Meat Puppets

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For the Internet community slang term, see Internet sock puppet.

Meat Puppets were 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.

1 History
2 Discography
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

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History

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Early years

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.

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Mainstream period

The band landed on a major label in 1991, with the release of Forbidden Places. In 1994, the band became suddenly popular 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, 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 in 1994 with Too High To Die, which earned them a gold record, outselling all of their previous records combined.

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-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 to release Golden Lies in 2000 and Live in 2002 (The concluding track to Classic Puppets entitled "New Leaf" also dates from this incarnation of the band.)

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Demise and post-break up

Around 2001-2002, the Meat Puppets dissolved and 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.

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 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 has dismissed the notion. [2]

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Discography

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Studio releases

Album Cover	Date of Release	Title	Label	US Billboard Peak	US sales
Image:Meat pupets st.jpg	1982	Meat Puppets	SST	Did not chart
Image:Meatpuppetsii.jpg	1983	Meat Puppets II	SST	Did not chart
Image:MeatPuppets - UpOnTheSun.jpg	1985	Up on the Sun	SST	Did not chart
Image:Nocover.gif	1987	Mirage	SST	Did not chart
Image:Nocover.gif	1987	Huevos	SST	Did not chart
Image:Monsters album.jpg	1989	Monsters	SST	Did not chart
Image:Forbidden places.jpg	July 9, 1991	Forbidden Places	London	Did not chart
Image:Meat Puppets Too High to Die.jpg	January 25, 1994	Too High to Die	London	62
Image:Nocover.gif	October 3, 1995	No Joke!	London	183
Image:Nocover.gif	September 26, 2000	Golden Lies	Atlantic	Did not chart