Wednesday Nick was all like "Guess what! Meat Puppets are playing tonight!" So I'm like "Huh? What?" And Nick's like "No, swear to God, they're playing some dive!" Meat Puppets? Playing in a dive? Naturally, this called for further investigation, as I am fond of dives.
Turned out it Nick was completely on the mark- the Puppets were indeed playing and the venue- joint called the Summit- was about as divey as they come. How they rocked it out! And what's more, the poster said that Saturday, they'd be playing Cleveland! As I was going to be up at the lake anyway, there was NO WAY I was going to miss that show!
Turned out that Cleveland doesn't really share the sort of enthusiasm that the rest of us have for the Pups. Guy at the door, looking genuinely puzzled, "Tickets? Awrr.. ?" It took several minutes of patient explanation before he cottoned on to the fact that I wanted to buy a ticket- to actually put up perfectly good money in return for admission- something that apparently was beyond his experience as Door Guy. "Sold out? Ah er no, um, they ain't even close to being sold out.." Which is true in the larger sense, I guess, although the Puppets were perilously close to selling out back in the early nineties, if only anyone were buying.
What I like about the Meat Puppets is that before the show, when you go to the pisser to take a pre-emptive pee (the last thing you want to do when the show starts is have to go pee), when you're standing there at the urinal, who shows up next to you but Chris Meat Puppet! So we shot the breeze and everything, and I tell you what- it turned out I didn't actually even have to pee after all! But I stood around anyway,
I got to admit that when the show started, I was kind of disconcerted that they played more or less the same set of songs that they had back in Columbus: 'The Touchdown King', "Plateau', 'Station', 'Coming Down', 'Sam', 'Some New Song Which Involves Whistling' and so forth. Not that there's anything I'd rather do than hear the Meat Puppets play 'The Touchdown King', "Plateau', 'Station', 'Coming Down', 'Sam', 'Some New Song Which Involves Whistling' and of course I realize that they only got like what? four hundred songs? so OBVIOUSLY there'll be some overlap, but I felt kind of, I don't know, a faint disquieting feeling like maybe someone let 10 psi out of my tyres, but then they busted out into 'Look at the Rain' , and it was like a switch had flipped- I don't know, maybe their drugs had begun to kick in- but they proceeded to rock out in so astonishing a fashion that I was completely astonished.
After the show I hung out with two teenage dudes from some small town near Canton outside, snickering at the various whackos, loonies, freaks and nutcases that wander the streets of Cleveland at three in the morning, and then the band came out and so I bought their CD and got it signed- which makes only the second CD I've ever had that's been signed by the band, that and my Aunt Beany's First Prize Beets CD.
I know, I know. I'm a total dork.
