Quickie: Michele Bachmann Locates Core Constituency

Republican presidential candidate, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., looks at hanging beef carcasses during a plant tour at Amend Packing Co., Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2011, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Finally, somebody who won't "fact check" me!

Arizona Audioblogging: Meat Puppets East Coast Tour Highlights, 1984

Here's another "authorized" bootleg of the Meat Puppets, and this is a special one. Curt Kirkwood made this tape for me of his favorite moments of their first ever East Coast tour in Fall, 1984. Later he told me that all the original tapes were gone, so I may be the only person who has these recordings.

Sound quality varies greatly from section to section, and do not adjust your set, because the first 18 minutes of part 2 are left channel only. The music is similar to the live shows I've already posted, but it's heavy on the covers: "Dominique" by the Singing Nun (!) rears its head again, and there are no less than three Elvis songs. There's also a Grateful Dead tune (ugh) and one of the versions of "Hot Pink" morphs unexpectedly into "Tomorrow Never Knows" by The Beatles. Curt also shows a preference for some of the funnier and more chaotic moments, at one point declaring, "My name is Carol Burnett."

I have no idea where these shows were performed, but Boston is mentioned at one point.

It's just over 90 minutes, and the 130mb files are zipped up and ready for download here.

Arizona Audioblogging: Meat Puppets Live At Clancy's, 09-09-84

Click for bigger. I think Clancy's is misspelled?

Oh, hey, sorry, I did say I would post the rest of these, didn't I?

OK, so this show was recorded in Phoenix not by me, but by my friend Steve (I was back at school in San Diego). The recording is a little bass-heavy, but otherwise very good quality. Of interest to Meat Puppets fans are an early, hypnotic version of "Up on the Sun" and primitive versions of other songs from the album of the same name, a cover of the Beatles' "Polythene Pam," a surprising cover of "Dominique," and an unbelievably noisy instrumental "Hot Pink" which dissolves into complete chaos.

It's 68 minutes, and the zipped mp3 files can be downloaded here.

Arizona Audioblogging: Meat Puppets Live At The Mason Jar, Phoenix, August 18, 1984

This Meat Puppets show was recorded at the Mason Jar the night after this one. It has better sound quality and is a fantastic performance. There are some technical issues: some "time to turn the tape over" confusion and restarting at the end of part one and the beginning of part two. The second part of the show is tragically marred by a drunk and noisy young lady sitting very near the tape recorder, and at one point she decides to sing a loud, tuneless rendition of "Shine on Harvest Moon" while the Meat Puppets are playing the best version of "Oh Me" I ever heard. Tsk. These things happen. Besides the usual suspects, songs from Meat Puppets II and Up On The Sun, there's an aborted attempt to do the ridiculously intricate "Out in the Gardener" from their first single, and two Elvis covers: "Trouble" and "Suspicious Minds."

I went to this show with my friends Jeff and Sam, on a weekend in Phoenix when the MPs were playing two nights in a row. I specifically remember this night being one of the times they let us pretend to be "roadies" so that we could get in the bar without all of us being old enough*. At the beginning, Chris says, "Check this out: it's a balloon with another balloon blown up inside it," something we had given him before the show. A fun night was had by all!

The two mp3 files are 105mb, and zipped up for download here.

*Looking back on it, were the Meat Puppets contributing to the delinquency of minors? I guess so, but they were a rock band! That was one of their jobs!

UPDATE – Hello and welcome all MP fans. Please to enjoy my humble offerings and amusing anecdote!

Arizona Audioblogging: Meat Puppets Live at the Mason Jar, Phoenix, June 8, 1985

Click for bigger.

Compared to the last Meat Puppets performance I posted, which was nearly a year earlier, this one is much better sounding, but I still recorded it on a ghetto blaster, so, you know, don't expect King Biscuit quality. This was at the Mason Jar in Phoenix, a place I remember being small and unremarkable. I believe this was the last show of theirs that I saw in Arizona before returning to college in San Diego full-time.

But what a difference a year makes! Like the earlier tape, the MPs are again mostly doing songs from Meat Puppets II and Up on the Sun, but what were new songs then are now very practiced, extremely tight, executed almost perfectly. To be honest, I can't say this is an improvement; I kind of prefer the chaotic qualities of the earlier show. Still, though, their skill is hair-raising here, and it's sometimes hard to believe it's a three-piece. Things get looser towards the end as the band plays ridiculous/awesome versions of "CC Rider" and "Country Road" as well as a superb "Not Fade Away." Halfway through a stodgy cover of "Tennessee Waltz," Curt says, "I hate this song!" and stops playing it. Fun show!

It's in two pieces, and it's over 80-minutes-long! Get the 120mg zipped files here.

PS: I was thrilled that drummer Derrick Bostrom, always the nicest guy, left a comment on the last post. Derrick: several years ago, I offered to send you these tapes. I was too poor at the time, though, and never got around to it. If you still want them, you should email me, because I'd love for you to have them.

Arizona Audioblogging: Meat Puppets Live at Rafters, Tempe, August 17, 1984

What, you want another rare recording of a cult band playing live in Arizona, one which has never been posted to the internet? The Fall wasn't enough? You people are greedy. OK, then, how about the Meat Puppets?

I recorded this show on a Sharp "ghetto blaster" with the MP's permission. Excuse the quality, please? This may have been one of the shows where they let us pretend to be "roadies" so that we could get in (read about this and other Meat Puppets reminiscences here). This was also a weekend when we stayed in Phoenix overnight so that we could see them twice more the next day, and I have vague memories that ordeals were experienced. Yay for obsessive teenage fans!

