When Man’s Ruin Records was getting ready to put out 1999′s Jalamanta, the first solo album from former Kyuss and Fu Manchu drummer Brant Bjork, they said in the album bio that it was “Psychedelic, soulful, organic, sexy…” and that “Man’s Ruin considers this one of their most interesting releases to date,” citing the likes of War as inspiration. Throughout the years and many subsequent solo offerings since, funk has always remained an essential part of Brant Bjork‘s work, and that ultra-grooving, ultra-warm low end is part of what makes Jalamanta a perfect summertime record, as well as the quintessential desert rock release.

The other part is the laid back vibe that Bjork constructs out of that low end. From the very start of “Lazy Bones” and “Automatic Fantastic,” Jalamanta bleeds cool. It’s a record that’s had untold influence on the current heavy rock scene — especially in Europe; one can hear shades of jams like “‘Let’s Get Chinese Eyes’” or “Defender of the Oleander” across a wide swath of bands — and its psychedelic elements only added mystique to the sun-baked atmosphere. Not to discount anything Kyuss did, but Jalamanta sounds even more purely of the desert, and if the song “Low Desert Punk” is anything to go by, Bjork knew exactly what he was doing and the sound he was embodying when he made it.

And while Brant Bjork would go on to become the godfather of desert rock and Jalamanta would in large part define the course of his career as a solo songwriter — a career that seemed to be sidetracked following a label deal with Napalm Records last year by the emergence of Kyuss Lives!, whose fate remains uncertain pending litigation — the album’s appeal isn’t necessarily limited to its geography. Sure, it’s low desert punk, but for example, right now it’s so humid outside my office that if you moved your arms the right way you could do a breast stroke through the air, and Jalamanta proves a perfect fit for Jersey’s perma-haze as well.

The album was reissued on Bjork‘s own Duna Records in 2003 (minus the Mario Lalli-fronted “Toot”) and again by his next label incarnation, Low Desert Punk (with that track restored and a bonus Blue Öyster Cult cover) on vinyl in 2009, and the original is out there on the secondary market, so Jalamanta is around, but if like me you’re too paralyzed by the heat to move and check it out, here’s “Too Many Chiefs… Not Enough Indians” courtesy of the YouTubes:

If the Nation of Doom (as opposed to the Legion of Doom) were to have a national anthem, there’s no question it would be Saint Vitus‘ “Born too Late.” The title-track of the first album of the band’s Wino-fronted incarnation, “Born too Late” sums up the doomer mentality as concisely and as clearly as possible: “I’ll never be like you/And I don’t want to be like you.” Can’t get any less ambiguous than that.

Canadian outfit Sons of Otis are among the most stoned of the stonerly, and they have been since their Spacejumbofudge debut in 1996. They meld a range of spaced-out effects, monstrous fuzz and doomed-out plodding to craft a dankness worthy of Bongzilla without the abrasion. Vocals come gurgled in from infinite echoes believed to have their origins in guitarist Ken Baluke, and when they covered “Born too Late” for their Man’s Ruin Records debut sophomore outing, Temple Ball, in 1999, they followed through on the song’s bullshit-free ethic by naming the track simply “Vitus.”

The idea is beautiful, but they might as well have called it “Life,” since “Born too Late” is nothing if not biographical. I know this is the first Wino Wednesday clip that doesn’t actually feature Scott “Wino” Weinrich at all, either in the main lineup or in a guest spot, but in their own, fully-baked way, Sons of Otis nail “Born too Late” on “Vitus,” and it shows that more than a decade after the fact, the “They don’t know the things I know” ethic had already proved as timeless as it seems today.

Enjoy Sons of Otis‘ “Vitus,” and happy Wino Wednesday:

A bit of personal trivia: Alabama Thunderpussy‘s Constellation was the first Man’s Ruin Records album I ever bought. It was released in 2000 and I made my purchase directly from the band on their website — it might also have been the first time I did that — sometime after the release of 2001′s also-excellent Staring at the Divine, which was their Relapse debut. I didn’t know much about the label or the band at that point, other than (as per the poster above) they stomped ass and it was worth $10 of my money.

I’ve chronicled my Man’s Ruin buying adventures here pretty extensively, but Constellation has always had a soft spot in my heart, for being the first and for its fearless blend of sentimentality and burly heavy Southern rock. It’s not just any band that would put “Six Shooter” and “15 Minute Drive” on the same record. Still, I probably hadn’t listened to it in a few years even before ATP broke up after releasing the more metallic Open Fire in 2007 with Kyle Thomas from Exhorder on vocals, and as has happened a couple times by now (see here, here, here and here, for starters), finding the promo for sale on the relative cheap provided a good chance to reintroduce myself to the album.

