I saw the Meat Puppets

One perk of being in (or around) Washington D.C. so far: I find myself, for perhaps the first time in my life, faced with more concerts to go to than I have time for. Those who have been in big cities for longer than I can testify whether or not this is a mixed blessing, but I find especially due to the fact that D.C. isn’t really that huge, that the overall community here is less noxious.

(Mendy visited me in D.C. a little more than a week ago and one thing that we both happened to observe independently is the lack of noticeably straight-edge people walking around, at concerts or on the Metro. We were both under the impression, given that this is where straight-edge was born and the hometown of Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Rites of Spring et al, that such observances would happen at least occasionally. So far, nothing. Too bad I can’t shuttle back and forth from here to c. 1985 or so on weekends, to play catchup.)

So I went to see the Meat Puppets, along with Retribution Gospel Choir, at a tiny venue called the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hotel (spelling “rock ‘n’ roll” is always awkward, isn’t it?). Meanwhile, Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood were playing nearby at the Verizon Center, with tickets there going for $50+, a fact I am only aware of because I heard a bunch of drunk blooze goobers on the way back on the Metro (a guy with spray-on hair striking up a conversation with an Italian woman, yelling, “I’m a guitarist, I’m a blues player! I’m a big fan of soul—Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye—have you heard of them?” Italian lady: “Do you know Ben Harper?”).

Now, Clapton and Winwood both have their shiny guitar moments (Winwood is tragically known mostly as a keyboard player today, maybe for his association with Hendrix on “Voodoo Chile,” but his slow-burning solo on “Dear Mr. Fantasy” is a psychedelic classic and certainly Traffic’s finest moment [and I would know, having heard plenty of Traffic vis-à-vis my father]). Neither of them can compare with Curt Kirkwood in his 1982-1987 prime. Not in terms of skill, not in terms of formal/melodic invention, whatever. My opinion about this is very resolute, even though I know I keep dumping on Clapton and yet I’m a pretty big fan of the Yardbirds, Cream, Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Blind Faith and Derek & the Dominoes (Delaney & Bonnie can suck it, however). Curt Kirkwood is an enormously skilled player, and he is easily the best and perhaps only reason to see the Meat Puppets today, particularly when he takes liberty with the material at hand and does his fingerpicking thing.

The opening act was Retribution Gospel Choir, starring another guy people don’t often think as a guitar god, Alan Sparhawk of Low. As a matter of fact, this band is pretty much Low as far as I can tell. Same bassist, at least. My own theory is that this band would not exist if not for the fact that drummer Mimi Parker needed to stay home and fulfill her Mormon duty by taking care of her and Sparhawk’s children, so Sparhawk just started a new band with a new drummer, who by the way was all right. I am not familiar with Retribution Gospel Choir’s album, but it did not take me long to figure out that the first song they were playing was simply a heavy, power-trio version of the Low song “Breaker,” from Drums and Guns. At the time, I thought, Wow, what a rocking improvement over the original, but having gone back to the original song since, which happens to have this amazingly intense simplicity to it, I now am in a continuous state of oscillation, being predisposed towards power-trio sounds anyway. At their core, though, Retribution Gospel Choir functions basically the same way as Low: songs that sound generic, or slow and boring, that you realize are actually clever and full of killer melodies, often injected with heartbreaking sounds. Amp up the “generic” factor a little bit, but not enough to be offensive, and you basically have Retribution Gospel Choir. If I heard any of this on classic rock radio however many decades from now, I wouldn't be too surprised.

After that, the Meat Puppets came on, the brothers Kirkwood looking harried and bored, although Cris Kirkwood kind of took on the role of resident goofball, in that he actually looked at and acknowledged the presence of an audience. Also, they had a new rent-a-drummer named Ted Marcus, apparently a former sound engineer for MTV. Those who know me know my intense physical displeasure whenever musicians, but particularly drummers, are rotated out of bands I like and audiences are presumed not to notice or care, but in this case I was simply unable to convince myself that their original drummer Derrick Bostrom was really a key ingredient on par with Grant Hart, Steve Shelley, Earl Hudson, or even Murph, what with his fairly rudimentary time-keeping skills. Anyhow, Ted Marcus did a good job.

I said before that Curt Kirkwood was really the only reason to pay $16 for this, as the band started their set with the title track from their latest album Sewn Together, this was made abundantly clear. I listened to it once, but I will defer to Curt Kirkwood’s expert assessment of the material, saying something to the effect that it sounds like a kid’s fruit juice commercial. Mind you, this is the actual artist describing his own music in this way, and not some critic. Not a good sign. And “Sewn Together” is a fairly generic mid-tempo county song that bears the dubious distinction of being really bad. When Curt started playing a solo, though, my ears perked up, and you could tell that Curt suddenly got a lot more interested, very occasionally indulging in guitar posturing and reacting with pleasure at crowd noise.

Those of you who like me are mostly fans of the Meat Puppets for their first three albums were rewarded intermittently with classic tracks. They played quite a lot from their 90s repertoire, which isn’t that bad but doesn’t have the singular vibe that Meat Puppets, II and Up On The Sun have. They did play the Nirvana-mandated “big three” from Meat Puppets II—being “Oh, Me,” “Plateau,” and “Lake of Fire,” in that order. All three were played somewhat differently and benefited from reworkings that highlighted Curt’s substantial guitar improvisations. As I was standing basically in front next to Curt, I could see him at work on the effects pedals, of which I noticed there were fewer than J. Mascis had. His way of playing through multiple registers is harder than one thinks (think of the first few bars of “Plateau” or “Aurora Borealis”) and you could tell that he changed some of the keys the songs were in to make them easier to play (or maybe sing).

Nevertheless. The undoubted highlight was an extended jam of “Up On The Sun,” played amazingly even faster than it was on record (let no one doubt that Curt can play the lead lines as clean and well-phrased as ever). The audience seemed to eat it up, even as the rhythm section started going in places that didn’t really resemble the original song at all. Another highlight for me was the instrumental “I’m A Mindless Idiot,” filtered through some sort of volume/phase pedal that finally explained to me how Curt got some of the effects that have eluded me for so long. Also, the encore of “Lost” was exhaustingly good, and they finished with their biggest hit “Backwater,” a remnant of the post-Nirvana years that is all right as a song but is fantastic as an example of how influence in the underground rock world is often reciprocal.

Tragically not represented at all was their first, most legitimately hardcore album, an album that few people seem to like. It certainly isn’t much of a gem, songwriting-wise, but I always liked it because it shows even then how inimitable a guitar style Curt Kirkwood has. If anyone ever tells you that the 80s don’t have the guitar gods to stack up to previous decades, tell them how full of shit they are simply by citing any of a number of bands from Our Band Could Be Your Life: D. Boon, Bob Mould, Roger Miller, Greg Ginn, Bob Stinson, and J. Mascis. Add to this the slightly more dubious proposition of Paul Leary, or Thurston Moore/Lee Ranaldo, or Ian MacKaye/Guy Picciotto. Add to this Dr. Know and Curt Kirkwood, absent from the book. Who among these is not brilliant, singular, a true hero of the form? Who are these morons who continue to propagate the theory that punk was the domain of the harmonically simple-minded? Rolling Stone, probably. Even when the songwriting is lax, which one can say of the original Meat Puppets as well as Sewn Together, one can still derive some sort of rudimentary pleasure in identifying the style of someone who couldn’t play otherwise if he or she tried. This is the key to the artistic success of the Meat Puppets, and the reason why they deserve just as much as Clapton to play at the Verizon Center, cranking out another solo for the zillionth time of some classic tune that, at its best, can remind you of why you found it revelatory in the first place.