Rounding out our salute to the Meat Puppets this week, as a lot of folks know, the band briefly tasted a bit of mainstream success in the 90s with the release of their most successful (commercially, anyway) album, Too High to Die. Propelled by the notoriety they gained from performing alongside Nirvana during their legendary Unplugged set (which featured a few fantastic renditions from Meat Puppets II), a lot of people point to Too High to Die as being the band’s most well-rounded/accessible album (for better or worse). And while there is certainly a lot to like about that record, in this writer’s (not particularly humble) opinion, all the mainstream success of Too High to Die really overshadowed the criminally underrated album that immediately preceded it: 1991’s outstanding Forbidden Places.
Indeed, suppose there’s one album in the Pups’ excellent discography where it feels like they’re hitting all their accessible and infectious cylinders. In that case, it’s Forbidden Places, an album that finds the band perfecting the more straightforward hard-rock sound they leaned into on Huevos and Monsters, whilst still retaining their trademarked sun-baked quirkiness in the process. It truly feels like a hidden gem in the band’s discography, but despite its generally well-rounded nature, it starts with one of the outright weirdest songs in the band’s entire catalog: “Sam”. With its frenzied, rapid-fire delivery, it also happens to be one of the most overtly entertaining songs the band ever cooked up, as this peculiar performance of the track on Into the Night from 1991 aptly demonstrates. Stay tuned for a bonus performance of “That’s How It Goes”, another great (albeit less spastic) cut from the underrated Forbidden Places. Long live the Meat Puppets!
