Meat Puppets

Born in the nascent hardcore scene of the early ‘80s, the Meat Puppets have had one of the longest, wildest careers in punk music. Formed by brothers Curt and Cris Kirkwood and drummer Derrick Bostrom, the Phoenix, Arizona misfits helped invent cowpunk (a warped blend of punk, psychedelia, and country), joined Nirvana on stage for the grunge legends’ most iconic performance, and have outlasted nearly every band they rose up alongside. After their 1982 hardcore-steeped self-titled debut, they began establishing their own groovy, country-fried punk sound on 1984’s Meat Puppets II and 1985’s Up on the Sun. By the time the Kirkwood brothers landed on the MTV Unplugged stage to play three of their songs alongside fan Kurt Cobain in 1993, they were already indie elder statesmen with seven albums under their belts. That performance shot the Puppets into the spotlight, just in time for the release of 1994’s Too High to Die, featuring grunge hit “Backwater.” However, that surprise success did little to temper the band's outsider sensibility. Even through a volatile history of addiction, arrests, breakups, and reunions, the Puppets have endured, bringing their acid-soaked, sun-baked surrealism to life with searing guitar rockers, hallucinatory lullabies, and twangy psych reveries that still sound like nobody else.