Diamond Mining Time

Put away your Clapton. Throw down your Eddie Van Halen. Cast aside your Frank Zappa corpse. I have come unto thee to tell unto all that of which I shalt have been known to have spoken. From the hill I preach to thee. So it is written, so it shalt be spake.

But seriously folks. I just gotta tell ya, the results are in. I refer of course to the results of my untold years of Guitarology research. My quest to find the one true Guitar God. And I finally have to close the book and bring to you my findings.

Curt Kirkwood.

If you don't know who this is, throw yourselves down on the ground and writhe like a wild undulating wildebeest, yelping, whimpering, perhaps even braying. For you are among the unwashed ignorant mismatched-sock-wearing masses. You are like a deer in the headlights of a UFO. You are a coin tossed towards the fountain that bounced back from the fountain edge unexpectedly and tumbled instead into the sewer, clinking its way down until it lands on a bloated rat carcass. Is the rat dead? Or it is sleeping? Was it a nickle? A dime? A quarter? Surely not a penny, that's just cheap.

Actually I am not surprised that many may not know who recently-knighted (by me) Guitar God Curt Kirkwood is. He's off the beaten path, Curt is not a "Rock Superstar." Sure he's had his brush with fame, he got some face time on MTV playing with Curt Cobain on "MTV Nirvana Unplugged" along with the other members of his band.

The band? The Meat Puppets. "The Meat Puppets are an American rock band formed in January 1980, in Paradise Valley, Arizona. The group's classic lineup was Curt Kirkwood (guitar/vocals), his brother Cris Kirkwood (bass guitar), and Derrick Bostrom (drums)." I stole that right from Wikipedia. Because it's true. It's good to steal the truth. It's better than buying a lie! I think I'll pass that onto my kids. "Boys," I'll say, waving my corncob pipe meaningfully, "It's better to steal the truth than to buy a lie."

I just left myself a mental note to buy a corncob pipe.

The Meat Puppets, to me, are the best Country band that's never been considered a Country band, ever. A quick thoughtful listen to "Huevos" will confirm this fact. Their first 2 releases may be hardcore punk run through a cow's digestive track and left in a steaming pile on the grass; but by the time they released "Up on the Sun" they had crossed over into my idea of perfect Country. I remember first hearing "Up on the Sun," and I remember it well. Because I was into Black Flag. Sex Pistols. Dead Kennedys. Stuff like that. My buddy Marty lent me "Up on the Sun" and it blew me away. Totally blew me away. And I HATED country. Rather, I hated the current Country Music Genre. I like Johnny Cash. And I love the Meat Puppets.

I saw the Meat Puppets, I think on the tour for their "Out My Way" EP. What was amazing about this tour was the fact they they played to their hardcore punk base, even though their new stuff wasn't hardcore punk. So this meant they played all their new songs really really really really fast. People were slam dancing to sped up versions of their new songs.

Back to Curt. He's the one true Guitar God as I mentioned, and here's a reason why. He played all that stuff really fast and it sounded great.he wasn't just doing some half-assed shredding, he was playing stuff that they recorded one way.. a lot faster. I remember being thrown off my game, I was expecting to hear the songs as they were on the record. And I remember a lot of sweat flying in the air, because at the tempo they were playing people were going bug-eyed-jungle-animal-on-PCP bat-shit CRAZY. This was the only hardcore show I was at where I was actually afraid I was going to die. The audience can only be described as crazed and potentially on a music-fueled cannibalistic sacrificial frenzy. I was worried for my skinny white body and what would happen if the crowd descended upon me and decided to rip me limb from limb. And they wouldn't remember it later.


Officer: And none of you remember ripping this skinny white boy apart?

the crowd is silent and vacant eyed.

Officer: look at your faces?! Covered in blood! You.. look at your hands

The crowd member the cop is talking to looks at his hands, and his eyes focus suddenly. He barks out a verse from "Buckethead"

Crowd member: got no head!

Another member of the crowd suddenly looks up and continues the lyric

Another Crowd member: it's a bucket with teeth!

