Hoodies

Amidst all sorts of topics I cover, I like to keep a broad range, including some more mundane ones.  In this case, a type of clothing I recently discovered.   They’re highly casual, and maybe beneath my age range (50), but very comfortable and very practical.  They’re light enough for all but the warmest summer weather, and heavy enough for all but the coldest winter weather, and I live in an area – Northern Virginia – which gets snow in the winter and heat waves in the summer. 

The hood itself is nice, as it acts as a de facto umbrella for all but the heaviest rain, for which an umbrella is essential.  The front pocket – which is one reason I prefer pullovers over zip-ups – acts as a handy place to keep the smartphone. 

I’m not keen on zip-up hoodies, preferring pullovers, but in one case I had to take the former as the latter was not available.   I attended a festival which featured a hoodie with the distinctive image of the Maryland flag, so the purchase was not binding but certainly persuasive.

The remaining hoodies are all pullovers, these being the topics thereof:   

All Them Witches (black).   The only decent item at their concession, but it’s good enough to wear. 

Clutch (black).   Psychic Warfare!  You better believe it!

Grateful Dead, Live/Dead (red).  The Live/Dead album from the late 60s is the imagery and theme.

Hofmann (Heineken) (green).  An homage to the famous Swiss chemist of Sandoz.  Note that his name is spelled with ONE f and TWO n’s. 

Judas Priest (black).  Purchased at the first of two Priest concerts at the Anthem in DC, for the Firepower tour (most recent album).

Kyuss (black).   The famous stoner rock band which featured Josh Homme and Nick Oliveiri of QOTSA and Brant Bjork.

Minnesota Vikings (purple).   A very light purple, and VIKINGS isn’t even in the older or newer logos. 

Queens of the Stone Age (red).  My favorite album of theirs is Rated R, which is usually blue.   This is one of the earlier albums back when Nick Oliveiri was still in the band.  Later they re-released it as a deluxe edition in red, Rated Rx.

Sleep

I’m trying to avoid simply recounting concerts or bands, but in this case I can’t resist.  Although I’ve referred to stoner rock bands countless times already, I haven’t blogged about Sleep in particular, and they are a particularly important band in that genre.

Current lineup:  Matt Pike (guitar), Al Cisneros (bass/vocals), Jason Roeder (drums).   Cisneros was also in a band called OM, which is heavy dronelike s**t.  Five albums: Variations on a Theme, Conference of the Birds, Pilgrimage, God is Good, and Adviatic Songs.  The singing sounds like it’s in Byzantine or some foreign language.  It reminds me of SunnO))).  To make matters even more stonerish, Cisneros was also in a one-off band called Shrinebuilder, somewhat of a stoner rock supergroup with only one (awesome) self-titled album, featuring Dale Crover on drums (the Melvins), Scott Kelly (Neurosis) on bass, and the ever-popular Scott “Wino” Weinrich (Saint Vitus & the Obsessed, among others) on guitar and vocals.  Note that current Sleep drummer, Jason Roeder, was with Neurosis, making two members of that band Al Cisneros has worked with. 

Discography:  Volume 1, Holy Mountain, Jerusalem/Dopesmoker, The Sciences.  With the exception of J/D (see below) these four albums have multiple songs with lyrics.

Along with Kyuss, Sleep can be considered one of the premiere stoner rock bands.  They began around 1991 and continued to 1998, at which point they broke up when the record label refused to release their album, Jerusalem, also known as Dopesmoker, a continuous 52 minute song (later released on a different label).  While most of their songs can be enjoyed without herbal enhancement, the latter album almost requires it to be listenable, and I imagine the record company weren’t 4:20 friendly enough to make that work.   