The first thing that sticks out about it — especially in the context of what’s come since from Virginia and the surrounding area — is how forward thinking it is. A lot of the distinct guitar crunch from Erik Larson and Asechaih Bogdan and the sans-reverb vocals of Johnny Throckmorton you can hear in the sludge coming out of that area now from the likes of Lord and a few like-minded acts also not shy about bringing melody into the mix.

As much as cuts like “Ambition,” “Burden” and the organ-infused “Foul Play” rock as straightforwardly as possible, the acoustics of “Obsari” and the more airy feel of “1271-3106″ do more than just change things up. There’s a direct effect on mood and the overall tone of the album that lasts right into the intro of “Keepsake” and the extended weird-out jam of “Country Song.” I guess it’s not necessarily that I didn’t realize these things were happening on the record before, although I’d believe that too, but with the additional time since its release — it’ll be 12 years come March — there’s been a real chance for the record to ferment. Constellation goes down like fine aged moonshine, and proves no less blinding.

If you’re interested, click the picture on the left above to enlarge it and read the bio. Believe it.

I didn’t get the chance to close out the week before I had to leave work Friday, and internet connection was spotty all weekend where I was staying (in Maryland; no real big mystery, was visiting some family friends) until last night, so I figured I’d just hold off and start one week instead of closing another. If you’re reading this and you’re American, happy July 4. If you’re reading this somewhere else in the world, hope work is good.

German Man’s Ruin obscurios Mass seemed as good a way to launch this week as any, and since where I sit in the home office is right next to the “M” section on my recently-decimated shelves (actually, it was way more than one in 10 I removed and put into storage to make room), it happened to catch my eye. I’d have just put the album on and enjoyed it that way, but the CD player is otherwise occupied.

You see, even as I sit here and type this, I’m ripping the tracks for what will become the previously-promised podcast, which I’ll have up before midnight tonight. Hopefully well before that, actually. There’s some not-in-front-of-the-computer stuff I need to take care of this afternoon, but I’m optimistic that I’ll have time for both real life and podcast-making. It’s worked out that way for the better part of the last 18 months, anyhow.

And if there’s any real sacrifice to get aOT17 made, it’s that I’m not spending this entire afternoon listening to the new YOB, which along with releases by Ancestors and probably two others, will be reviewed this week. I’ll also have Six Dumb Questions with Sons of Alpha Centauri about their collaboration with Yawning Man‘s Gary Arce (the project being Yawning Sons) and Karma to Burn, as well as sundry other happy-fun-time posts.

For now, let me get back to work on this beast. Hope you have a great week, and if you’re boozing and fireworks-ing today, please try to keep the blown-off fingers to a minimum.

Of the sundry stoner/riff-heavy bands that emerged from my beloved Garden State in the wake of Monster Magnet‘s run at major label success, one of the most often and most unfortunately overlooked is Solarized. They had two albums in 1999′s Neanderthal Speedway (Man’s Ruin) and 2001′s Driven (MeteorCity), a split with Solace, and they appeared on a couple compilations, but then they faded into the swamps. The scene links were there — guitarist/vocalist Jim Hogan and drummer Regina Santana were in Daisycutter with Tim Cronin (The Ribeye Bros.) and Ed Mundell (now ex-Monster Magnet), and in and out of the band at different points were Halfway to Gone‘s Lou Gorra and Lee Stuart, the latter who went on to form A Thousand Knives of Fire — but that wasn’t enough to get Solarized much past 2003. Their last reported lineup was Hogan, Santana, bassist George Pierro and second guitarist Dave Topolenski.

I was doing my usual bit of late night eBay dicking around last week when I spotted an original Man’s Ruin promo for Neanderthal Speedway (the kind with the bio attached that’s been posted about before, and before, and before) and decided to snap it up for the listed $7 and use posting the bio as an excuse to revisit the album, which I already owned. It’s a friendly listen, some psychedelia spread throughout, and Hogan‘s vocals are gruff but not forced, and buried under his ultra-fuzzed out guitar. The Atomic Bitchwax‘s first record, which also came out in 1999, but on Tee Pee, is a decent point of reference, but something about Solarized is more assured and confident in its sound. Both Tim Cronin and Ed Mundell turn in guest appearances throughout Neanderthal Speedway, and listening to it now that the stoner scene has grown internationally and splintered so much, it’s kind of a return to simpler times, which, as someone who wishes people didn’t get offended at the term “stoner rock,” I can appreciate every now and then.

