Meat Puppets Archives

Jaimie Branch and Jason Ajemian Cover Meat Puppets Deep Cut “Comin’ Down”

Posted by Riley Haas at 12:00 pm 1 Response »

Jul 242023

jaime branch jason ajemian comin down cover

“Comin’ Down” is the final track on the Meat Puppets’ eighth and most successful album, Too High to Die. It is also the most country song on that record, harkening back to some of their most alt-country work of the previous decade. The song is a jaunty, upbeat country stomper that is actually either about giving up drugs or giving up on the search for enlightenment (or both). The lyrics don’t really match the tone.

Jaimie Branch was a Chicago-based trumpeter with two studio albums as a leader to her credit. She has also played in a number of other combos. Her third album as leader is a posthumous release coming out in August. (She died last summer.) The album features a cover of “Comin’ Down” she recorded with bassist Jason Ajemian, retitled “The Mountain” for this release. Continue reading »

Full Albums: Buffalo Springfield’s ‘Retrospective’

Posted by Seuras Og at 1:00 pm 4 Responses »

Jan 072022

Full Albums features covers of every track off a classic album. Got an idea for a future pick? Leave a note in the comments!

Retrospective saw Buffalo Springfield’s record company out to catch a final buck or two, their cash cow having imploded ahead of quite how much of a cash cow it could or should have been. The band had been on the decidedly no-frills ATCO label, an offshoot of Atlantic for acts that failed to fit their then template of blues, jazz, r’n’b and soul, along with other square pegs of the day, like Dr. John. I say no frills, as their cover art was always of the decidedly cheap and shoddy nature: Retrospective has a cover that cannot have taxed too many creative brains, the “rips” in the background paper, to allow inserts and a makeshift collage, are all clearly visible.

Retrospective, which is actually subtitled “The Best of Buffalo Springfield,” actually performed as well as their final album, Last Time Around, and surpassed the sales of both Buffalo Springfield and Buffalo Springfield Again. It’s an artistic success, too; it contains many songs which have a greater quality, with the hindsight of time, than perhaps was fully appreciated at the time. Stills’ “For What It’s Worth,” their biggest hit, has repaid itself time after time after time, becoming a soundtrack shorthand for setting a time and place during the US civil rights years. That has to appease him a little, surely, against his always apparent second pegging against his Canadian nemesis.

Full Albums: Nirvana’s ‘MTV Unplugged In New York’

Posted by Sara Stoudt at 3:00 pm 3 Responses »

Nov 012019

Full Albums features covers of every track off a classic album. Got an idea for a future pick? Leave a note in the comments!

Nirvana has sold more than 75 million records, joining the ranks of Aretha Franklin, The Police, Journey, and Tupac Shakur among others, despite having their career tragically cut short by the death of Kurt Cobain after they’d released only three albums. The band is credited with increasing grunge music’s recognition beyond the Pacific Northwest, introducing the genre to the masses.

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the release of Nirvana’s live album, MTV Unplugged in New York. The performance was recorded on November 18, 1993, aired on MTV on December 16, 1993, and released as an album almost a year later, the first Nirvana release since Kurt Cobain’s death in April. The performance was filmed in one take and differed from the style of many of the previous MTV Unplugged sessions. The band chose to build their Unplugged setlist using mostly lesser known songs, including six covers out of fourteen songs, passing over their biggest hit, “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

This album has a variety of accolades, including a Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album, a number one debut on the Billboard 200, a 5x platinum certification, and the top spot on New Musical Express‘s 50 Greatest Live Albums list.

To celebrate the historic day, we’ve compiled covers spanning a variety of artists who reimagine each track.