Doom with a Groove.  As noted earlier, a frequent complaint of stoner rock is that too much of it sounds the same, mostly bands incessantly copying not only Black Sabbath but also each other.  A subset of stoner rock is doom, which seems to take Black Sabbath, particularly “Into the Void”, the last song on Master of Reality and tuned down to C#, and make it even slower, heavier and doomier.  Electric Wizard really come to mind on this, but SunnO))) and Sleep do this as well.  And after awhile that really gets dull and tiresome.  Are you trying to lull everyone to sleep?  [WARNING:  DO NOT USE INDICA].  So the challenge with this is keeping it lively when you’re tuned down low – thus the GROOVE.  I could hear a definite groove with Pike & the boys that night, and certainly on The Sciences.  I did not fall asleep during this show. 

Pike tends to play Les Pauls through multiple Orange amps – I counted three heads and six 4x12” cabinets – and heavily detuned.  He doesn’t wear a shirt.  Cisneros handles the vocals and Rickenbacker bass, through no less than 4 full stacks of Sunn amps.  The music drones but (as noted) has a definite groove which breaks up what might otherwise be monotonous and dull.  Both shows (see below) were highly enjoyable. 

In 2000, Pike formed High On Fire, more of a thrash metal band, and continued with that for awhile, putting out 8 albums between 2000 and now.  I actually saw them open for Opeth in Baltimore in 2008, but for some reason they didn’t impress me.  I tried listening to their stuff on Spotify and it went in one ear and out the other.  Like a fair amount of thrash metal, it does a poor job of distinguishing itself from angry white noise.  Fortunately Sleep are much different.

In 2009 Sleep reformed and began touring again.  Recently they released a new album of awesome s**t, called The Sciences.  [Technically it seems High on Fire is on hiatus and not disbanded.]  

Here is a particularly good (and of course, positive) review of the new album which addresses much of the circumstances surrounding its long-awaited arrival: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/sleep-the-sciences/

Now I’ve seen them twice, both at the new 9:30 Club in DC.

2016 set list.     Dragonaut, Holy Mountain, Dopesmoker (excerpt), The Clarity, Sonic Titan, Aquarian, From Beyond, Cultivator/Improved Morris.

2018 setlist.       Marijuanaut’s Theme, Holy Mountain, The Clarity, Sonic Titan, Giza Butler, Leagues Beneath, The Botanist, Dragonaut, encore: Dopesmoker (excerpt).   Remarkably, the following night they played another show, a different setlist featuring most of Holy Mountain.   Hopefully Pike was using a new guitar cable. 

As you might imagine, this is a band not quite shy about declaring their love of marijuana consumption.  In addition to the names, and much bud-like imagery on the album covers and t-shirts, the concession stand at the recent show featured lighters, credit card-style grinders, and at a premium, metal grinders – i.e. MJ paraphernalia.  Other bands are doing the same these days, so it’s only a matter of time before band-emblazoned bongs, pipes, rolling papers, etc., become available.  Hell, Willie Nelson and Snoop Dogg have proprietary weed strains, so as legalization spreads, perhaps we’ll see that from stoner rock bands as well – hell, concert venues would be well advised to double as legal dispensaries (dare we hope).  DC, where the concert took place, has legalized possession, but not sale, of MJ.  Stay tuned.  In the meantime, enjoy SLEEP.  

Brant Bjork

I’ve been listening to a bit more of this guy lately, in particular, Gods And Goddesses and Punk Rock Guilt.   Prior to that it was Jalamanta, Saved By Magic, and Black Flower Power.

In the beginning:  there was Kyuss, famous for giving us Josh Homme, the lead dude of Queens of the Stone Age.  With that band he’s on Wretch, Blues for the Red Sun, (Welcome to) Sky Valley and ....And The Circus Leaves Town.  Since Kyuss are also famous for being one of the first stoner rock bands, and are still well esteemed to this day, that alone would give BB solid stoner rock credentials.

Then it was  Fu Manchu, for the albums, No One Rides For Free, The Action is Go, Jailbreak, Eatin’ Dust, King of the Road (their best album), and California Crossing. 

QOTSA bassist Nick Oliveiri had a falling out with Homme – who can be a bit strong-minded about running his band – so he wound up making his own band, Mondo Generator, which has two studio albums, Cocaine Rodeo and A Drug Problem That Never Existed, both of which BB is on.