The bio may not be as thrilling as Brant Bjork‘s or Goatsnake‘s, but here it is anyway. Click the image to make it bigger in a new window/tab:

For what it’s worth, I was happy to get the chance to listen to Neanderthal Speedway again. Granted, I could have done so without spending any money by taking the disc off my shelf at any given point, but screw it, it was $7 and “February Sixth (Anti-Life Equation)” rules and the riff of “Solar Fang” is close enough to “Zodiac Lung” to give me a fix, so I don’t feel like I lost out on anything. I was still in high school at the time and knew squat about stoner rock, but it would have been something to run into Solarized at a show. I suppose I still feel that way now.

I thought rather than hold off and wait for either later tonight or tomorrow to end the week, I’d cut out early. I’m supposed to be interviewing “Dixie” Dave Collins of Weedeater at 7PM Eastern, and after that I’m off to pretend I’m a human being with The Patient Mrs. at a social-type gathering. One can only assume I’ll either fall down and hurt myself or end up swearing loudly near a group of small children. That’s usually how it goes.

This week caps off with Tummler, who ruled. They put out Queen to Bishop VI on Man’s Ruin in 2000, Early Man (which predated the band of the same name) on Small Stone in 2002, and were never heard from again. Good band. If I remember right — and there’s a chance I don’t — I either got to see them live at a SXSW or an Emissions from the Monolith somewhere along the line. A little “hey whoa momma yeah” in the vocals, but still cool. I haven’t had any Man’s Ruin-worship on here in a while, anyway. Fuzz on.

My semester starts next Wednesday, the thought of which is grueling. I believe the phrase I used when The Patient Mrs. reminded me the other day was “kill me in the face.” That is still very much how I feel about it. Somehow, some way, though, I’m still planning on posting my interview with Laura Pleasants of Kylesa, and maybe we’ll have some more goodies as well of the listening-to variety.

Until then, be safe and enjoy the weekend. Remember that the forums never close, and we’ll see you back here for more fun times on Monday.

I’ve posted bios from the backs of original Man’s Ruin Records promo CDs already for High on Fire and for Brant Bjork, and though I didn’t really get any response off either of them, I thought especially in light of today’s SunnO))) announcement from Roadburn, I’d put the one that came in the mail yesterday with Goatsnake‘s classic I album (an eBay find) up for the great silent majority out there who might think it’s cool.

Or maybe it’s just me who thinks it’s cool. That’s fine too. I do get a nerdy pleasure out of seeing the first biography for Goatsnake, before anyone had heard of Greg Anderson and when Greg Rogers and Guy Pinhas from The Obsessed were the big draw to the band. By way of a little context, 1999 was the year The Grimmrobe Demos were first released, so no one yet knew the serious and drone-laden madness that was about to befall American doom.

Click the image below to make it bigger, and enjoy.

If this was GQ magazine and not The Obelisk (and if the idea had any appeal to me whatsoever), this piece would be about how I finally had a threesome and was pissed when the two chicks spent the whole time making out and I was left in the cold. Since it’s The Obelisk, it’s about record shopping. Hey, you get what you pay for.

This past weekend, I paid for a copy of The Desert Sessions Vol. I/Vol. II on Amazon. It was the cheapest I’d ever seen the CD for sale — and believe me, I checked regularly — and I knew from habitual eBay browsing that I wasn’t going to do any better in terms of price, so I grabbed it for $28. Even with the couple bucks shipping, it was a bargain, and as I’ve been pining away for this lost Man’s Ruin gem for longer than I at this point care to admit, I figured it was high time to bite the proverbial bullet and shell out the cash. So it was done.

Showed up in the mail yesterday and I popped it on this morning for the first time, and well, there are some cool tracks. “Girl Boy Tom’ has a good feel, and “Cowards Way Out” is among the more developed of the ideas present, and the few cuts at the end with vocals — “Johnny the Boy” might be my favorite of the bunch — pretty much rule, but there’s no way these songs could have lived up to my expectation. My life remains as it was yesterday: mostly in need of caffeine.

Still, I don’t have buyer’s remorse in the traditional sense because (1:) I know I got a good deal and (2:) I legitimately wanted to own The Desert Sessions Vol. I/Vol. II enough to justify the price. So what if the music didn’t reshape my perception of the world? Even if I listen to it two or three more times out of obligation and stick it on my shelf forever, at least I’ll be glad to see it every time I look over there. It’s not everything it could be, but it’s everything it is, and that’s enough.

