist Curt Kirkwood has to be one of the most underrated and underappreciated guitarists ever. He is phenomenal, and I was in complete awe of his skills, and was put into a trance like state on many of the Puppet’s psychedelic jams. The Meat Puppets’ set was reaching the 1am mark when I decided it was best to cut out and salvage at least another half hour of sleep before work that morning. Highlights from the night included a killer rendition of “Oh, Me”, and my favorite Meat Puppet tune, country punk turned psych freak out gem “Up on the Sun”. The brothers Kirkwood have come full circle and seeing them perform together again was a major highlight of my 2009 concert going adventures.

Opening the show was Ume and Georgia’s Dead Confederate who will get their own blog post as soon as possible. Check out my photo slideshow from the show as well as a video of Curt Kirkwood and the Puppets wailing on “Oh, Me” from 1984’s Meat Puppets II. Cheers!