Mark Arm tells us Mudhoney haven’t played with Meat Puppets since 1992. Tonight 05.06.13 we hear them both and METZ. And it’s special.
Writing a typical live review of last night’s Mudhoney gig is not the object of this blog. If I’m falling into that trap then expect more tangents in the future. Musings, ramblings and observations will serve me far better. You don’t think I write all this for your benefit now do you? *maniacal laugh*
AN EARLY START
The ticket said 7PM so being grunge slackers my friends and I arrived at precisely 7.21pm and wandered through the doors to the main room to be greeted by the opening METZ song.
You can’t help but grin when you’re greeted by such a wonderful racket. Even with earplugs in, METZ sound joyously loud. Sub Pop couldn’t have signed a more perfect noise band for this decade. There is singing but it’s mostly screaming in tune.
The band’s sheer admiration and happiness at being on such a bill is summed up when the bassist says early on, “so you guys are looking forward to seeing Meat Puppets tonight?… {pause}…it’s The Meat Puppets!” At which point we now understand METZ are every bit as chuffed to be here as we are.
What follows is the remainder of a 30-minute set which ploughs and plunders viciously through most of their debut album. The singer-guitarist Alex Edkins is a human sweat machine. He is the sweatiest man in rock. Boy can that man SWEAT. Maybe they should be called SWEATZ. Some bands walk off stage as if they’ve just played a round of golf. This guys plays music as if you’d shaken a bottle of IRN-BRU with an industrial bottle shaker and then had the lid explode off. It’s one thing to scream. Screaming like that every night on stage is going to take its toll eventually. Which leads into my main point.
METZ may have been brilliant last night but I did wonder if this was a stock car still being trashed around at full speed despite the fuel tank near empty. The intensity of the show at a venue the size of ABC is never going to be the same as smaller venues such as SWG3 or Broadcast – I get that. But I still had a nagging feeling that they were being brilliant at the personal expense of their sanity. Considering how many shows they’ve played since being on Sub Pop I’d be amazed if they’re not already sick to death of their debut album. Youthful exuberance {can’t believe I just used that phrase – fuck it, it stays in} and the buzz from being on such a famous label surely starts to wane when you’re banging out Wasted for the 899th night in what feels like a row.
As a huge fan of METZ, please take care of yourselves guys. If you don’t fit in some time for non-van living you’ll have nothing to write about on your next record. Look what happened to Kelly Jones. Nobody wants that.
YES, IT’S THE MEAT PUPPETS
Believe it or not music snobs, some people are unaware of Meat Puppets, know little about cowpunk, and missed out. ABC was barely over half capacity when Meat Puppets came onstage. Which was great for a non-mosher like me who could therefore stand about fifteen metres from the stage without fear of a doc martens landing on my head. How very rock n roll of me I know. A friend of mine at the gig had never heard them before this show (she was there primarily for METZ) and they have quite the punk rock royalty history. Neither are they exactly straight edge!
Here’s a band who genuinely do their own thing and it’s refreshing to listen to a set where every song doesn’t sound more or less like the last one. You could learn so much about songwriting and be inspired to find your own voice by listening to Meat Puppets. That has nothing to do with grunge or any other genre. It’s simply about being true to yourself {what the fuck is this, Dawson’s Creek? Twilight?} and stretching your ability out as far as it’ll take you. The set included songs from their Lollipop album and surprisingly, they played those three songs made famous by KC and the Sunshine McCartney Band.
What can you write about singer-guitarist Curt Kirkwood without falling into cliches? He looms larger than life onstage, a presence so much the focal point that it’s as if the other three huddle around each other and look upon him in awe. He has that effect on his own band so you can guess how the audience feels. For some this will have been the highlight of the entire show.
FINALLY, WORDS ABOUT MUDHONEY
They have the most overqualified rhythm section in grunge. Guitarist Steve Turner is now the spitting image of South Park co-creator Matt Stone. The strongest card in their poker hand is still Mark Arm’s trademark howl that somehow manages to scrape itself out of his throat and onto the mic. When they play their best songs, they still sound like teenage rebellion. Not bad for a group who’ve been mudhoneying the world over for twenty years.
Mudhoney open with a few songs from their latest album Vanishing Point which deserved better than the muted response from fans. It’s only much later in the set when they rock out through the song Chardonnay that everyone is onboard with the newer material. The collective speech bubble hanging in the air of, ‘shut up and play the stuff we love’ was popped as soon as the band kicked into classic Mudhoney territory.
In the words of Scotsman reviewer Malcolm Jack,
If it didn’t demand earplugs, it didn’t get a look in, from the savage Suck You Dry through the acerbically tuneful Good Enough and, come the encore – off of their Iconic 1988 debut EP Superfuzz Bigmuff – In ’n’ Out of Grace, a track that seems to only gain more power with vintage.
Verdict? They still have what it takes live and they are more interesting than ever creatively on record. Vanishing Point is worth checking out.