A while back I purchased a promo of the Man’s Ruin release of High on Fire‘s first album, The Art of Self-Defense, and posted the bio included with that. It didn’t get much of a response, but when I received the promo of Brant Bjork‘s Jalamanta (which I’m certain is exactly the same as the final Man’s Ruin release sonically, though the wah-guitar on “Automatic Fantastic” sounded higher in the mix when I listened this morning), I was interested to read how the album was pitched to the press at the time.

Of course, we think of desert rock now as a given, but in 1999, the idea was still pretty new, at least to those outside the geographic locale. So in coming up with a description for Bjork‘s unique blend of soul, funk, punk and classic rock, the record gets called “12 tracks of ghetto vibe wonder,” which is just awesome. Plus, it’s got different cover art than either the final Man’s Ruin release or the subsequent Duna Records reissue. That’s gotta be worth $15 in itself.

So here’s the bio for your perusal. Click the image to view full-size:

NOTE: Gonna leave this post in the first spot for a couple days. New ones will appear underneath.

Since starting The Obelisk, I’ve made no secret of my unbridled fanboy status for all (or at least most) things Man’s Ruin Records. The now-defunct label headed by artist Frank Kozik put out some of the best music I’ve ever heard, and the bands released under the Man’s Ruin banner went on to influence an entire generation of underground rock, virtually defining and redefining The Heavy for the better part of a decade.

This podcast only scratches the surface of Man’s Ruin‘s impact crater. Some of the bands were Kozik discoveries, some were established acts he picked up for a release or two, but what is always assured with Man’s Ruin is that you’re going to get a work of quality, passion and genuine aesthetic. I can only hope Transmission 005 from the audiObelisk captures some of that. Like the banner above (made from an original Kozik poster), it was compiled in a spirit of reverence and with the utmost respect for those involved.

I didn’t exhaust my Man’s Ruin collection to put together all these songs, but also there are some things I just don’t own. Vinyl, for example. And Chrome. And Killdozer. And the first Desert Sessions. Nonetheless, these are all my personal rips from CDs and I think they’ve made for the best podcast yet. I’m optimistic you’ll agree when you download the file by clicking the image above, follow this link, or stream it on the player below.

aOT5

Just because I found the timeline interesting, I included the years the albums were released in the track listing. We start off with Tummler in 2000, and you’ll find the rest after the jump…

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Did you vote for which podcast you want next? If not, get the deal here. I know I said voting stops at the end of the week, which is today, but if you have an opinion on the matter and give it before Sunday, I’ll take it into consideration. So far, Man’s Ruin tribute by a nose. In honor of that, here’s a little Coping with the Urban Coyote-type Unida. Killer.

Well, my friends, we come to the end of an astonishingly regular week around these parts. I’ve been in Connecticut since Wednesday, but you’d never know it. I can’t remember the last time I had a solid Monday to Friday of normalcy. March maybe. Been a while, in any case.

Good stuff to come next week. I just got my grubby mitts on the new Zoroaster record and am listening to it for the first time as I type this, so hopefully I’ll have heard it enough to get a review together by the end of next week. I’m also slated to interview J.P. Gaster from Clutch about their new DVD, and this past Tuesday I had a chat with Greg Anderson of SunnO))) and Southern Lord Recordings fame about the Goatsnake reunion and the possibility of more shows and new recordings. So that’ll be up in who knows what order, but it’s definitely worth sticking around for, in any case.

Until then, enjoy the weekend, and don’t forget to pick a podcast!

I always try to pay attention to international exchange rates. Aside from being interested in the political implications thereof, it’s interesting to see what our tiny pieces of paper are worth compared to everyone else’s tiny pieces of paper. Occasionally you can get a bargain too, if you play your cards right.

As of today, the euro is worth $1.36, which isn’t bad. Of course, the market is turbulent (if you don’t believe me, search your favorite news site for the words “Greece” and “economy”), but I managed recently to hit up The Stone Circle, the mailorder of Spanish label Alone Records and come out of it on the positive side of the equation. Not financially, of course, but existentially.