Solo.  He has 7 albums as “Brant Bjork” (Jalamanta, Brant Bjork & the Operators, Keep Your Cool, Local Angel, Tres Dias [a compilation with only one unique song], Punk Rock Guilt, and Gods & Goddesses), two as “Brant Bjork and the Bros” (Saved By Magic and Somera Sol), and one with his “Low Desert Punk Band” (Black Flower Power).  The solo distinction is that with the prior bands, he was playing drums, whereas now he’s playing multiple instruments and seems to be on guitar & vocals live – basically doing a Dave Grohl/Foo Fighters switch.  I suppose you could call him the Dave Grohl of stoner rock.  What’s even funnier is that Grohl himself played drums briefly with Queens of the Stone Age and teamed up with Josh Homme and John Paul Jones (yes, the Led Zeppelin bassist/keyboardist) for Them Crooked Vultures.

Although I haven’t heard all his material, I’ve heard the Kyuss, the Fu Manchu, about 1/3 of his solo material.  It all qualifies as stoner rock, and all has a definite groove of coolness.  I’ve seen him in concert a few times, although only as a drummer: Kyuss (1995), Fu Manchu (2002), and Kyuss Lives (2011).  I’m still trying to catch him playing a tour as his solo band. 

Note: despite the term “stoner rock”, much of this music is not psychedelic at all, and Bjork’s stuff is not either.  It’s riff driven, with some bands like Bjork’s having a definite groove element to it, almost “heavy-funky”.  The scene also includes bands which are much slower and sludgier (“doom”), such as Electric Wizard and Acid King (imagine Black Sabbath’s “Into the Void” – but even slower), or others which pick up the tempo considerably with a quasi-thrash vibe, like High On Fire.  It’s not music which requires marijuana to enjoy, but many of its fans are proud tokers, and some bands even celebrate it in their names:  Bongripper, Bongzilla, Weedeater, Weedpecker, etc.  The genre seems to take Black Sabbath as its starting point, and then spliff it up with some weirdness, a la Pink Floyd, or what I call Black Floyd.  They inject just enough originality to avoid simply being de facto Black Sabbath tribute bands, but they often sound very much the same as each other. 

If you’re a fan of classic heavy metal – AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest – you’re going to find that the bands are getting older and touring less and less.  Black Sabbath will be lucky to follow up 13 with another album and tour – and Bill Ward is effectively retired.  Priest are close to shutting down.  AC/DC may have one more album and/or tour after Rock or Bust, and Maiden eked out its most recent album, Book of Souls, which still hasn’t been released (ETA 9/4/15), before Bruce Dickinson’s cancer scare.  When they do tour, it’s large venues at high prices.  The beauty of the stoner rock scene is that none of these bands have blown up huge, so they’re playing local clubs fairly often for modest prices.  There are some stoner rock festivals in Europe, but I haven’t seen one come by the DC area yet.  But the bottom line is that you get “Black Floyd” in your home town fairly often.  And you don’t even have to toke up.  

Queens of the Stone Age

As you might have guessed, this blog is due to a recent concert, Queens of the Stone Age, at Merriweather Post Pavilion, in Columbia, Maryland, on July 17, 2014.   QOTSA (as they are commonly referred to) were the headliner for a change.  I had seen them three times before:  in June and September 2002 at the new 9:30 Club (Washington, DC) on the Songs for The Deaf tour, and in September 2008 on the Era Vulgaris tour at the Ram’s Head Live in Baltimore.   By now Nick Oliveri is no longer with the band.

The current lineup is Josh Homme (vocals & guitar), Troy Van Leeuwen (guitar), Dean Fertita (keyboards & guitars), Michael Shuman (bass), and Jon Theodore (drums).  In the past Dave Grohl (Nirvana, Foo Fighters) has been on drums, and the inimitable Oliveri was the prior bassist.

They have six studio albums now, self-titled (1998), Rated R (2000), Songs For the Deaf (2002), Lullabies to Paralyze (2005), Era Vulgaris (2007) and …Like Clockwork (2013).   I got into them shortly after Rated R came out, and to date that remains my favorite album.  Somehow it breathes more, it’s less compressed, and it has my favorite songs, including “Better Living Through Chemistry.” 

