meat puppets ii

The Meat Puppets relaxed into a unique new sound by injecting some hazy country twang into their hardcore thrash to reach their plateau in this captivating cowpunk concoction.  The trio had formed in Phoenix, Arizona with brothers Curt and Cris Kirkwood and Derrick Bostrom and self-produced  'In a Car', an EP of fast and furious punk rock (five songs in five minutes) that led to a deal with SST Records.  Their eponymous debut album shows them playing with the formula a bit; but it wasn't until the followup that they really embraced a different kind of music.  

Curt Kirkwood says:   "We did 'Meat Puppets II', we had an ounce of ecstasy. We just snorted X the whole time, and it was "MDMA" back then. We were really into putting things into these double locked capsules full of MDMA, and getting high as shit. Nobody knew what X was yet...Yeah, we were having a blast. See, we didn't drink, that's the thing about the Meat Puppets. My brother would drink some, but Derrick and I didn't drink at all in the early days. We smoked some weed – we weren't your typical partiers. It wasn't "rock" really, it was peer surrealist art for us, like we get to do this and emulate our heroes...Derrick was way into surrealists like [Francis] Picabia, and then cartoonists like Jack Kirby. We were trying to find some sort of forum for high art. And also just trying to integrate our psychedelic experience into it intentionally ... I guess, more than anything, I didn't know how punk rock was gonna go over.  When it did start to go over, I was pretty idealistic, and I didn't really like the audience very much. So when, I took the time to think about it, I realized I needed to explore some of my other roots. I mean, we'd always had sort of a punk rock motive early on, but as a band, and individually, we'd never kept ourselves form doing anything.  I just had to start conscientiously having us do other things, which largely, I got the confidence to do through listening to Neil Young and the Grateful Dead when I was growin' up. Those and the Flying Burrito Brothers [among others]."

The sessions took place with Spot the engineer, who disappeared with the tapes for several months.  Derrick Bostrom reveals:  "We weren't entirely satisfied with 'Meat Puppets II', in the sense that the start of it was in March, and we didn't get it mixed until November that fall. It basically languished for at least six months, and by the time it finally came out, in March of 1984, the impact that we had wanted it to have, with our country leanings and whatnot, had been somewhat blunted by the delay. That made us very uncomfortable. We felt that this was our first inkling that how you're going to manage your label relationship to make sure you get what you want. You can't count on anybody else but yourself to do what's best for you. And the way that SST – who were a little weary about putting out this country rock crap on their punk rock label – started to throw a wedge in it."

Cris Kirkwood looks back:    "I remember when Curt painted that picture [that became the cover of 'Meat Puppets II']. We were still living at my mom's house. We used to hide in the bathroom and smoke grass. We were in the bathroom getting stoned, and he picked up this little piece of canvas, and real quickly, whipped off this thing. And that's the cover. It took him about a minute to do that – we used it a few years later as the cover for the record. It's Curt's acrylic work, and definitely Van Gogh-inspired painting technique. It was back when you still had vinyl, so you were making this shit in terms of being "an album."... One of the cool things that we did was we did a photo session with this guy, Anvil Blockhammer, here in town. We drove around West Phoenix, and we were out in a field, an agricultural thing. It was Derrick's cool arty idea – that picture that's on the back, where we're in silhouette."

'Meat Puppets II' features Curt Kirkwood on guitar and vocals;  Cris Kirkwood on bass and vocals;  and Derrick Bostrom on drums.  The album didn't sell well; but it's combination of country music with psychedelic folk and urgent punk rock helped to define a new genre of music.  





http://themeatpuppets.com/







'Meat Puppets II'
full album:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IenJY0QWIJE




1. Split Myself in Two - 0:00
2. Magic Toy Missing - 2:24
3. Lost - 3:46
4. Plateau - 7:12
5. Aurora Borealis - 9:34
6. We're Here - 12:20
7. Climbing - 15:03
8. New Gods - 17:46
9. Oh Me - 19:58
10. Lake of Fire - 23:01
11. I'm a Mindless Idiot - 24:57
12. The Whistling Song - 27:28




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn9s5GOFs0g




0:00 Split Myself In Two
2:23 Magic Toy Missing
3:45 Lost
7:12 Plateau
9:34 Aurora Borealis
12:18 We're Here
15:02 Climbing
17:44 New Gods
19:57 Oh, Me
22:59 Lake Of Fire
24:56 I'm A Mindless Idiot
27:25 The Whistling Song

[bonus tracks]
30:22 Teenagers
33:58 I'm Not Here
35:53 New Gods 
38:08 Lost
41:11 What To Do
43:45 100% Of Nothing
45:35 Aurora Borealis