One of the unique results of complete immersion in the music of college radio is a skewed perspective on which songs and bands have become long-term staples. I’m constantly having to remind myself that certain songs that were huge smash hits in our little corner of the world aren’t as universally known as some Madonna song from roughly the same period of time. That’s compounded when it comes to the bands that I was actually a little perplexed at the time as to why they weren’t enjoying greater commercial success. Rock radio was fairly robust in the late-eighties and early-nineties and any number of bands that were confined almost exclusively to college radio at the time would seemingly have fit into the playlists of those stations nicely, a theory that was arguably confirmed a few years later when grunge completely took over for a time. One of those bands that was largely left behind when the tidal wave launched from Seattle was Meat Puppets.

For me, though, with my album rock radio fueled preference for bands with tough, uncompromising guitars and grit in their grooves, Meat Puppets represented a happy standby at the station. I could grab any one of their records with confidence, knowing that something good would come out of it, regardless of where I dropped the needle. We were fairly well-stocked on their earlier SST Records, thankfully, but I was especially pleased that they were releasing new music at a comfortable clip while at was at the station, including their major label debut (to the degree that London Records was considered a major, anyway) in 1991, Forbidden Places. The album absolutely didn’t disappoint, and even garnered a little extra attention for the single “Sam,” which featured vocals delivered at an auctioneer’s speed.

Meat Puppets soldiered on, releasing a few more albums and then going through cycles of dissolution and reunion. They’re currently back together and out on the road (they’ve even got a show booked right down the road from me in September that I’m seriously considering handing over the necessary cash to go see), but they’re probably best known for being the band that Nirvana covered three times over on the episode of MTV’s Unplugged that later accounted for the first album released by the band after Kurt Cobain’s death. That album went quintuple-platinum in the U.S. and I suspect a dispiriting number of people who own it don’t even realize that “Plateau,” “Oh, Me” and “Lake of Fire” were Meat Puppets songs first. For those in the know, though, there’s always those great old records to return to, the ones that find Meat Puppets just putting their heads down and getting down to work playing excellent music. They didn’t change the world, but then, they didn’t have to.

Meat Puppets, “No Longer Gone”

(Disclaimer: Forbidden Places appears to be out of print, although a lot of the SST Records are still actively available and highly recommended. I’d like to an online retailer to demonstrate the latter point, but it would far more satisfying to head out to your friendly neighborhood record store, the one that’s independently-owned, and ask them to secure a copy of, say, Meat Puppets II or Huevos. The inability to do that with Forbidden Places is a major part of my motivation in placing a song from that release here on the interweb for “fair use” kind of sharing. Should anyone contact me requesting or even demanding its removal, that’s exactly what’s going to happen, yo.)