It's safe to say alternative rock would've sounded a lot different without the Meat Puppets. Their agrarian influence guided R.E.M. away from post-punk to rootsy jangle, showed Dinosaur Jr. how to fuse hardcore velocity with Neil Youngian rusticity, and, most famously, inspired Nirvana's latter-day acoustic detour. More recently, their sundazed sensibility has permeated the slack-rock musings of Kurt Vile and the bent guitar pop of Mac DeMarco.