Baker’s Dozen 005 — Meat Puppets

Every other Baker’s Dozen installment I’ve done so far has been with a band I’ve been thoroughly familiar with. Thought it would be good fun to do one with a band that I knew very little about. What a rewarding deep dive this was. You can listen along on Spotify here.

1. “Plateau” from 1984’s II — This is the song that put Meat Puppets on the map when Nirvana covered it in 1994 on their MTV Unplugged performance. There’s a reason Nirvana covered it: it absolutely kicks ass. It’s got a loose, earthy vibe that hits just right.
2. “Flaming Heart” from 1994’s Too High to Die —In a decade they’ve gone from playing loose and fast on the underground to polished major label artists being covered by Nirvana. They’ve done it with grace and taste and without a hint of selling out. This is a driving up tempo jammer that should reel in anyone with a functioning set of ears.
3. “Sam” from 1991’s Forbidden Places — The vocal delivery on this is absolutely bonkers. It’s comparable to REM’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine).” How anyone could sing this without a lyric sheet or teleprompter present is beyond me. It goes hard musically too. Just three relentless minutes.
4. “Sexy Music” from 1987’s Huevos — Not particularly sexy, it is excellent. Also, if this isn’t the inspiration for Primus’s “Wynona’s Big Brown Beaver,” I will never be convinced otherwise. Not that it sounds like Primus, but the baseline and cadence is there.
5. “Light” from 1989’s Monsters — Probably their most psychedelic and generally heavy album, “Light” is actually a bit of an outlier in that it isn’t a sonic tour de force as much as a delightful trip through a sunny meadow or some shit.
6. “Lake of Fire” from 1984’s II — Nirvana also covered this on their MTV Unplugged. And with good reason. The raw emotion of early MP releases is well on display here and I must say, despite having heard the Nirvana versions a million times, I think the originals are better. You also realize how much Cobain must’ve loved these songs because he tries to match the vocal warbles and everything. Just great stuff.
7. “Never to Be Found” from 1994’s Too High to Die — This is probably the one MP album in the collections of 90s music fans if I had to guess. The songs are good, the production is great, the performances are sharp. Kind of makes you wonder how they didn’t get really huge off of this album. It beats the brakes off of a lot of stuff from that era in the same genre that did get big.
8. “Open Wide” from 1991’s Forbidden Places — This is almost like a Motorhead song if they were from the Western USA. Just fast full-throttle rock and roll screaming on the open road.
9. “Up on the Sun” from 1985’s Up on the Sun — Title tracks are usually title tracks for a reason — because they’re damn good songs. It’s stunning if you compare this to their 1982 debut how far they’ve come in three years. From super sloppy lo-fi punk to clean borderline funky-prog filtered through slacker pscyh haze.
10. “Attacked by Monsters” from 1989’s Monsters — Some of the riffs on this sound like something from Soundgardern’s Badmotorfinger, expect this album came out 4–5 years prior. Nothing about MP strikes me as “grunge” but man, they certainly helped lay some of the blueprint.
11. “Another Moon” from 1991’s Forbidden Places — One of the thing that really strikes me about these guys is that despite being more embraced by the indie corner of the rock world, they could’ve easily slid onto H.O.R.D.E. tour with jams like this. Would’ve been extremely at home in that world too much like Blind Melon straddled the line.
12. “Aurora Borealis” from 1984"s II — An instrumental jam that could really be stretched out live it feels like. I’ve talked to a lot of younger Deadheads that were apparently way into the Meat Puppets so maybe my thoughts on them being able to move in both worlds isn’t so far fetched after all.
13. “Backwater” from 1994’s Too High to Die — I’m sure there was a video for this. I don’t remember anything about it, but this song was definitely everywhere in 94/95. Felt only fitting to save “the hit” for last, but unlike a lot of bands, the hit is actually a really great song.

Meat Puppets have 15 albums and it’s a bit of a confusing trip. The first album is this weird super lo-fi sloppy punk affair. The next album is so drastically different you almost can’t believe it’s the same band. And they did a good bit of morphing and shifting throughout the years. Their strongest years are 1984–1994 without a doubt, but they did good stuff after that, it’s just that the albums are more inconsistent as the band was beset with a hosts of problems at a certain point and underwent a series of lineup changes. Highly recommend everything in that ‘84–’94 window of time though.