Slang Editorial :: Never Underestimate The Value Of A Holla'

Saturday, January 02, 2010
Backwatering

"Childhood Ghosts I: School". Larger here.

For whatever reason this afternoon I became possessed with the idea that I needed to listen to the Meat Puppets and so I pulled out No Strings Attached, the "best of" covering their SST years (read: pre-mainstream entry).

In listening to No Strings, I was reminded of a conversation I had a few years back with a friend about why the Meat Puppets weren't included as one of the thirteen hallowed bands featured in Michael Azerrad's seminal Our Band Could Be Your Life (note: if you haven't read this shit, you really should read this shit). He felt their exclusion was surprising given their influential melding of punk and country and their proximity to and relationship with so many of the other bands in this book. My argument more or less came down to, "Well... for whatever reason, I never really want to listen to these guys once I put their records on..."

Which probably isn't fair: my ears don't necessarily mean shit, and many regard the second MP record II to be among the canonical 80s post-hardcore records--a record which, in addition to being "important", most famously features three songs chosen as covers by Nirvana for their MTV Unplugged session--"Lake of Fire", "Plateau", and "Oh, Me"--with even Puppeteers Curt and Cris Kirkwood assisting. But, well, Kurt's versions of all three cuts are superior to the originals, and the rest of II... I dunno. Just plays like the kind of thing that looks better on paper than in product.

Weirdly though, the one Meat Puppets track I've ever held dear to my heart isn't even on No Strings Attached, but instead came after SST and after Nirvana--the '94 single "Backwater" off second major label effort Too High To Die. Some of you may remember "Backwater", as it reached #2 on the "Modern Rock" charts and achieved a certain degree of popularity amongst grunge-leaning teens in the mid-90s, offering a tuneful and even bouncy blend of early 90s standard riffs with a bit of J Mascis-lite guitar thrown in. It also sounds almost nothing like anything on No Strings (covering the band up to 1990) and, honestly, like an entirely different band than the squawking stone-grags who performed "Lake of Fire". And I can't even say that it's a Lost & Forgotten Great Song, because it isn't, but I wanted to hear it today and so there you go.

Here it is, in fact:

LISTEN:

Meat Puppets - "Backwater", from Too High To Die

Meat Puppets - "Lake of Fire", from II

And of course, Nirvana doing "Oh, Me" from MTV Unplugged, with a little help from Cris and Curt Kirkwood:

Labels: memories, mp3, music

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 1/02/2010 01:47:00 AM 0 comments

0 Comments: