Reunited Kirkwood brothers help Meat Puppets rise to the occasion
By LEN RIGHI
Posted on Yahoo Meat Puppets Group
One of the more heartening bits of music news in 2006 was that Curt
Kirkwood would be working with his long-estranged bassist-younger
brother Cris on a new Meat Puppets CD for the first time since 1995's
No Joke!.
The rough `n' rowdy Rise to Your Knees arrived in mid-July, its 14
songs culled from material Curt Kirkwood had stockpiled over the
years. If not quite in the league of such influential alt-rock albums
as Meat Puppets II, Up on the Sun and Too High to Die, Rise to Your
Knees still has its share of memorably Meat-y moments.
The Meat Puppets are now on the road, nightly showcasing three or
four songs from the new album as well as older material during what
Curt Kirkwood calls "a dive down the rabbit hole of the past."
And though 48-year-old Kirwood seems happy to be playing again with
his 46-year-old sibling, he is brutally frank when he says during a
phone interview that he would have made Rise to Your Knees even if
Cris had not gained control of the heroin and crack addiction that
split the band apart 12 years ago.
"I wasn't waiting for it," he says while checking into a motel in
Boonville, N.Y., the day before the Meat Puppets are to perform at
the eighth annual moe.down jam-band festival in nearby Turin.
"I didn't realise ahead of time that the band would become a viable
thing. I'm wasn't even sure it would be a three-piece. All I knew was
that I wanted to make a Stratocaster record. A while back I was
playing a Strat (guitar) at a friend's house in North Carolina and I
thought, `I could make a rock record with one of these.' ... I was
going to do it one way or another."
His claim is credible. After all, in 2000, five years after parting
company with his brother and original drummer Derrick Bostrom, he cut
a Meat Puppets album, the underappreciated Golden Lies, with three
other musicians - guitarist Kyle Ellison, drummer Shandon Sahm and
former Bob Mould bassist Andrew Deplantis.
"I never really broke up the band," maintains Kirwood, in-between
side conversations with check-in clerks and photographer Joseph
Cultice, a regular contributor to Vogue and Entertainment Weekly who
is shooting a documentary about the Pups. "I just told (Cris) that I
wasn't going to play with him until he cleaned up. It took him a long
time.
"And," he adds, "over the years I was the one who retained the
intellectual validity of the band."
Kirkwood's comments are brief and cursory while recollecting the mid-
2006 reconciliation with his brother during a meeting at a mutual
friend's house in Tempe, Arizona.
His musician son, Elmo, informed him that Cris, who recently had
spent 18 months in jail for assaulting a security guard at a Phoenix
post office, had straightened out his life.
"So I called him and we got together and started doing a little
rehearsing in Phoenix," says Kirkwood. "Then we quickly set it up so
we could get together (with drummer Ted Marcus) in a studio in Austin
to record. ... That much hasn't changed. Cris is still a quick
learner, good at laying down tracks."
(Reportedly Cris was set to start work at a Salvation Army warehouse
when Curt proposed re-forming the band.)
For the most part, Rise to Your Knees skips the sunlit country and
Southern boogie facets of the Meat Puppets' sound, favouring instead
the punkier, trippier inclinations.
As for lyrics, Kirkwood chuckles, "I go out of my way to make sure
people can't understand (them). ... My songs are like Impressionist
paintings to a certain degree."
However, he is forthcoming about the reggae-rhythmed Enemy Love Song,
which Kirwood characteriSes as "Blondie ska", no doubt referring to
the new wave band's 1980 hit The Tide Is High. "It started out about
a friend of mine. His wife left him and he was living in his car and
I thought it was kinda funny. He wore a lot cologne. He wasn't
obnoxious, just a tool. ... I haven't seen him in years."
And while some "Rise" songs are edged with an uncharacteristic
cynicism, "Spit" is both confident and hopeful. "That's more a look
at the present," Kirwood says. "You're always told, `Don't spit in
the wind.' But most memories are made by spitting in the wind.
Creating memories causes everything goes forward."
