WHO ARE THEY?
Athens, Georgia multi-instrumentalists boasting up to 21 members, centred around head freak Jim McHugh. Dark Meat bind an early love of punk and southern-rock with the boundary-bashing insanity of Captain Beefheart and New York ketamine-core act Oneida. McHugh himself describes Dark Meat as “a redneck version of Amon Duul II.” Their Universal Indians disc — featuring field recordings and massive opuses such as “There Is a Retard on Acid Holding a Hammer to Your Brain” — has recently been reissued by Vice Records.

DO THEY TRAVEL BY CAMEL TRAIN?
Transporting this many eccentric musicians in standard 15-­passenger vans just doesn’t cut it. So what then — a Boeing 747?

“No, we’re in a 35-foot GMC bus, which we restored,” McHugh explains. “It’s got a wacky paintjob, because it was in that Matthew McConaughey movie We Are Marshall. It’s the green team bus with eagles all over it. We think of ourselves as pirates sometimes, or a 19th century street gang.” Indeed, this buccaneer mentality is intrinsic to Dark Meat’s “high-minded psychedelic concept.”

“Universal Indians was named after an Albert Ayler song,” McHugh says. “He was a free jazz saxophonist who was into universal thought, stuff that everyone can understand. We’re musical Bedouins travelling across the land, delivering universal music.”

DANCING VS SONIC ATTACK
Back in the day, space-rockers Hawkwind amused themselves by dislodging the audience’s footing purely through extreme frequencies. Does Dark Meat ever engage in such guilty onstage pleasures?
“That’s kinda the goal with our noise jams,” McHugh says, “to spiritually make people fall over and crawl into a ball. But we also like to introduce cockamamie, instantaneous dance styles. Like, ‘Here’s a dance song about one time when I ate Indian food and tried to play basketball with a pakora because I was on acid, and you gotta dance sideways downwards.’ And I look out and people are actually doing this move and are falling on their heads. It’s really gratifying.”

IS LSD GROOVY AGAIN?
It’s easy to visualize Dark Meat’s bus as a chemically sealed bubble, hurtling down the interstate, filled with Freak Brothers tripping 24/7. McHugh (mostly) denies this. “We wouldn’t be manageable as an entity if that was the case,” he says. “But these times are reminiscent of when acid rock first originated. People’s lives are so drab and full of darkness that you have to expand somehow, because you’re focused on the economy or because your brother’s been shipped off to the war.”

HAVE THEY HAD ANY EASY RIDER­­–TYPE INCIDENTS?
Being a tattooed, long-haired dude will ensure you get plenty of dirty looks in rural American truck stops. But add purple war paint plus an entourage of freaks, and one must suddenly tread very lightly. “I never wash the third eye off,” McHugh claims. “It’s always clotted in my hair. I have pink prescription sunglasses, so I look like a total fruitcake, like some gay dude from The Road Warrior. People are either frightened or want to slit my throat. I walked into this gas station in Texas yesterday, and this cavalcade of freaks followed me in. Everyone there busted up laughing, staring, and we’re like, ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here.’ So we ended up accidentally leaving our roadie there like a bunch of dumbasses. He’s a tough motherfucker, but we felt terrible. We got back and they’d given him all this pizza and stuff. They felt bad for him.”

DO THEY KNOW WHERE THE B-52s’ LOVE SHACK IS?
McHugh: “The Love Shack is the metaphorical, erotic, musical zone in everyone’s heart in Athens.” Just don’t forget your jukebox money.