The crowd starts to chant

Crowd (speaking as one): It likes to dream, It likes to sleep. It knows hot. It knows cool. It know what's what. It's no fool.

The police officer starts to back away slowly towards the exit but is cut off by crowd members.

Crowd (chanting as they descend upon the police officer and rip him to pieces): Fill up the bucket with Whatever we've got. Make sure it's something That the bucket likes a lot!

Curt Kirkwood floats off the stage and coasts slowly over the crowd, laying down an amazing instrumental as the crowd rips the police officer to pieces and feasts on his innards.


That's how it could have gone down. As luck would have it, there was no carnage at the show. And it totally rocked.

The Meat Puppets have veered off in many odd directions. For example they recorded one of their CDs over the course of a few days using many first takes. They said they did that one in tribute to one of their favorite bands, ZZ Top. I hope the members of ZZ Top have heard it, it's my favorite Meat Puppets CD. Later on, their best selling CD "Too high to Die" was obviously their tribute to grunge. Curt Cobain was a huge Meat Puppets fan, which is why they ended up on MTV Unplugged.

Unfortunately Cobain passed on his heroin habit to Curt's brother Cris. The band fell on hard times, and broke up, and reformed with different people, and re-broke up, and re-reformed with slightly different people. Etc, etc. I think the latest version has the Kirkwood brothers reunited, with a different drummer.

Throughout it all, though, Curt Kirkwood dazzled everyone with his unique guitar stylings. The man can crank out some deep fried licks. Deep fried and mutated, he has a style all his own.

Therefore I have submitted him for Guitar God. I emailed my suggestion to "guitar-god-designator@hotmail.com." The email bounced, so I'll see if "guitar-god-designator@yahoo.com" is the right address. And we'll take it from there.

If you are inspired to go pick up some music by the Meat Puppets, I suggest you start with "Up on the Sun." And really let it sink in for a while. You'll need to become accustomed to its awesomeness and when your mind is opened up, perhaps you can cautiously proceed to either "Huevos" or "Too High to Die." Don't dabble by mistake in Meat Puppets I or II, I knew a kid who did that and his left eyeball bled for 17 weeks and 3 days. He recovered, but only through careful Spandeau Ballet therapy, his brain soothed back to being functional through the carefully played crooning of, whoever that lead singer of Spandeau Ballet is.

Sometimes, with careful monitoring, someone who has just heard a few tracks from "Up on the Sun" can hear "Flight of the Fire Weasel" from "Monsters," or "I am a Machine" from "Mirage," but only if, and I can't stress this enough, if there is someone there with a big fat joint ready in case the listener becomes overwhelmed and needs quick medication. In the event that no one has any pot, a shot of Jack Daniels and a kick in the testicles followed by a push down a short flight of stairs (a stretch of somewhere between 12 and 15 steps if possible) can be substituted. It's much easier to just ease from "Up on the Sun" into "Huevos," then proceed cautiously to a quick listen of "Mirage" followed by intensive "Monsters" aural therapy lasting between 12 and 17 days depending on the responsiveness of the listener. From there most people can then peruse through the entire Meat Puppets catalog as they see fit.

I recommend new listeners try to get a Meat Puppet Mentor, that's really the best way to go. I'm available right now, I just got done pushing a friend all the way to the "Live in Montana" CD, and he managed to make the whole journey with only one 3 day lapse into pants-shitting dementia.

Curt Kirkwood has a solo CD out now called "Snow," but I haven't listened to it much yet. Even a wise Meat Puppet Master knows to proceed with caution. With Time comes Wisdom. With Wisdom comes Knowledge and Power. With Value Meal comes Fries and a Coke, but don't "Biggie Size" it, that's just unhealthy.

I'll leave you with a lyric from "Automatic Mojo":

"Inside the mighty basket

I carry rattlesnakes

You got to be a monkey

To see the sense it makes"

Ask yourself, are you that monkey? If so, proceed quickly, purchasing a copy of "Up on the Sun" as soon as you can, subsequently shooting me an email so we can begin to uncover the truth about the rattlesnakes.

I just found my mental note, I'm off to buy a corncob pipe.

-Jebby