The show is classic Meat Puppets at their best, between Meat Puppets II and Up on the Sun, with plenty of songs from both. You can tell that they're still working out the kinks in the new songs from the latter. There are also covers, such as "Poke Salad Annie" and "Voodoo Child" and the inevitable random bits of sonic mayhem the band was likely to spin off into at any point during this period.

It's over 70 minutes long (!), in two parts (I didn't break it into songs), and you can download the 101mb zipped archive here.

And if anybody wants more, there's more.

Oh, and Derrick, if you're out there, I hope you don't mind me posting this!

UPDATE: Very little response! Probably not worth digitizing the others.

Random Arizona Anecdote: Meat Puppets Memories

Both images 1984

Warning: this post is a little name-droppy/braggy; sorry about that.

The punk/new wave scene in Arizona in the early 1980s was tiny. If you were into it, chances are either you or your friends were in a band, and everybody knew every band because... well, because there just weren't that many of them.

The Meat Puppets, from Phoenix, started playing in 1980 and quickly became notorious for several reasons: they were absolutely crazy, they were astoundingly good musicians, and they rarely sounded the same twice. They were not beloved by all. One night they'd play just the most blistering, fast, grinding speed-punk, and then the next week they'd play Neil Young and Funkadelic covers while the audience booed in dismay. I saw them several times in 1981 and 1982 and thought they were great.

In 1983, my friends and I finally decided that the Meat Puppets were pretty much the best thing ever, and this was great timing because the band was entering a period of heightened activity, gigging a lot in both Phoenix and Tucson and, eventually, finally releasing their long-awaited second album in 1984. We saw them every chance we got.

We also hounded them like the star-struck teens we were. Don't forget that these were tiny clubs; there were no dressing rooms, so there was nowhere for them to hide. Curt, Cris and Derrick were a little stand-offish at first because, I mean, who the hell were these obnoxious kids? I think, too, the band had gotten used to having more than their fair share of "haters," and Curt later told us that at first he thought that we were mocking them or something, but then realized that we were hardcore fans when they noticed that we were showing up to all of their shows, even the ones in Phoenix. Then, Curt also realized that my brother (whose photographs of Arizona you've been enjoying lately here at PSP) was a college buddy of his.

After the ice was broken, the Meat Puppets were always nice to us, and we had a lot of fun hanging out with them in the various bars' parking lots when they played. Brothers Curt and Cris always struck me as kinda strange guys in a can't-put-you-finger-on-it way. They were both super-smart. Kurt was the more abstract of the two, usually very mellow, spacey. Cris was more hyper; he always reminded me a little of David Patrick Kelly's character in The Warriors ("Warriors, come out to playyyy!"). Derrick was more down-to-earth, less disorienting to talk to, also very smart and loved to talk about music and art, as they all did. They also did the greatest thing: most of the bars they played at in Phoenix (like the Mason Jar) didn't let minors in, and until we all finally turned 19, they would let us pose as "roadies" so that we could sneak in through the back doors. They also let us tape their shows, and I still have a dozen or so great ghetto-blaster recordings of superb 1983-1985 shows.

After I left Arizona, I kept up with them for a while. Their sound got a lot less crazy, more mainstream sounding, and even though they were still incredibly talented, I eventually lost interest in their recordings. Their early stuff still sounds good to me, though. Their studio sound never quite captured the thrilling chaos of their live shows; I feel lucky to have seen them dozens of times. I'm glad to see that they're currently enjoying a comeback.

So that's my Meat Puppets story: a great band of great guys who provided some fantastic memories. Hats off to them!

Desecration: A True Story Ripped from Today's Headlines!

OK, so here's where I do something rare: write about my "real" life.

I live in a basement apartment in an early 20th Century row house. It's not exactly the most air-tight place, so every once in a while a mouse gets in, which I regard as absolutely the most traumatic thing about my homelife (which, I know, makes me pretty damn lucky).

Today when I got home, I caught one of those quick little scurries out of the corner of my eye. Fuck. Then I saw it several times in my living room running around, peeking around corners, mocking my very presence. It was a teeny-tiny one, the smallest I've ever seen and, yes, very cute. Arrrrrgh.

Let's backtrack a few steps, OK? I've got this old American flag which I recently dragged out of the drawer. It's an ugly one, made out of cheap nylon and faded several steps away from the red and blue standards favored by support-our-troops magnet manufacturers and decal-makers. I had it out because I was thinking of using it for some photo backdrops, and today it was, I admit, rather unceremoniously dumped in a pile on the floor. What can I say? I'm a very patriotic person, but the American flag has never really wormed its way into my heart. I've always been a materialist in the traditional sense of the word, so I never bought into the whole "the flag is patriotism made flesh" ideology.

But... ZIP! Across the floor scurried the mouse! And into the little flag-pile on the carpet!

Call it a panic response, but I jumped up and grabbed the nearest thing... a stack of vinyl records, and tossed it mercilously onto the flag-pile-with-mouse. Thinking that if I was in for a penny I might as well be in for a pound, I grabbed another stack of records and threw them on, too.

So now I have this wadded up flag containing a presumably dead mouse covered by a couple of stacks of records in the middle of my living room floor, and thanks to the magic of photoblogging™, you can enjoy the sight, too!

Soooo.... now what the hell do I do?

(Bonus! Yes, I did think of putting more photogenic album covers on the top of the stacks, but then I decided to keep it real. On the left is Slave's incredible 1977 funk masterpiece The Hardness of the World, and on the right is a very strange inspirational/religious album from 1967. To say that a whole entire record of a guy with a hairlip preaching is uneasy listening would be an understatement. Also barely visible are two Meat Puppets LPs, No More Heroes by the Stranglers, and Gyrate by Pylon.)