Posts Tagged ‘ Meat Puppets ’

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[Photos from the April 3 show by P Squared Photography]

I last saw the Meat Puppets at Mercury Lounge four years ago, when I made this recording.  Four years later, the band has proven that fires cannot only be rekindled, they can be made made brighter. Now in the fourth decade of their career and on their second reunion as a band, the brothers Curt and Cris Kirkwood have all the scars to prove what 30 years of rock n’ roll can do to a person and a unit. Rock n’ rollers are meant to die happy warriors. If they’ve lived how they’re supposed to live they make their memories early, then check out before their time with a ledger of music a mile deep. Maybe they were onto something when they titled their most commercially successful record Too High To Die, but the Kirkwoods haven’t bowed out or toned it down. They keep re-grouping, re-generating — so much so that Curt’s son Elmo is now the band’s rhythm guitarist.

After a shorter set the night before owing to being the “early show”, this “late show” set on Thursday at Mercury Lounge was a marathon that gave fans everything they could possibly want.  We got all of the Meat Puppets II classics that Kurt Cobain made famous (“Oh Me”, “Plateau”, with a searing guitar solo, and “Lake of Fire”), fiery versions of band classics (a nine-minute “Up On the Sun” and equally sick “I’m A Mindless Idiot”), covers (Beach Boys’ “Sloop John B”, Freddy Fender’s “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights”, the Texas Tornadoes’ “(Hey Baby) Que Paso” and Jimmy Driftwood’s “Tennessee Stud”), a taste of their forthcoming album, Rat Farm (the title track, “Time and Money” and “Original One”), plus two of their better-known Too High To Die numbers (typical set closer “Backwater” plus “Comin’ Down”). Among the new songs, “Original One” from Rat Farm was the live debut of that song. The band kept their feet on the gas for all of this nearly two-hour set, with minimal breaks between songs, and the brothers’ interplay between each other on stage seemed, to me, to be at an all-time high. The Puppets have always been capable of writing great songs, but haven’t always been what you’d call musically consistent. Tonight, we saw them at their absolute full potential — a band that can be both.

I recorded this set in our usual manner for the venue, with Schoeps MK41 supercardiod microphones and a feed of the excellent house mix by the Meat Puppets’ touring FOH (please send his name if you have it) working with Mercury head FOH Kevin Mazzarelli.  The sound quality is outstanding. Enjoy!

Stream “Plateau”

This Recording is now available to Download in FLAC and MP3 and to Stream at Archive.org [HERE].

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Meat Puppets
2013-04-04
Mercury Lounge
New York, NY USA

Recorded and produced by acidjack for nyctaper.com

Schoeps MK41>KCY>Z-PFA>Sound Devices USBPre2 + Soundboard (engineers: Kevin Mazzarelli and Meat Puppets traveling engineer)>>Edirol R-44 [OCM]>2x24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS5.5 (align, mix down, fades)>Izotope Ozone 5 (light EQ, exciter)>Audacity 3.0 (tracking, amplify, balance, downsample, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks [Total Time: 1:53:50]
01 [Intro]
02 Sometimes Blue
03 Waiting
04 The Monkey and the Snake
05 Oh, Me
06 Touchdown King
07 Up on the Sun
08 Comin’ Down
09 Plateau
10 [banter1]
11 Wasted Days and Wasted Nights [Freddy Fender]
12 (Hey Baby) Que Paso [Texas Tornadoes]
13 I’m a Mindless Idiot
14 [banter2]
15 Rat Farm
16 [banter3]
17 Sam
18 Lost
19 [banter4]
20 Time and Money
21 Tennessee Stud [Jimmy Driftwood]
22 Original One
23 [banter5]
24 Open Wide
25 [banter6]
26 Sloop John B [Beach Boys]>
27 Lake of Fire
28 Seal Whales
29 Backwater

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT the Meat Puppets, visit their website, and pre-order Rat Farm from their online store [HERE].