Tall, thin, with long black hair framing a face that, when relaxed, takes on an angelic sweetness, Curt Kirkwood, the singer, guitarist and main songwriter of the Meat Puppets, sometimes comes across as a starry-eyed dreamer, a mystic of sorts. Other times, he’s just kidding around. But even when he’s not entirely serious, he often makes a great deal of sense. You have to listen for the logic buried in the seeming non sequiturs.

“I tend to speak from an imaginative viewpoint, as opposed to a social viewpoint. What i want to hear is something that has a newness to it. I don’t want to hear brashness. I don’t care about not pulling punches or something like that. I’m interested in splitting atoms. I want to see what the whole thing is made of.”