Customer Reviews

Mirage

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Mirage is exactly what you have heard it was, The meat puppets psycadellic masterpiece. I don't know how any meat puppets fan could dislike this album it's probobly my third favorite album of theres. Every song is so colorful and the album as a whole paints the picture of the album cover when you hear it. The opening of the album starts off with curts psycadellic guitar which is the intro to the laid back title track. Quit it is an all out Meat Puppets rocker which you can't help but really get into. Get on down is a funny song where the music just makes you want to do a stupid little dance as well as sing along too. The lyrics have to do with taking your car apart and what not. A Hundred Miles is probobly my favorite track where the music in the verses have a get up and grove beat and the chorus is the part of the song that rocks! If you liked Up on the Sun, Meat Puppets II, and Too High to Die then you will most likely love this and your collection should not be without this. If you want to start with this album then go ahead and click buy cd and wait for the glorious day when one of rock's greatest masterpieces comes on your doorstep.

While "Up On The Sun" is my all-time favorite Pups album, this comes real close. "Liquified" is probably my favorite MP song just because of the wacked-out lyrics. "Mirage" conjurs up psychedelic images of the 'Zona desert, and "The Mighty Zero" taught me all about multiplication and getting rid of intractable problems.

As on their previous albums, the Meat Puppets continued to switch gears on Mirage. The band added keyboards and electronic drums to their repertoire which added to their eclecticism. But while the band deserves credit for trying something different, as they did on nearly every album they made, the songwriting isn't up to par which makes this one of the weaker albums in their catalog.

Right from the get go, the band cover uncharted territory as the title track adds heavy synths to Cris Kirkwood's very original guitar work to mixed success. While "The Wind and The Rain" is a great country song that the band does so well, other songs in the cowpunk vein such as "Confusion Fog" and "Leaves" don't measure up to their usual standards. The tracks "Quit It" and "Get On Down" are decent enough but sound like outtakes from their Up On The Sun album. Furthermore, "The Mighty" may be one of their worst songs ever, sounding like something you're more likely to hear on Sesame Street than on a rock album. However, the second half is much better as the tracks "Beauty" and "A Hundred Miles" are very catchy while "I Am A Machine" has a great new wave feel. The slow "Love Our Children Forever" is very good as is "Liquified", one of their great heavy songs that sounds like nothing else on the album. The remastered version contains instrumental versions of "The Mighty", "Liquified", and "I Am A Machine" of which "The Mighty" works best since it sans its weak lyrics. All told, while this is a good album and has a few great songs, it's still one of their weaker efforts.

Mirage is exactly what you have heard it was, The meat puppets psycadellic masterpiece. I don't know how any meat puppets fan could dislike this album it's probobly my third favorite album of theres. Every song is so colorful and the album as a whole paints the picture of the album cover when you hear it. The opening of the album starts off with curts psycadellic guitar which is the intro to the laid back title track. Quit it is an all out Meat Puppets rocker which you can't help but really get into. Get on down is a funny song where the music just makes you want to do a stupid little dance as well as sing along too. The lyrics have to do with taking your car apart and what not. A Hundred Miles is probobly my favorite track where the music in the verses have a get up and grove beat and the chorus is the part of the song that rocks! If you liked Up on the Sun, Meat Puppets II, and Too High to Die then you will most likely love this and yor collection should not be without this. If you want to start with this album then go ahead and click buy cd and wait for the glorious day when one of rock's greatest masterpieces comes on your doorstep.