It was Fatso Jetson‘s 1999 outing, Flames for All, that hooked me. Aside from being a Man’s Ruin release — anyone who’s been around this site for a while should know of my Kozik fetish — it’s also the only record they did as a four-piece, the lineup including Mario and Larry Lalli, drummer Tony Tornay and, as the fourth for doubles, Gary Arce of Yawning Man. It’s like a desert party pressed to plastic and I had to have it, so after a relatively exhausting search for comparison prices/conditions, The Stone Circle won out.

And I figured, hey, while I’m on the site, might as well see what else they’ve got lying around, right? If you could have just one CD, they wouldn’t have shaped them so similarly to potato chips (krinkle-cut notwithstanding).

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Whatever moniker they happen to be using when you encounter them — Porn, The Men of Porn, Porn (The Men of), etc. — they are quite possibly one of the most stoned bands on the planet. I recently picked up a copy of their 1999 Man’s Ruin debut, Porn American Style, and it’s the kind of album you can just smell the resin coming off of while you hear it. A sticky-icky mix of punk fuck-all and sludge disgust, one listen and you can officially get pulled over for a DUI. Yes, it is quite stoned.

Notable since for guitarist Tim Moss solidifying a lineup around him including noted producer Billy Anderson on bass and Melvins‘ Dale Crover on drums (not to mention the three albums), on Porn American Style, Moss had a range of players across the 12 tracks, making the record even more disjointed and haphazard than it already was. “Comin’ Home (Smoking Pot on a Saturday Afternoon while UFO’s Drone Overhead)” is exactly the kind of album opener I love; nearly 17 minutes long and basically daring you to sit through the whole thing. “Dancing Black Ladies” and “Porch Song” both have killer riffs, but as the record goes on, it twists and turns in different directions, never quite landing in the same place twice.

And yet it’s totally ridiculous. “Ballad of the Bulldyke” and “Ode to Theodore’s” are over the top silly, and even the noisier crush of “Double Don” or the instrumental “Pyleven” clearly aren’t about to start taking themselves seriously. Porn American Style is one of those albums that kicks your ass even as it’s flipping you off because it just doesn’t care and that’s how cool it is and take that, nerd. These are the kids who said “fuck school” and meant it.

However, a word of warning to anyone who might try and search out the album: Be careful how you phrase your Google search. Just saying. A YouTube query might not be the way to go either.

Woke up not half an hour ago realizing I never said a word about the shops I hit while in Asheville last weekend. An egregious error to be immediately remedied. It was 10:30AM, probably time to get up anyway, but surely I wouldn’t have been able to fall asleep again without this task completed. Maybe I’ll take a nap this afternoon.

There were three shops amidst the list of important addresses The Patient Mrs. compiled for me before I left the valley, and they were, in order, those of Static Age Records, Harvest Records and Voltage Records. Both Static Age and Voltage were on N. Lexington — about three doors down from each other; which should say something about the town itself — so I figured I’d hit them simultaneously.

Nice thought, and one complicated by the overarching hippieness of Asheville. Static Age‘s listed opening time of 11:00AM was more like 1:30PM. Since they were the shop with a Caltrop show listed on their website, they’d been the one I was most looking forward to checking out, but I hit Voltage first instead. No Holy Grails there, but I’d have probably been more into it if I was buying vinyl, since that’s mostly what they had to offer. Some cool Beatles records, “imports,” but nothing I could afford given my liquor budget.

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“Infernal” Keith Bergman — drummer/vocalist of The PB Army, former editor of InfernalCombustion.com (Wiffley Snidegarb!), contributor to Blabbermouth and numerous other outlets and regular feature in the stoner rock scene — has opened an eBay shop called Exile Toledo. While perusing the tubuwebs recently I came upon an original Man’s Ruin promo copy of 1999′s The Art of Self Defense by High on Fire, not even knowing it was Keith selling it, and it was simply too cool to not buy.

Yes, I know it seems like a long time ago, but before they were the overlords of beast metal, blessing black wings and communing with Death himself (or herself if you read Saramago), High on Fire were just the nascent offshoot of stoner kings Sleep. They were just getting going, and the promo for The Art of Self Defense was the first exposure a lot of people had to them. There may have been press releases beforehand with their self-titled EP, maybe a live track on Napster or something, but remember, there was no Facebook or MySpace, and if you were a member of the media, unless you were really searching it out, you’d be hearing “Blood from Zion,” “10,000 Years” and “Fireface” for the first time. How fucking awesome is that?

Needless to say, thanks to Keith for the listing and prompt shipping (positive feedback ahoy) and I’m happy to share with anyone who feels free to click the “Read More” link the bio that came in the back cover of High on Fire‘s first record.

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