Meat Puppets

In the embryonic year of 1982, the brand of colorful country punk that would blossom on Meat Puppets II and Under the Sun had yet to develop. Rather, The Meat Puppets’ eponymous debut catches these three Phoenix-reared outsiders thrashing through a hardcore cacophony gleaned from L.A. heroes such as Black Flag and the Germs. Yet even in this early stage, the Puppets’ take on hardcore showed pluck and imagination, and offered hints of the glories to come. “Walking Boss” and “Tumblin’ Tumbleweeds” are shards of the Puppets’ patented desert dementia, while “Milo Sorghum and Maize” is a glorious guitar-driven instrumental that predates Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. in its quest to meld Greg Ginn with Jerry Garcia. The expanded reissue of Meat Puppets adds 18 songs to the album’s original 14-track 45 rpm running order. Among the additions are stray compilation tracks, outtakes, and a sampling of the outrageous cover versions the Puppets loved performing at the time. While they absolutely eviscerate Fred Neil’s “Everybody’s Talking,” the wistful bumpkin bounce they add to Neil Young's “I Am A Child” and the ragged, streaming version of the Dead’s “Franklin’s Tower” are strangely perfect. At this point, the Meat Puppets were too young to have developed a completely distinctive voice, but even in these early noisy hours the band painted in peyote colors.