After the release of “Meat Puppets II” in 1984 and “Up On The Sun” in 1985, the Meat Puppets found themselves transformed. No longer mere “local boys made good,” we became players on the national stage. As more people began to take us seriously, we began to take stock of what what the band meant to us and what we wanted to do with it. We experienced lots of growing pains as we struggled to assess our goals and ambitions. But back in those days, nobody had a road map. What exactly did success look like for a punk rock band in 1980′s America?
We were already painfully aware of our limitations, that the same “straight” critics who praised our album were coming away disappointed from our performances. We all pointed fingers at each other, but at the end of the day, the truth was obvious. For the moment at least, our reach had exceeded our grasp. Our only option was to close our eyes, hold our noses and roll up our sleeves. It would take a couple years and a lot of work before we really began to put it all together and become the band we wanted to be.
But not everyone back then shared this low assessment of our live shows. Plenty of folks dug the way we interspersed breakneck punk rock with long clumsy psychedelic jams and tentative workouts of future Puppets classics. For them, the sloppy sense of discovery found in these shows was the real deal. I happen to hold that opinion myself, which is why I regret not keeping more recordings from back then. I would tape every show I could, but I only kept the highlights for my own personal collection. I left the rest of them with our sound man. Unfortunately, we had a falling out, and I didn’t have the presence of mind to get our live tapes out of his house before we fired him. To make matters worse, I lost an entire box of masters when our van was broken into during a trip to Los Angeles.
Happily, every so often an old fan crawls out of the woodwork with a handful of heretofore unheard audience recordings. A new one just came to my attention just this week: witness Peteykins of the Princess Sparkle Pony blog, who shares three shows from 1984-5, and describes his preference for those years. Peteykins is like a lot of Puppethead tapers. For one thing, he’s somebody I probably once knew but have now completely forgotten (sorry man; it was a long time ago). Second, he was kind of afraid to post shares for fear of pissing off the band. So, my purpose here is twofold: first, to popularize his recordings (and maybe take down his blog in the process due to heavy traffic — again: sorry man), and second, to encourage the rest of you. Tapers: if you got shows, by all means rip em and put em up somewhere before the tapes rot!
As far as I can tell, the Sparkle Pony recordings of these shows are the only ones in existence. I’m pretty sure I don’t have copies of any of ‘em. So, I’m as anxious to hear this stuff as the rest of you are. I’m sure it’s terrible!
GET EM HERE, and remember: if you have issues, you’ll have to contact Peteykins yourself. I’m not your dad.
Derrick, I’m certainly neither surprised nor offended that you don’t remember us from back then. You guys were playing so much! All I can say is that you guys were always really nice to our motley Tucson crew, and probably really patient, too, given how young we were.
The three shows I’ve posted so far are the best recordings. I’ve got three or four more tapes to digitize, and they range from OK to really bad tape quality. I’ll post those over the next few weeks.
I’ve also got some earlier San Diego and Phoenix shows which I got in trade from somebody years and years ago. If anybody is interested, I’ll post those, too.
Cheers!
Thanks a lot for these tapes, Petey! Very cool stuff. “Embodiment of Evil” with lyrics in the Rafters tape… that must be pretty rare! I’d be interested in hearing the other ones as well.
We LOVED “Embodiment of Evil” and were baffled when it wasn’t included on Up on the Sun.
Wow, this is great.
I have some tapes, but I think the ones I have are pretty widely circulated. I know I recorded a show at Hotel Congress in 1995, but I bet it sounds awful. I was standing on a bucket with the microphone hanging out of my pants. Still – off to the Tupperware tape vault!
Excellent!
Im listening to the show from the Mason Jar, the second one from 84 (8/18), and enjoying it immensely. The early versions of the Up on the Sun songs are great, as they are undergoing their (onstage) transformation to final album form.
I also appreciate the comment toward the end of the first clip (on that same recording), where Curt says that while it may be surprising to some, hes actually 97 years old. Then, they start to play Out in the Gardener by request, after which he calls it a really old number, that he wrote way back when he was around 60, back before the time of Daniel Boone.
Thanks!
Oh, hey! Sorry, I got lazy. I’ve posted another one, at Clancy’s in Phoenix from September, 1984. If you liked the primitive versions of Up on the Sun songs from the Mason Jar show mentioned above, you’ll LOVE this one.
