For the Internet community slang term, see Internet sock puppet.
The Meat Puppets were a three-piece band, formed in January 1980, in Paradise Valley, Arizona. The brothers Kirkwood, Curt and Cris, played guitar and bass, respectively, and Derrick Bostrom played drums. They began rehearsing together by learning songs from Bostrom's collection of punk rock 45s. After briefly toying with the name "the Bastions of Immaturity," they settled on the name Meat Puppets in June, 1980, after a song by Curt of the same name which appears on their first album.
Their early works (the In A Car EP and Meat Puppets LP) were wholeheartedly punk, with vocals so feral in their delivery they were often indecipherable, but ultimately humorous and ingenious once discovered. The musicianship was mostly breakneck thrash, yet the songs were tinged with a subtle, haunting element like that of a long abandoned ghost town. Their brand of cathartic, explosive hardcore attracted the attention of legendary punk label SST, who released their first record in 1982.
Unsatisfied with the result, the band spent plenty of time in the studio before the release of 1983's Meat Puppets II. The band's exciting experimentation with psychedelia, acid rock, and quieter tunes on top of a core western-style thrash sound, gave them their one acknowledged classic album, and propelled the record to legendary status.
The Meat Puppets burgeoning musicality led to more intricate and melodic efforts on 1985's Up on the Sun, which was a cohesive collage of songs that further demonstrated their abilities to capture a sound that had all of the wonder of the desert. The album granted them their first major mainstream exposure, and many fans still consider it to be their masterpiece.
