Best tunes of 1994: #28 Meat Puppets “Backwater”

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I first came across Meat Puppets care of the old MuchMusic late Friday night alternative music video show “City Limits”. I used to sit poised, close to the TV and VCR, and ready to hit the play and record buttons whenever KCC (and later Simon Evans) would announce an interesting or familiar upcoming video.

One night, and I’m not sure why I did, perhaps it was the interesting band name, but I recorded the video for “Sam”, a single off of Meat Puppets’ seventh and first major label album, “Forbidden places”. Of course, in an age before the Internet was in wide use and almost a decade before the establishment of Wikipedia, I had no idea that the trio led by Curt and Cris Kirkwood had formed in 1980 as a punk band and had released so many independent albums already, amassing a small but mighty cult following.

Upon repeat viewings of the aforementioned video, I formed an attachment to the song and the frenetic way frontman Curt Kirkwood delivered the verses, contrasted with his static facial expression in the video. I ended up purchasing the CD* used at ‘Hooked on Video’, my hometown’s only music store, which was located at the eponymously named Bowmanville Mall.

So I felt a little smug when the group attained a certain level of fame and notoriety a couple of years later when Kurt Cobain invited the Kirkwood brothers onstage to join Nirvana for the taping of their now legendary MTV unplugged performance and they recorded a handful of Meat Puppets covers together. “Backwater” was the first single to be released off the album “Too high to die”, the first bit of new material to see the light after that appearance, so of course it did well, charting higher and selling better than anything the band recorded, prior or ever since. Sure I was a bit of a jerk about all the bandwagoners but I didn’t seriously blame any of them because it was a pretty great tune.

Whenever I hear “Backwater”, I am instantly transported back to the summer of 1995, a whole year after its release. It had had lots of time to steep on commercial radio and was recognizable to many. I was working at the recycling division of the steel plant my father worked at**, a summer job he had arranged for me and that I had quit my favoured 7-Eleven post because it paid more. I spent the better part of the first month in that job picking up scrap metal from the ground around the division’s offices, a make-work project to keep me and the other student hire (we’ll call him Todd because I don’t remember his real name) busy until we had real work to cover off. I spent much of this menial time singing songs to myself and “Backwater” came up often and when ever it did, Todd would join in, doing his best mimicry of the Kirkwood vocals but sounding more like Bert and Ernie.

“Some things will never change
They just stand there looking backwards
Half-unconscious from the pain”

Sure, the song definitely had a more mainstream feel than the sound I had gotten used to on “Forbidden places” but it got its lure hooks into me quickly and never let go. It’s got raunchy guitars, a popping time keep, and a driving riff that would not be denied. It plays like a joyride down small town back roads in pickup trucks with lit cigarettes burning in the ashtrays and open cans of watery domestic lager sloshing in the cupholders. Definitely not my memories of glory days but it still spells warmth somewhere.