QOTSA’s musical style can best be described – by me, at least – as a funky variant of Soundgarden.  They have their own style, somewhat twisted lyrics and sense of humor.  It has to be heard to be appreciated – if at all.

It’s funny that I didn’t like Oliveri when he was in the band, but I miss him now that he’s gone.   In his absence the band’s stage presence is simply Homme singing and playing guitar backed by 4 competent nobodies.  There are no gimmicks, lasers, light shows, or anything aside from the band.  Homme’s intersong banter is arrogant and nasty, but at least coherent.

QOTSA has a connection with the following three groups, which merit mention herein, as follows:

Kyuss.   Any discussion of QOTSA should include Kyuss.  This was one of the first “stoner rock” bands, active between 1987 and 1997, with a revolving lineup.  John Garcia (vocals), Homme, Oliveri, and Brant Bjork (drums) are the most important members.  They made 4 albums before breaking up, but they’ve reformed recently around Garcia, Bjork and Oliveri as Kyuss Lives.   Apparently Homme still has the rights to Kyuss, so Garcia then renamed the group Vista Chino.  I don’t find the Homme-less material as good as what they did with him.  We actually saw Kyuss in 1995, opening for White Zombie at Merriweather, but I can’t remember that set.  I made up for that by seeing Kyuss Lives in 2011. 

Masters of Reality.   Founder and main member Chris Goss has a close relationship with Homme and Kyuss.  He produced the Kyuss albums and the first two QOTSA albums, including Rated R.  While it may be a stretch to call him “the godfather of stoner rock” (as some do), he undeniably has a major role in the genre.  This band’s material is also good, though I’ve yet to collect all of it.

Them Crooked Vultures.  This was a short-lived “supergroup” of Josh Homme, Dave Grohl and John Paul Jones (yes, the Led Zeppelin bassist/keyboardist), with one self-titled album (2009) and a brief tour I couldn’t catch.  The band they sound closest to is (drumroll, please) QOTSA.  

Stoner Rock 101

I suppose it started with Hawkwind…Pink Floyd….Blue Cheer…maybe even Captain Beyond. Up until the early 90s, heavy metal was alive and well, as we could see in “Heavy Metal Parking Lot”. Then Nirvana came around and ruined it all with grunge (see my grunge blog). Now we have “nu-metal”, Good Charlotte, A Simple Plan, Disturbed, etc. all the dazzlingly brilliant and original (ha!) bands on the Ozzfest. Hold on, where’s the real metal? And I don’t mean Manowar….


I’m talking about bands that know, understand, and live for riffs, guitars, guitar solos, old-school, old-style banging around like …Black Sabbath, who are probably the most important influence to many of these bands. But despite the name, you don’t have to smoke dope, or get stoned, to listen to this or enjoy it, although obviously many of these bands are probably chemically inspired in different ways, to various degrees. For some reason many of the bands come from California. Oddly, there’s little jamming and not much psychedelic (except for Gas Giant) – just straightforward heavy guitars and good fun.


So what passes for real metal these days is best known as “stoner rock” and will not be found opening for Ozzy or Black Sabbath. Maybe just as well, because it means we can see these bands at local clubs for $20 a ticket and maybe even meet the band members after the show. Who are these bands? Here are a few of the most important (i.e. these are not only the ones I’m most familiar with, but who are also the most popular and tour the most – with the exception of sHEavy, mentioned below - and the list is by no means exhaustive):


Kyuss. They are considered the first stoner rock band, if you leave out Hawkwind and Black Sabbath (precursor bands). I actually saw them in concert years ago and can’t remember a thing. D’oh!


Queens of the Stone Age. Derivative of Kyuss thanks to Josh Homme. Despite the name, none of the band members are female. This is one of these more original bands with its own sound that’s hard to describe, but it’s definitely heavy and definitely different. My favorite album is Rated R. I’ve been able to see them a few times, including with Dave Grohl of Nirvana on drums (Songs for the Deaf tour).