Cheers!
I only see one show on here, did the rest get taken down?
Good stuff. Thanks as always Derrick and in this instance Peteykins. I have some recording from I believe right after Out My Way, and the playing was fantastic, os I would say the evolution was mighty fast. So on a different historical note that would appear proper for this site, Derrick, what ever happened to the In the Studio Book? I was looking very forward to it, but of course, news on this release have now gone frigid. I assume it is dead, but still holding out hope.
They’re all there, Rick. Just hit the “Get ‘em here” link above.
thanks derrick for once again turning us fans on to some live shows you found on the “interweb”, and thanks peteykins for sharing these shows with us. hey peteykins, do happen to have the setlists for these shows? i burned the 9/9/84 show and got most of the setlist written down. the songs i didn’t recognize were the one after polythene pam (was that dominique?) and the one after hot pink. thanks again!
Thank you Derrick and Peteykins for sharing these great shows. The 9/9/84 show in particular is very interesting with the early versions of Sexy Music, Mountain Line and even Love Mountain from Sewn Together which was very surprising given the time between the show and that album.
The song that was introduced as “Newy the New Song” was that an early take of Out My Way?
Thank you for the four shows that have been posted so far. I look forward to hearing more of the shows you taped, Peteykins, if you have the time to post them.
Regards
Nick
OK, I’ve posted another one: a tape Curt made for me of highlights from the MP’s 1984 East Coast tour. Heavy on covers, nonsense, and Elvis! The tape has some sound quality issues, but it’s pretty great stuff.
Milo: I’m afraid I didn’t keep track of the song titles; it appears that Nick, above, knows all these songs a lot better than I do.
That pretty much wraps up the tapes I made (or were given), but I do have some even earlier shows I got from a guy in San Diego which have probably vanished into the ether. If you all are interested, I can probably get around to ripping those, too.
I listened to the 9/9/84 (Clancy’s) show yesterday, and I would have to say it is my favorite of the bunch so far. In addition to the great cuts that Nick mentions, “Boyhood Home” is also on there, and a wonderfully sedated version of what was to become the “Up on the Sun” title track.
You weren’t kidding about that chaotic ending of “Hot Pink”, Peteykins. Wow, that is some amazing stuff. It is not only chaotic, but absolutely golden, mind-melting psychedelia that just about thrusted me into hyperspace.
Thanks again, and I’d definitely be interested in hearing the older tapes.
hey bostrom-
dunno about your current sphere of influence, but if archive.org received permission from the band for uploads, they do a fine job of taking lossless files and archiving them in lossless and lossy formats. It would also provide a more central repository rather than the distributed, inconsistent mess we all comprise currently. http://www.archive.org/details/etree
Hope all is well. Best,
Wow! Excellent gems here! I think I heard what could be a live performance of 100% of Nothing!! Am I right?
Peter’s idea is great!! I hope it can happen in the near future!
Quoting Derrick: “It would take a couple years and a lot of work before we really began to put it all together and become the band we wanted to be.”
That is so true. When you hear Meat Puppets live recordings from 1986-87-88 they sound like a total different band. Not only by the fast and furious performances that the band delivered but also by Curt’s singing style. I think I read on some liner notes from one of the Rykodisk reissues that Curt had taken vocal lessons in order to be able to perform in a much better way.
Thanks to Sparkle Pony for these amazing recordings they give us a great look on the band’s transition between the more hardcore and the more far out stuff, wich ultimately will end up being even faster and further out as the recordings from Out My Way, Mirage, and Huevos tours show! (Really looking forward to a blast of recordings available to download from these tours hehe
Greetings everybody and sorry for my english.
Andrés.
Hey Derrick. I appreciate all your work. The greatest show I ever saw was Tipitina’s, New Orleans, LA 1989-10-31. I was attending Tulane at the time. I recently ran across an old link (2007) on a torrent site that said they had it. Unfortunately, it was no longer there. Is there any way you can point me in the right direction to this one? Now that I know that it actually exists, it’s going to drive me crazy until I actually find it.
Thanks, Kevin.
thx. amsterdam graffiti? Goldengate Park. Outfits sewn by Kurts wife. Making Henry Rollins Mad because we were there to see u in Milwaukee. CAHeeg