Lost on the Freeway: The Meat Puppets, SST and the Last Days of the Weird Old West
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In the third installment of my Oxford American Column, “A Goddamn Impossible Way of Life” I wrote all about the Meat Puppets and the 1985 SST Records tour. I also debut a new Paranoid Style song – a tribute to They Might Be Giants done the Meat Puppets way!! Something for everyone, as Sondheim would have it.
They play ferociously fast—as fast as any band in the country—but not like hardcore. Within the seams you can hear a supple groove and an almost jazz-like interplay. Like Captain Beefheart and DEVO and the Dead before them, this is genuinely weird American music. No coincidence: these are genuine American weirdos. In time, they’ll be America’s strangest household name, if only for a moment.