The Meat Puppets

Emo’s, Saturday, March 17

Seeing Cris Kirkwood onstage with his brother, Curt, again after a prolonged battle with addiction, a stint in jail, and getting shot was genuinely great, and damn if the gutbucket acid punk that helped create the entire indie/alternative scene (cough, Nirvana, cough) didn’t sound stellar. Most telling though were the couple of songs when Curt’s mic stand kept failing. What did Kirkwood do? He kept playing, limboing backward to sing as the mic slipped lower. He didn’t whine. He didn’t ask for more vocal in his monitor. He kept rocking. And when it was fixed, he never acknowledged there was ever a problem. Why? Because the Meat Puppets know how to play live. Problem? Deal. The veterans spent their formative years on stage learning how to perform for an audience, not scouring the Internet for cracked Pro Tools plug-ins. So if you really want to be a band, don’t get a MySpace page. Get a van.

This article appears in March 23 • 2007.

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