Show Notes
Season Five of Discography begins where the desert first started humming: before Too High to Die, before MTV, before “Lake of Fire” became somebody else's campfire song.
Host Marc With a C traces the earliest evolution of the Meat Puppets through three foundational releases: the frantic In a Car EP, the feral self-titled debut, and the astonishing leap that is Meat Puppets II. Along the way, we'll follow Curt Kirkwood, Cris Kirkwood, and Derrick Bostrom as they transform from Arizona hardcore outliers into one of the most imaginative bands to emerge from SST Records.
This isn't a show about gossip or mythology; it's about the stories pressed into the vinyl: how five minutes of chaos on In a Car hinted at something stranger. How the debut LP stretched hardcore until country, folk, and psychedelia started leaking through the cracks. And why Meat Puppets II remains one of the most startling artistic left turns in American independent music.
In this season debut, we'll examine songs that seem to wander in circles only to arrive exactly where they needed to be; across desert landscapes, black rainbows, lakes of fire, plateaus, through tumbling tumbleweeds, and the peculiar way the Kirkwood brothers make existential dread sound oddly comforting.
Proof that sometimes the strangest path is the straightest one, because the best records don't just ask you to listen, they ask you to keep climbing until you find yourself up on the sun.
Links:
The Meat Puppets Marc With a C on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from Discography
After an entire season spent searching for the stories hidden in the grooves, we finish by hearing from someone who put them there. Last time, Derrick Bostrom helped us straighten out the Meat Puppets' first decade into their stint on London Records. Now, things get weird.
We've spent seven episodes telling the story that The Meat Puppets' records contained; now we get to hear the story from someone who lived it.
Some reunions chase the past. The Meat Puppets used theirs to prove the story wasn't over.
Sometimes the end of one band is the beginning of several new adventures: unlikely supergroups, overlooked masterpieces, and the quiet confidence of an artist who kept moving forward no matter what name appeared on the album cover.
Not every chapter in a band's history is defined by triumph. Sometimes the most revealing stories are the ones told through uncertainty.