I haven’t seen Built to Spill in years, and I’ve never seen the Meat Puppets. What an awesome, awesome show.

First up was a band from Seattle called Helvetia. It was a guy on guitar/vocals, who introduced them as a “project,” and then the drummer from Built To Spill, and one of the guitarists from BTS on bass. I have to say, he’s a great bass player. I liked their stuff. Someone asked where the rest of the band was, the singer said the two BTS guys playing with him were just filling in. I guess his usual crew couldn’t make it for this tour. A lot of people there seemed familiar with him or his stuff, but I’d never heard of him.

His set was short, only 6 songs. I think they hadn’t had much rehearsal time.

The Meat Puppets came on and blew me away. I’ve never really listened to them very much. In high school I checked one of their albums out of the library and listened to it a lot. But the only one I own is the one with their hit, “Backwater,” on it. I like it but haven’t listened to it for years. I know Nirvana let their spotlight shine on them a bit with the Unplugged thing (the Meat Puppets played with Nirvana on their Unplugged, and Nirvana did one or two Meat Puppets songs), but I haven’t heard the Nirvana Unplugged stuff since I watched it when it first aired. So hearing their music again was a bit of a trip. I’d forgotten what they sounded like. Their voices. That whole western/cowpoke vibe they sometimes have. But really it was the songs with the crazy guitar jams that did it for me. Amazing.

A lot of people were there to see them. The crowd at various times started chanting, “Meat! Meat! Meat!” In between the “meats” the guitarist would quietly say, “Sauce. Sauce. Sauce.” It was funny.

Seeing the two Kirkwood brothers together was really something. I guess they haven’t been playing together until recently—from what I’ve gathered, Kirk’s been playing solo for awhile. It reminded me a lot of seeing the two Conner brothers play in Valis. (Van, formerly of Screaming Trees, on guitar, and Patrick, also on guitar). They just seem to fit so well together. And one of the brothers is spazzy (just like Valis) and the other one is funny (just like Valis).

The bassist was the spazzy one. He’d dance and jump all over the place. Somehow, calling what he does “dancing” and “jumping” doesn’t quite capture it. Someone I was with, I think it was Mike D.’s friend, said it looked like he’d done some hard living. He did have a bit of a Keith Richards thing going on. But I also thought he looked pretty fit and was *very* energetic.

It was interesting to watch him play. Sometimes he’d slap the strings with a finger. One song he kept scraping them with a pick. Another he started banging on them with both hands, palms down.

They didn’t follow a written set list and seemed to decide what to play a little bit on the spur of the moment. I’m not too familiar with their stuff, but I know they did “Lake of Fire,” a version of “Up On the Sun” that went into a big huge jam at the end that was incredible. “Plateau” – the song Nirvana made famous. A song full of vocal gymnastics, “Sam,” that was pretty dang awesome. “Coming Down,” which I think was played by request.

At one point the guitarist said they should do some songs the bassist sings, and asked the bassist which of two different ones he wanted to do, but the bassist didn’t care. So the singer asked the crowd if they’d prefer hearing “something awful, or something worse than that.” They ended up doing a song that went something like, “My world is ended, my baby’s gone.” Also “Walking Boss.” I thought they were going to end without playing “Backwater,” the band thought they were out of time, but then the sound guy let them know they had time for one more. So they ended with it. It was awesome.

After their set, I turned to my son and Mike D. and said, “That was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Clip of “Plateau” I took:

Built to Spill were terrific. They’re from Boise, Idaho, and they have a very Northwestern sound to me. Very Neil-Young-ish in some ways. They tend to have long drawn out guitar jams at the end of their songs. The encore went on for 20 minutes. It was fantastic.

I’ve only seen them once before. But I know it’s their tradition to do a cover every tour. In the past, they’ve done “Freebird,” “Here Comes the Sun,” “Cortez the Killer,” all kinds of stuff. This time I didn’t recognize the cover, but I think it was a Brian Eno song called “Third Uncle.”

People kept calling out for requests. One girl kept yelling for “Cortez the Killer,” a Neil Young cover they recorded on their live album. It’s 20 minutes long. That was a no-go. Someone else kept yelling for “Twin Falls, Idaho,” which is my husband’s favorite (he grew up in small town Idaho). Also a no-go. I asked Mike after the show if they usually do requests, because people were calling out for them all night long. He said no, they always stick to their written setlist. Here it is:

Except they didn’t do “Conventional Wisdom” as the encore. They didn’t do it at all, which was disappointing. I was really hoping for a lot of material from the latest album. I love it. We got “Liar,” my favorite track, as the first song—it was excellent. (Best line: “Look out, the world’s destroyin’ ya.”) It’s one of those songs that burrows into your brain and never leaves. They also did “Goin’ Against Your Mind.” The rest were all older songs. I can’t complain—everything they do is fantastic. I was hoping they’d do “I Would Hurt a Fly,” my all-time fave by them, but they didn’t. I’m wondering how much they change up their setlists during a tour. They’re playing LA again tonight, will they do the same stuff or mostly different?

There was a guy doing multimedia stuff on a computer, and it was being projected onto the wall behind the stage. Sometimes it’d be crazy film footage. Sometimes it’d be the band playing (they had cameras rigged up on the stage somehow—probably just webcams), sometimes it was the audience. It was pretty dang cool. I’ve seen similar things done at other shows (RJD2, to be specific).

The band has added a third guitarist, a guy from Caustic Resin (on the left in the pic above). I forgot that I’d seen Caustic Resin before, a few years back, I think opening for Valis in Seattle. The guy looked really familiar to me, it was tripping me out. Adding a third guitar was interesting. Sometimes he’d just make little noises here and there. Once Doug Martsch looked at the drummer to see why they hadn’t started another song yet and the drummer motioned to the third guitarist, who was still tuning his guitar. Doug waved at him as if to say, “Forget about him” and they started playing. It was fun to watch and see what the different guitarists were doing. I noticed that everyone, in all the bands, were playing Fender guitars.

After their set, I turned to Mike and said, “That was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.”

I brought my oldest son along because he loves Built to Spill. He was having trouble standing for so long, though, and left our spot at the stage to try to find a seat in the back of the venue. He ended up getting sick and throwing up in the bathroom. Then he went on a puking spree outside as we were walking to the car. Puked just outside the venue, all over the ground, with people all around, and then again on the sidewalk, again with people all around. Poor kid. It was horrible. Fortunately that was it, though, and he didn’t puke in the car on the way home.

And 4 minutes of Built to Spill’s 20-minute encore: