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.In the final episode of Discography's season exploring The Meat Puppets, founding drummer, Derrick Bostrom, shares with Marc With a C end of the SST years into the band's major-label era: the unlikely explosion of Too High to Die, the end of the original trio, the years when Curt Kirkwood carried the Meat Puppets name forward without Derrick or Cris Kirkwood, and the even more unlikely road that eventually brought all three of them back together - And Derrick brought tapes.Hear Too High to Die-era recordings that have never circulated among fans, including the elusive title-song itself, plus not one, not two, but five different versions of the long-rumored track "Don't Touch My Stuff". Derrick shares the saga around the album that unexpectedly put the Meat Puppets in front of a massive audience—and what the familiar version of that story leaves out.This is anything but an exercise in settling scores. Derrick discusses the years when Curt kept the Meat Puppets alive without him and Cris, and why keeping that name and music moving ultimately mattered. Then we arrive at 2017, when Curt, Cris and Derrick reunited onstage for their induction into the Arizona Music & Entertainment Hall of Fame for their first performance together in more than twenty years, and how that reunion ultimately opened the door to another chapter of the band. Misconceptions, alternate histories, and lost songs are demolished in real time. At the end of this long road, we're not going to pretend we've completely figured out the Meat Puppets, because Derrick Bostrom made the whole story even weirder than we previously knew! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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.Host Marc With a C sits down with founding Meat Puppets drummer Derrick Bostrom for an extensive conversation about the band's history. In part 1, we're going back to the 1980s: when three guys from Arizona made an ungodly racket, somehow landed on SST Records, and spent the rest of the decade becoming increasingly difficult for anybody to categorize.Derrick helps untangle some of the chronology that's got muddled over four decades of retellings. He shares what it was actually like to exist inside the SST ecosystem - where releasing someone's records and understanding them were two entirely different jobs and making fun of the band on the air was just another day at the office. Along with tales from Derrick's lips to your ears, you'll hear slices of the unfinished, unreleased "homemade" version of Up on the Sun—an abandoned attempt at the album, offering a glimpse of familiar songs in their gestational phase.This isn't a documentarian's attempt to reconstruct the eighties from press clippings. This is Derrick's memories of how the records happened, what everybody gets wrong, what everybody somehow got right, and all of the strange little accidents that became Meat Puppets history.Somewhere along the way, a noisy Arizona punk band became one of the strangest and most original American bands of its generation. It turns out the guy behind the drum kit remembers quite a bit about how they got there! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Some reunions chase the past. The Meat Puppets used theirs to prove the story wasn't over.Instead, this current era of Meat Puppets is characterized by: second chances, hard-earned wisdom, and a catalog that refuses to stand still. These later albums aren't epilogues; they're proof that artistic curiosity doesn't have an expiration date, and that a band can continue to surprise listeners long after the history books think the story has already been written.Host Marc With a C follows Curt Kirkwood and the reborn Meat Puppets through an unlikely and deeply rewarding revival. Beginning with Rise to Your Knees, continuing through Sewn Together, Lollipop, Rat Farm, and Dusty Notes, we'll explore a band that rediscovered its voice while refusing to become its own tribute act. Along the way, Cris Kirkwood returned to the fold, drummer Ted Marcus became a vital part of the band's modern identity, Shandon Sahm powered much of the band's post-Sewn Together studio work, and Dusty Notes welcomed both the return of original drummer Derrick Bostrom and keyboardist Ron Stabinsky, bringing old friends and new collaborators together for one of the band's richest and most adventurous albums; not to mention Curt's son Elmo becoming a full-time official member!This isn't a story about recapturing former glory, it's about what happens when musicians survive long enough to gain perspective and eventually put that into artistic motion. Rise to Your Knees announces that the Kirkwood brothers still share an unmistakable chemistry, Sewn Together finds them writing with renewed warmth and confidence, underrated albums Lollipop and Rat Farm continue to stretch their sound in surprising directions, and Dusty Notes embraces new collaborators without ever losing the personality that made the Meat Puppets unique in the first place.We'll also take a few side quests, exploring the projects and releases that filled the spaces between studio albums, showing that creativity never slowed, even when the gaps between Meat Puppets records grew longer. More than anything, we'll examine how the band balanced continuity with reinvention, welcoming new musical voices while honoring the peculiar spirit that Curt and Cris built decades earlier in the Arizona desert.Sometimes the road circles back!Links:The Meat PuppetsMarc With a C on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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.Host Marc With a C follows Curt Kirkwood through the years in-between incarnations of the Meat Puppets; writing and recording with a remarkable cast of collaborators. First: the supergroup Eyes Adrift, alongside Krist Novoselic of Nirvana and Bud Gaugh of Sublime. After that band's brief lifespan, Kirkwood and Gaugh regrouped as Volcano. Finally, Curt stepped out completely on his own with the understated and deeply personal solo album Snow.This isn't an intermission in the Meat Puppets story, it's a chance to see one of alternative rock's most distinctive songwriters through a different lens. Eyes Adrift blends the musical DNA of three legendary bands into something entirely new, Volcano expands Curt's love of reggae, country, and psychedelic rock into a loose, sun-soaked collaboration, and Snow strips away nearly everything but the songs themselves, revealing just how timeless Kirkwood's writing had become.Curt never sounded like a guest in anyone else's band; these collaborations grew naturally from friendships rather than celebrity. In this episode we examine what happens when a songwriter with nothing left to prove simply follows his instincts. These records may not bear the Meat Puppets name, but they carry the same unmistakable fingerprints: surreal imagery, desert horizons, and melodies that always seem to find beauty in unexpected places.Links:The Meat PuppetsMarc With a C on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Not every chapter in a band's history is defined by triumph. Sometimes the most revealing stories are the ones told through uncertainty.Host Marc With a C chronicles the Meat Puppets' journey through one of the most turbulent periods of their career. Beginning with their overlooked record No Joke, continuing through the You Love Me EP, the reflective Golden Lies, and the raw Live album released by DCN Records; we'll examine a band trying to hold itself together as the ground beneath it continues to shift. Along the way, the classic lineup of Curt Kirkwood, Cris Kirkwood, and Derrick Bostrom comes to an end, with both Cris and Derrick Bostrom departing the group entirely. Meanwhile, deeper personal struggles cast an ever-lengthening shadow over the years to come.This isn't simply a story about records. It's about resilience under impossible circumstances. No Joke pushes forward, despite growing instability, You Love Me captures Curt Kirkwood still willing to experiment, Golden Lies carries an unmistakable sense of reflection and weariness, and Live serves as a snapshot of a group of ringers that could summon remarkable chemistry even as their own future became increasingly uncertain.We'll explore how lineup changes altered the band's dynamic, how addiction and personal turmoil threatened to eclipse the music in the public narrative, and why these releases are more than a bridge between better-known eras. Even in the darkest moments, Curt Kirkwood's songwriting continues to search for beauty, humor, and humanity where most bands would have settled for despair. There are endings that no one could yet recognize as endings, songs that carried more weight than they first appeared to, and a band whose greatest challenge was never writing remarkable music: it was surviving long enough to keep playing it.Links:The Meat PuppetsMarc With a C on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.