Tasha and I went out to the Orpheum on Thursday night to see Meat Puppets and Built to Spill.  Some band from Portland (?) opening up— they reminded us of Dinosaur Jr.  We hadn’t seen Meat Puppets since the first time they played in Flagstaff, about 18 years ago, at the Monsoons (back when Jake owned it, before Steve bought the place and later dismantled it as a music club). Curt wasn’t as lively as he’d been then, but Cris certainly was.  We thought that his head was going to fly off.  At one point, he leaned into the microphone and said, "So, we meet again!" in a villainous voice.  They opened with "Sam," which by itself was well worth the price of admission.  I was surprised to see Curt wielding a Seafoam green Stratocaster instead of his trademark Les Paul, and playing into a Fender amp instead of a Marshall stack.  A sign of the End Times?  Perhaps.  Still sounded amazing and for all the snobs out there, exactly like him regardless. 

Built to Spill was great, but we left halfway through. 



A note on the sound.  I’ve heard frequent complaints about the mix at the Orpheum, and at the risk of again making politically disastrous comments (though honest and usually dead-on accurate), I’d have to say that this night of banjo-less music was marred by sub-par mixing.  Having played on the Orpheum stage with Buckethead and Major Lingo, I can speak from experience about what it’s like from the musician’s perspective.  From having seen a wide variety of acts at the Orpheum since it opened, I canoffer a sound engineer/ audience member’s perspective.  The main vocal mix was tinny, distorted and buried in the mix, especially for Built to Spill.  During the Puppets set and BTS, the bass was WAY too loud and muddy, effectively drowning most everything else out.  The Orpheum is acoustically prone to huge bass loading, and I’ve seen too many shows where this wasn’t taken into account.  This was one of those nights.  Other than that, it was awesome to see the Meat Puppets together again, and Cris looked terrific and supercharged.  All the usual suspects were in the audience, and a surprising number of people left after the Puppets ended their set.