That's not an exaggeration. I also consider this one of my 'Top 40 Best Alternative-Rock albums of the '80s.' But the asterisk is for those who were already fans of the early Meat Puppets before "Mirage's" 1987 release. When "Mirage" arrived at my college radio station summer 1987, I wrote on it in big letters: "Ladies & Gentlemen: Introducing the New Grateful Dead." (Ironically, several months later, the Dead released their big comeback album "Touch of Grey") Some of the kids who were into classic rock and never heard of the Meat Puppets before liked it. (If you only know the Puppets from their hit '90s CD "Too High to Die", your next best bets are 1991's "Forbidden Places" and "Mirage.") .......*However, if you had already fallen hard for the impressionistic indie-rock of the Meat Puppets "II" and "Up on the Sun" albums, "Mirage" was a big change in direction. Some early fans considered it an attempt to "sell out." I used to play great rock'n'roll songs like "I Am a Machine" and "Get on Down" on a "vintage vinyl/classic tracks" radio show I did on a rock station for several years; they fit right in and I got positive listener feedback. Even though Kurt Kirkwood's singing and the band's harmonies are (as usual) a bit shakier than "Mirage's" influences -- the Dead, the Allman Bros, also R.E.M. -- the vintage '60s-"San Francisco sound" influence on the melodies and guitar riffing is as infectious as it obvious. The Meat Puppets still put their own individual twist on these songs, no doubt;only 2 or 3 sound derivative....... Many of the lyrics are desert poetry; they shine with spirituality and a love of finding harmony with nature.(later in the '90s, Meat Puppet lyrics became mostly incoherent) The melodies stick in your head forever, and Kurt Kirkwood's guitar rings with passion and dances around joyfully. Moments of transcendence are reached on songs likes the living-room hoedown "Confusion Fog," the early R.E.M-ish "Beauty", the introspective/poetic "Leaves" and the hippie-bop of "One Hundred Miles" .......The Meat Puppets would lean back toward a looser, more contemporary sound on their next 2 indie-label releases "Huevos" and "Monsters." (although "Huevos" has its "southern-rock" moments). But "Mirage" expresses best the essence of Meat Puppets music: a Love of Life, a fascination with its mysteries, and an irrestible urge to dance around till you (and them) break through all of music's useless boundaries.

This is fairly simple, if not as concise as I'd prefer: "Rubberneckin'" is NOT "move shlock" because it was never intended for a film in the first place. In fact, it comes from Presley's landmark session in American Studios in Memphis, and is perhaps Elvis Presley's most controversial song, at least among certain fans. The sessions were held in January and February of 1969, on the heels of the first broadcast of the legendary "Comeback Special" as it has come to be known. Most of the songs were worked on meticulously, with many instrumental and vocal "repair" nights, careful overdubs, etc. There were some exceptions to this painstaking approach when Chips Moman would allow {and I do mean "allow": Chips was the only boss in that studio, and Elvis seemed to like it that way at the time - after what he'd been through in Hollyweird, he needed structure} Elvis to mess around with songs he just happened to like. "Hey Jude" is probably the best known, and no one even bothered to go out and buy the record for the words, so he makes 'em up. On some stripped-down mixes, it sounds more like a guitar sing-along at a campfire. Anyway, "Rubberneckin'" was submitted by Elvis's usual "source": Hill and Range publishers, the very same ones who straitjacketed and stomped on his creativity for financial gain. But it was '69, and they would soon go the way of the dinosaurs. Elvis, nevertheless liked a song partly written by Ben Wiseman, a film shlocksmith. Odd, huh? . . . but this song seemed, well, different. And it was. Anyone who hasn't suffered a head injury knows Elvis is NOT singing about either car wrecks or "girl-watching." Car wrecks, unless you're completely demented, do not "give {one} such a glow-oh-oh-oh" nor can one "rubberneck" in the conventional sense, no matter what you're looking for, from the BACK porch! I don't know if Wiseman made the credit change before or after recording was completed, but he pulled his name off the record, and put on his wife's. Highly unusual for this writer, indeed. See, the only meaning the song can have is simply this: a tribute to what is and was known as "Mary Jane" and its uncanny ability to attract company {grin}. I don't know if Elvis ad-libbed just a line, or much more, but it is about smoking pot. It simply, logically, cannot be about anything else. Period. On the sheet music, one line is even identified as an "ad-lib" because he didn't even bother with a rhyme: "people say I'm wastin' time, but I don't really care." It was supposed to be, apprently, "but they don't really know." This was from the "relaxed time" during the sessions, clearly.
Just take a listen; it's easy. And keep the context in mind: this was long before the "War on Elvis {uh, drugs}," and Elvis was just kicking it around in the studio for fun, and it IS fun! They even did a 21st century remix! Especially considering his later bizarre, but comprehensible actions when the heat didn't come from the "glow" of the "Mary Jane." In texts about the drug, the chemical actually does provide this "glow": a sensation of warmth, and often, facial flushing. It also very often "slows down time" or so it seems, so the user can see and hear things with greater clarity, even if they're not actually getting anything done! This is why one should never drive while intoxicated on "Mary Jane." Yes, there are different varieties, but these characteristics tend to apply generally. It's a rather DETAILED description of the experience!
And if he's "rubbernecking" in any other sense, then why "settin' on the back porch, all by myself/Along came Mary Jane - I'm with somebody else!" One idly watches neither car wrecks nor pretty young ladies from "the back porch." And, well, the lyrics of the original are very clear, as the band must surely know.
Time and events change things quite a lot, but in early '69, Elvis was not very concerned about joining The Legion of Decency or whatever happened around very late '70, early '71 when the drug laws suddenly changed and "scheduling" commenced, etc.
Anyway, they put it in his very last fiction-feature "Change of Habit" to accentuate his role as "hip young 'ghetto' doctor." Who can play guitar, sing, and some rollicking boogie-woogie piano! {The latter is not on that song . . .}
The sad thing is that if "Mary Jane" was all he did, he'd have had a long life: in fact, he'd probably be with us right now - like Willie Nelson, Kristofferson, etc. But that's not how it turned out. The more he feared the consequences, the harder stuff he did. Very unfortunate. Great vocal and instrumental work on the original, and most covers are great fun, so I would have no problem recommending.
Just felt like setting the story straight. {was that a '60s joke? I wouldn't know since I was a bit too young at the time to know, but old enough to remember the "dazed and confused" generation. I remember a guy saying, in the early 80s: "I can see sounds!" while intoxicated on pot. "Stop, look, and listen, baby . . .}
All the best and don't do anything illegal,
DR. M.

