Meat Puppets
Live @ Latte + Brescia, 21.05.11

THE REVIEW

I start from Emilia Paranoica with a friend, and in a little over an hour, we’re in La Leonessa. It takes a good half-hour to find the venue, a stop at the gas station where we find a kind soul who gives us a couple of directions that neither I nor she understands, and a splendid brown sign saying “Industrial Area South” that appears like an oasis in the desert, making us breathe a sigh of relief (damn, if we’d been told it’s where they did Radio Onda d’Urto, we’d have gotten here much faster).

We arrive, and there’s not a soul, the opening band starts playing, and I understand…

The fateful hour approaches, the venue starts to fill, but if there were three hundred of us, we were many!

Is this what the Puppets deserve?

I don’t think so, and the concert is much more than evident proof of that!

Few but good, I’d say, people ranging from teenagers to some magnificent forty-five-year-old semi-drunk hippies jumping (even moshing, to be honest!) at Mine Vaganti (like completely out of it, which we renamed thinking at first it was Iside...) who served as animators for the collective drunkenness.

A cannonball start with four pieces from that II that made me love them so much: “Lake On Fire”, “Lost”, “Aurora Borealis” and “Magic Toy Missing” in random order!

The approach is as always straddling between Hard Core, more as an attitude than chords, Country and sandy psychedelia, dotted with drunken Cow Boys, coyotes, and shriveled cacti.

Between classics, "Plateau" obviously was there, and pieces from the new album (which I need to catch up on as soon as possible) the concert doesn’t let up for a moment! Harmony at a thousand demonstrated by the continuous pranks and jokes they purposely exchange with fake attacks and mutual teasing, entertaining themselves and secondly the audience increasingly at the mercy of the erratic verve of the Kirkwood brothers!

The setlist is practically perfect, designed to shake hips with wild, epileptic saloon dances and relaxing, if you can call them that, strolls in the rocky desert of Arizona!

My wonderful partner, who came more for Voyeurism (“Oh! The Meat Puppets are the Meat Puppets!” kind of thing) is ecstatic, and that’s enough for me to realize it’s not just a really well-conducted fantasy but rather something truly captivating. Cris on bass is a stage animal, sporting hallucinated faces and awkward poses, playing with simplicity and urgent precision, assisted by Ted Marcus (I believe) who hits with timing, sometimes soft, sometimes ferocious, amid demented scenes and adolescent lusts. Curt is perfect and magnetic, singing with that typical ungainly ugly duckling voice, playing the guitar with seasoned experience without indulging in unnecessary noodling, resulting in the spark, the burnt and insane neuron of the band.

What can I say, we mosh, we jump, we scream, we travel, and we get excited all evening without realizing that the concert is nearing the finish line!

The encore is standard but the urge for mayhem is high, so we scream, we curse, and we demand until we insist on a third appearance, ending with a bang! “Sloop John B”, which I hadn’t recognized, done as only the Puppets can: personal, carefree, spastic, but therefore perfect! Johnny would’ve been proud!

End!

“Eh! Bloody hell!” and everything that goes with it.

Another two hours and it wouldn’t have been enough.

I have a bitter taste in my mouth but not from hops, alas!

The urge to scream again “Hell Yeah!” is pressing as if the spiral they pulled us into had become addictive the moment the first note came out of the amps!

Many greetings to the known, Mine Vaganti included, the return to Emilia is pleasant with chats, comments on the concert, and the distinct sensation of having passed from the arid Arizona to the foggy Plain without even realizing it!

Promises kept!