Fu Manchu. If Black Sabbath were surfers and into vans, cars, etc. you’d have Fu Manchu. Scott Hill is a bit smarter, and has a better voice, than Ozzy. IMHO, their best album is King of the Road. This is the band of these that I’ve probably seen the most.


Nebula. A three-piece that used to be ¾ of Fu Manchu, with Scott Hill being the 4^th who remained the core of Fu Manchu. Nebula sound almost the same, though with a more spacey riffing and losing the vans & surfing themes.


Monster Magnet. From New Jersey, and led by Dave Wyndorf, the closest thing to a rock personality that stoner rock has. They have several albums and are heavily influenced by Hawkwind – they even covered “Brainstorm” and “The Right Stuff.”


Atomic Bitchwax. This started out as a side project of Monster Magnet guitarist Ed Mundell, but now has a life of its own with replacement guitarist Finn Ryan, who looks like a blond version of Jason Lee. More riff-oriented than Monster Magnet; my favorite song is (surprise, surprise) “Black Trans Am.” They even cover Deep Purple’s “Maybe I’m A Leo.” I got to meet the band in Baltimore and talk to Chris Koznik, the bassist/singer.


Electric Wizard. From England, EW tune the guitars down to C and really, really drone on. Their album Dopethrone should be a dead giveaway (wizard w/bong) as to their inclinations. Imagine Black Sabbath slowed down half speed…and you have Electric Wizard.


Acid King. Now…substitute a female singer in EW and you have….Acid King. Pretty much the same deal. They do an excellent cover of BTO’s “Not Fragile.”


sHeavy. Of all these bands, sHeavy have by far the closest sound to Black Sabbath, thanks to the singer, Steve Hennessy, who does a dead on Ozzy impression. For some reason, this Canadian band doesn’t tour. I finally saw the DVD that comes with their latest album, The Machine That Won The War, and could see why: half the band (aside from Hennessy, who looks like he belongs in a band) look like they have day jobs, wife & kids, etc. and can’t go off on a money-losing tour of Canada or the US. Too bad, as they are damn good.


Fireball Ministry. These guys sound like 70’s Black Sabbath with 90’s-era Ozzy singing.


Pentagram. The DC area’s Black Sabbath. Remarkably, they’ve been around since the 70s yet only put out an album until the 80s. The only consistent member is singer Bobby Liebling, though their drummer, Joey Hasselvander, recently played drums for Blue Cheer, and I found out that Liebling was at the Blue Cheer show I saw at Krug’s Place in Frederick, Maryland (see the shot of me and Dickie Peterson on my Yahoo 360 album).


The Suplecs. A trio from New Orleans. Fortunately they’ve survived Katrina, but I haven’t seen them tour around this area yet. “Cities of the Dead” is my favorite song, and they do a knockout cover of the Beatles’ “She’s So Heavy.”


Gas Giant. These guys are from Denmark, not to be confused with an Arizona band called the Gas Giants. They have two albums, Mana and Pleasant Journey in Heavy Tunes, both of which are fantastic. They actually have some pretty psychedelic stuff going on, more so than even Hawkwind these days.


Orange Goblin. This was one of the first of these bands I heard, and I got to see them play in Baltimore. Pretty damn good. They are one of the more Sabbath-oriented groups, though the earlier material from the first three albums, Frequencies from Planet Ten, Time Travelling Blues, and The Big Black, are the trippiest.


Lowrider. Teleport Orange Goblin from England to Sweden and you have…Lowrider.


Valkyrie &The Sword. For some reason I put these two together and can’t pull them apart in my mind. They both sound the same. I suppose it’s because The Sword evoke a lot of Norse mythology, which matches up with the name of Valkyrie. They should definitely tour together.


Wolfmother. This new band from Australia gets lumped in with these other bands. They’ve been compared to Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, but I hear more Grand Funk Railroad – but I seem to be the only one making that connection.


Even within this narrowly limited genre of rock music, there is much variety, but in addition to cool riffs, they share a remarkable talent for cool album covers, as you can see.