.....I dug this out and was completely surprised at how enjoyable this album is. Taken by itself, this is a wonderful album, easy sun-baked summer listening that harkens back to...well, for me, the early 90's and the best of my adolescence (yes, I know this album was out several years earlier...). In comparison to their other albums, especially their earlier and more highly praised albums, Mirage is definitely closer to "Up on the Sun" pups than any of their other stuff. This is nothing but bonus if you, like me, just gawk all over "Up on the Sun". Of course, this is not the perfection that that album is, but who cares...this is a solid follow-up that deserves to be evaluated on it's own merits....it's not fair to reach for comparisons to their previous pair of all time classics.

And one other thing that struck me yesterday as I was listening to this and cleaning my house: Curt Kirkwood's guitar playing, at least on this album, is sometimes strikingly similar to Johnny Marr's (of Smiths fame)....whether you agree or not, both players have a knack for crafting really complex and striking guitar lines without compromizing the structure and flow of the song...they both play "rhythm" guitar that sounds better than many artists solo's....but enough said, just see for yourself.

I really cannot say enough good things about this album. I could go on and on, but I will be brief. While Up on the Sun and Meat Puppets II typically receive all of the critical accolades (and rightfully so), it is 1987's Mirage that is the hidden gem in the Meat Puppets discography. It manages to combine high-brow intellectualism with off-the-wall silliness. The song The Mighty Zero is a perfect example of this. The music is clever and the words even more so. Lyrical content is devoted to such things as nature, time, and math. Other standouts include Leaves, Confusion Fog, and I am a Machine. It is obvious that the Puppets spent a lot of time creating Mirage (three months, as opposed to four days for 1988's Huevos). This is a whacked-out piece of work that could have only been produced by the collective genius of the Meat Puppets. Listen to it while you think and laugh at the same time.

A collection of (mostly) fine songs recorded in a far too pristine, sterile, and mechanized manner. Hell, even the band gave up trying to reproduce these songs in a live setting fairly soon after the album's release...just wasn't any fun. This album features some of the Puppets' most lovely material ("The Wind and the Rain", "Leaves") and one of the band's biggest boners ("I am a Machine" - ouch!) in its 15-year span. Also, I must say I never understood the whole "psychedelic" angle pitched by the critics et al. regarding this album. If y'all wanna get really psychedelic, strap on the first (self-titled) album.

I just bought this yesterday, and this was my fourth MP album. Up on the Sun is probably my favorite because I don't think Chris Kirkwood's guitar playing can possibly get any better or groovier than on that album, but that saying Mirage is great. I didn't give it 5 stars because only a select few should get those kinds of accolades. The Meat Puppets were absolutely amazing music.