Cue up Kings of Leon’s “Knocked Up (Lykke Li vs Rodeo Remix)”
I’ve always wanted to live in the desert (and oddly, Omaha, Nebraska… I have a recurring dream where I move to Omaha to be on the radio and live by the airport… weird).
But the desert, the desert is somewhere where I think I could live. I suppose in a pinch I could settle for the Okanagan… but that’s not really what I’m thinking. I want to live where its flat, desolate, strange creatures dwell, and its hot.
Living in the desert shouldn’t be that challenging of a goal to achieve one day. No one wants to live there, so it should be matter of just going, and finding a patch of sand to settle.
What got my imagination turning was reading the story of the Meat Puppets. The Meat Puppets started in the late 70s and early 80s in Phoenix, Arizona. But not even right in Phoenix the city, but a suburb. The Meat Puppets began as this crazy hardcore lo-fi (I guess all 80s indie rocker bands would be lo-fi by today’s standards) band but then evolved into a pioneering alternative group. The Kirkwood brothers, Curt and Cris started the band in a town called Paradise Valley. I don’t know what Paradise Valley might have been like in the late 70s, but today its one of the more affluent areas of Arizona. I was reading their bio on wiki, and its a pretty straight forward, they did this, then this happened, then they did this and then this happened and next… you know how it is. Doesn’t paint much of a picture. But I was interested in what life might have been like, being a teenager in suburban Phoenix in 1979… being into hardcore music and starting a punk rock band. What was happening in Curt and Cris’ world to shape them and create the Meat Puppets? History tells us what happened after. It took some time, but their sound gelled, they influenced Nirvana, they had some success in the mid 90s when the world went ape shit for grunge… but a lot of that happened 10 years or more after they were high school kids. I wonder….
Does anyone remember that movie SLC Punk? What a cool movie, a little goofy but maybe it kinda reminds me of the film I wish I could see about the Meat Puppets. Fun fact, Jason Segel (who is 8 days my junior) makes one of his first movie appearances in SLC Punk. huh? He’ll later go on to star in I Love You, Man, Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Knocked Up.
jeeze, all this talk on the 80s has me listening to old Fear and Exploited records. Oi.
“Hold it, hold it! No way, pal. That’s a bald-faced lie! We caused $500,000 worth of damage, a cool half a million dollars worth of damage, ‘cause we’re professionals, and I counted the damage myself.” – Fear leader Lee Ving talking to the New York post in 1981 about trashing the set of Saturday Night Live.
Go with yourself.
The Morning After 
just a *fistbump*
ha, *fistbump* you too.
I think Osoyoos would be the perfect little desert-like place to live. Nice seasons and a wickedly hot summer not to mention Canada. Too bad it’s a ghost town in the winter months though … not much opportunity there.
yes, sadly, I do need to work. If the opportunity presented it would be Vegas or maybe Phoenix for me. (Maybe IO could research some more and find some other cute medium sized desert cities?).
If I moved to Vegas, I’d actually live outside of Vegas in this small town on the way to Hoover Damn or out by Lake Mead.
[…] had a minor obsession with the desert of the American southwest, The Good The Bad and The Ugly, and what it might have been like growing up in a suburb of Phoenix. Here is the soundtrack to those thoughts swirling around the grey matter of my […]
[…] This Replacements record is so great. The Replacements are an old alternative rock band from Minneapolis. I love listening to their music. It is like a time machine that takes you back to the gritty side of town in the 80s. To be young and a skid. It makes me feel like old Meat Puppets. […]