from the LP Up On the Sun, SST Records, 1985Kurt Cobain always spoke highly of the Meat Puppets, admitting their influence on his own music and even inviting them out on tour & to come help out when Nirvana played that classic ‘unplugged’ set for MTV, but for those of us who weren’t into the Puppets ahead of time, the connecting line between the two bands was a blurry one at best---due mainly to the fact that their album from then (1994) Too High To Die, while being a great LP, sounded almost nothing like the atmosphere on their early – mid ‘80s albums. As you can hear on this song, Mr. Cobain wasn’t just influenced by this band---the Puppets fucking molded Nirvana in almost every way: the reject vibe, the blasé but experimental playfulness, the unabashed link to fuzzy classic rock; hell, Cobain even sculpted his vocal delivery after Curt Kirkwood’s (they shared a first name for fuck’s sake!), so much so that parts of this song, the title track off of their third album, genuinely sound like it could be a Nirvana outtake, “…not too much more, too much more; not too much more, too much more…”. We recently had the pleasure of seeing the Meat Puppets open for Ween out at Red Rocks, and I’ve gotta say, they still rock!!
