Audio By Carbonatix
The Meat Puppets Dan’s Silverleaf Saturday, April 28
The Meat Puppets were perhaps older than most at Dan’s on Saturday night, but boy, did they own it; the hair of the Kirkwood brothers still cascaded, just like it was 1984, except with a little more gray at the temple. Three songs into a 90-minute set, they played “Plateau,” which some might remember when Kurt Cobain howled, “Nothing on the top but a bucket and a mop/And an illustrated book about birds,” on 1994’s Unplugged.The Meat Puppets’ version at Dan’s was far more rocking, sticking closer to the ’84 recording.
The next song was “Coming Down,” the last song off 1994’s Too High To Die, if you don’t count the hidden reissue of “Lake of Fire.” The bluegrass oom-pah oom-pah of Cris Kirkwood’s bass would serve a recurring role, starting with this song, and it illustrated their pioneering genre-bend of country, rock and punk. It was a fitting segue into the two Texas Tornados covers they would do next, including “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights,” a nod to the geography of Texas and legacy of that band.
Throughout the show, Curt, the venerable leader, seemed in good spirits as he smiled at Cris and mouthed the words “Fuck you, cocksucker” under the din of applause. There were stellar jams of “Backwater,” their only chart-topping single;a fantastic cover of the Beach Boys’ “Sloop John B”; and strategically placed closer “Lake of Fire.”
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