- Copyright (C) 2007 MCT Information Services
Accessed 9/12/07
http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/meatpuppets/message/13354
By LEN RIGHI
Posted on Yahoo Meat Puppets Group
One of the more heartening bits of music news in 2006 was that Curt
Kirkwood would be working with his long-estranged bassist-younger
brother Cris on a new Meat Puppets CD for the first time since 1995's
No Joke!.
The rough `n' rowdy Rise to Your Knees arrived in mid-July, its 14
songs culled from material Curt Kirkwood had stockpiled over the
years. If not quite in the league of such influential alt-rock albums
as Meat Puppets II, Up on the Sun and Too High to Die, Rise to Your
Knees still has its share of memorably Meat-y moments.
The Meat Puppets are now on the road, nightly showcasing three or
four songs from the new album as well as older material during what
Curt Kirkwood calls "a dive down the rabbit hole of the past."
And though 48-year-old Kirwood seems happy to be playing again with
his 46-year-old sibling, he is brutally frank when he says during a
phone interview that he would have made Rise to Your Knees even if
Cris had not gained control of the heroin and crack addiction that
split the band apart 12 years ago.
"I wasn't waiting for it," he says while checking into a motel in
Boonville, N.Y., the day before the Meat Puppets are to perform at
the eighth annual moe.down jam-band festival in nearby Turin.
"I didn't realise ahead of time that the band would become a viable
thing. I'm wasn't even sure it would be a three-piece. All I knew was
that I wanted to make a Stratocaster record. A while back I was
playing a Strat (guitar) at a friend's house in North Carolina and I
thought, `I could make a rock record with one of these.' ... I was
going to do it one way or another."
His claim is credible. After all, in 2000, five years after parting
company with his brother and original drummer Derrick Bostrom, he cut
a Meat Puppets album, the underappreciated Golden Lies, with three
other musicians - guitarist Kyle Ellison, drummer Shandon Sahm and
former Bob Mould bassist Andrew Deplantis.
"I never really broke up the band," maintains Kirwood, in-between
side conversations with check-in clerks and photographer Joseph
Cultice, a regular contributor to Vogue and Entertainment Weekly who
is shooting a documentary about the Pups. "I just told (Cris) that I
wasn't going to play with him until he cleaned up. It took him a long
time.
"And," he adds, "over the years I was the one who retained the
intellectual validity of the band."
Kirkwood's comments are brief and cursory while recollecting the mid-
2006 reconciliation with his brother during a meeting at a mutual
friend's house in Tempe, Arizona.
His musician son, Elmo, informed him that Cris, who recently had
spent 18 months in jail for assaulting a security guard at a Phoenix
post office, had straightened out his life.
"So I called him and we got together and started doing a little
rehearsing in Phoenix," says Kirkwood. "Then we quickly set it up so
we could get together (with drummer Ted Marcus) in a studio in Austin
to record. ... That much hasn't changed. Cris is still a quick
learner, good at laying down tracks."
(Reportedly Cris was set to start work at a Salvation Army warehouse
when Curt proposed re-forming the band.)
For the most part, Rise to Your Knees skips the sunlit country and
Southern boogie facets of the Meat Puppets' sound, favouring instead
the punkier, trippier inclinations.
As for lyrics, Kirkwood chuckles, "I go out of my way to make sure
people can't understand (them). ... My songs are like Impressionist
paintings to a certain degree."
However, he is forthcoming about the reggae-rhythmed Enemy Love Song,
which Kirwood characteriSes as "Blondie ska", no doubt referring to
the new wave band's 1980 hit The Tide Is High. "It started out about
a friend of mine. His wife left him and he was living in his car and
I thought it was kinda funny. He wore a lot cologne. He wasn't
obnoxious, just a tool. ... I haven't seen him in years."
And while some "Rise" songs are edged with an uncharacteristic
cynicism, "Spit" is both confident and hopeful. "That's more a look
at the present," Kirwood says. "You're always told, `Don't spit in
the wind.' But most memories are made by spitting in the wind.
Creating memories causes everything goes forward."
- Copyright (C) 2007 MCT Information Services
Accessed 9/12/07
http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/meatpuppets/message/13354