Meat Puppets later gained significant exposure when the Kirkwood brothers served as guest musicians on Nirvana's MTV Unplugged performance in 1993.

In the late 1970s, drummer Derrick Bostrom played with guitarist Jack Knetzger in a band called Atomic Bomb Club, which began as a duo, but would come to include bassist Cris Kirkwood.

Carducci suggested they sign with the label, and Meat Puppets released their first album Meat Puppets in 1982, which among several new originals and a pair of heavily skewed Doc Watson and Bob Nolan covers, featured the songs "The Gold Mine" and "Melons Rising", two tunes Derrick and Cris originally had written and performed as Atomic Bomb Club previously.

"[2] Here, the band experimented with acid rock and country and western sounds, while still retaining some punk influence on the tracks "Split Myself in Two" and "New Gods".

Between tours they would regularly play small shows in bars around the Phoenix area such as The Mason Jar (now The Rebel Lounge) and The Sun Club in Tempe.

After the release of the hard-rock styled Out My Way EP in 1986, however, the band was briefly sidelined by an accident when Curt's finger was broken after being slammed in their touring van's door.

[citation needed] The tour for Mirage lasted less than 6 months, as the band found it difficult to recreate many of this album's songs in a concert atmosphere.

[citation needed] These recordings were completed in only a matter of days, and along with a few drawings and one of Curt's paintings taken from the wall to serve as cover art (a dish of three boiled eggs, a green pepper, and a bottle of Tabasco sauce), were all sent to SST shortly before the band returned to the road en route to their next gig.

Curt revealed in an interview that one of the reasons for the album being called Huevos (meaning 'eggs' in Spanish) was because of the predominance of first-takers on the record, as similarly eggs can only be used once.

This album was mostly motivated by the Meat Puppets' desire to attract the attention of a major label, as they were becoming frustrated with SST Records by this time.

"[5] In late 1993, Meat Puppets achieved mainstream popularity when Nirvana's Kurt Cobain, who became a fan after seeing them open for Black Flag in the '80s, invited Cris and Curt to join him on MTV Unplugged for acoustic performances of "Plateau", "Oh Me" and "Lake of Fire" (all originally from Meat Puppets II).

The resulting album, MTV Unplugged in New York, served as a swan song for Nirvana, as Cobain died less than 5 months after the concert.

Examples of this are the single "Scum" and "Eyeball", although the band's usual laid-back style is still heard on tracks like "Chemical Garden".

[7] The Kirkwood brothers had always had a legendary appetite for illegal substances and during the tour to support Too High To Die with Stone Temple Pilots, the easy availability of drugs was too much for Cris.

Curt formed a new band in Austin, Texas called the Royal Neanderthal Orchestra, but they changed their name to Meat Puppets for legal reasons[citation needed] and released a promotional EP entitled You Love Me in 1999, Golden Lies in 2000 and Live in 2002.

In late 2005, Bostrom revamped it, this time as a "blog" for his recollections and as a place to share pieces of Meat Puppets history.

The response from fans was overwhelmingly positive within a couple of hours, leading to speculation of a full-blown Meat Puppets reunion in the near future.

[11] In April 2006 Billboard reported that the Kirkwood brothers would reunite as Meat Puppets without original drummer Derrick Bostrom.

[12] Although Primus drummer Tim Alexander was announced as Bostrom's replacement, the position was later filled by Ted Marcus.

On January 20, 2007, Meat Puppets brothers performed two songs during an Army of Anyone concert, at La Zona Rosa in Austin, Texas.

Then the second song was played with original members Curt and Cris Kirkwood and new Meat Puppets drummer Ted Marcus.

[15] The band was chosen by Animal Collective to perform the album 'Up on the Sun' live in its entirety at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival that they curated in May 2011.

Meat Puppets have played several gigs in their hometown since 2009, such as the Marquee show in June 2011 with Dead Confederate.

[20] In March 2013, Meat Puppets opened for Dave Grohl's Sound City Players at the SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas.

The Meat Puppets were picked to open for an 11 show tour as support of The Dean Ween Group in October 2016 after Curt Kirkwood and drummer Chuck Treece contribute to The Deaner Album.

[24] On July 8, 2018, it was confirmed that Bostrom had replaced Sahm as the drummer for the band, and that keyboardist Ron Stabinsky had joined, as well.

[26] According to the Chicago Reader, Meat Puppets "were part of a crucial group of hardcore bands bucking the conventions of a genre that had quickly become codified.

"[31] In addition to Dinosaur Jr.[32] and Sebadoh,[33] Meat Puppets have been cited as an influence by numerous commercially successful rock bands, including Nirvana,[34] Soundgarden,[35] Pavement,[36] Jawbreaker,[37] and Sublime.