The great shame of Kyuss‘ tenure — apart from the fact that 30 years later they stand among the most influential rock acts of their generation and still have never really gotten their due for spearheading desert rock, stoner rock and a vision of riff-led heavy that continues to inspire artists worldwide — is they never put out a live record. There are videos out there — some killer full sets, to be sure — and a few corresponding bootlegs, but apart from the four tracks bundled at the end of their posthumous 2000 sorta-greatest-hits collection Muchas Gracias: The Best of Kyuss, which had seen prior release on CD singles and as a promo EP that I don’t even know if it was ever publicly sold, there’s no real, official documentation of who they were on stage. A live album — hell, take that Bizarre Fest ’95 set press it to a disc — would be nice to have in hindsight, especially for those fans who’ve come along in the years since Kyuss‘ breakup, which at this point is most of their fanbase.

Muchas Gracias features “Gardenia,” “Thumb,” “Conan Troutman” and “Freedom Run” as recorded at Marquee-Club in Hamburg on May 24, 1994, and if you would read that and say, “Gee, that’s not the kind of thing one usually finds on something calling itself The Best Of…,” then yeah, you’re right. Hence “sorta,” above. Certainly, if Kyuss ever had done a real, greatest-hits-only release, songs like “Green Machine,” “Thumb,” “Supa Scoopa and Mighty Scoop,” “Demon Cleaner,” “Gardenia” (the studio version) or “One Inch Man” from their now-holy trinity of albums, 1992’s Blues for the Red Sun (discussed here), 1994’s Welcome to Sky Valley (discussed here) and 1995’s …And the Circus Leaves Town (discussed here) — the latter two on Elektra, like Muchas Gracias, the former on Dali Records — would feature. They don’t. You do get “50 Million Year Trip (Downside Up),” “Demon Cleaner,” “Hurricane” and “El Rodeo” from those records, and the instrumental “A Day Early and a Dollar Extra” from 1991’s debut LP, Wretch (discussed here), but the rest is given over to B-sides and the aforementioned live tracks.

This makes it a gift, mind you.

Consider the question of access to a song like “Un Sandpiper,” with its distinctive spoken intro that at one point I’d heard was Jello Biafra but can’t verify that so I’m probably wrong, and brash, circa-’94 groove. The only other place that song has appeared to my knowledge is on the CD single for “Gardenia,” and the subsequent “Shine” comes from Kyuss‘ 1996 split with Wool (with Pete and Franz Stahl) that was released by Bong Load Records. These, as well as “Mudfly,” “A Day Early and a Dollar Extra” and “Flip the Phase” (yes, which is a reworking of the earlier “Fatso Forgotso II (Flip the Phase),” and even “Fatso Forgotso” from the Man’s Ruin split with Queens of the Stone Age (discussed here), which is out of print by I don’t know how many years at this point. Plus the live tracks. These would be the sovereign territory of digital completists and well-to-do CD shoppers were it not for this release so conveniently bringing them together. Worth it for the stank in the lead of “Shine” alone, and, instead of a half-hearted summary of the singles that were sent to radio, Kyuss find a way to make the 75-minute collection about the story of the band as a whole, the way they conjured and rolled out grooves, the loose feel of some of their structures despite a plan at work, and the scope of their songwriting as regards tone and impact.

Because while it’s also most certainly handy, Muchas Gracias is more representative of who Kyuss were as a group than a regular greatest hits album could hope to be. Not only does it include nearly everyone who was ever in the band throughout its 15 cuts — vocalist John Garcia, guitarist Joshua Homme, bassists Nick Oliveri and Scott Reeder and drummers Brant Bjork and Alfredo Hernández; only original bassist Chris Cockrell, who was out of the band before Wretch, doesn’t appear — but it gives a sense of their scope as well. A sub-three-minute instrumental, “Mudfly” twists in a way that portends some of what Homme had already gone on to harness for Queens of the Stone Age by the time this was released, where the one-two punch of “Gardenia” and “Thumb” at the start of the finishing stretch of live tracks is, for someone who never saw the band, the stuff of daydreams. They finish with “Freedom Run” after “Conan Troutman,” and one could hardly ask for a more Kyussian closer than the ensuing eight minutes of jam and shove topped off with Garcia going, “Alright alright alright, ohhh,” like he too is somewhat knocked back by how much ass his own band kicks. Reasonable.

I’ve said a fair amount over the last few weeks about Kyuss‘ influence and legacy, and the continued relevance of the music is an important part of the story, so I stand by that. And no, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that Muchas Gracias is as essential as any of the three long-players that preceded it, because it isn’t. But the fact of the matter is that whether or not you were there like Johnny Groundfloor in 1990 when these guys were putting out demos, or you came aboard at any point between then and now, Muchas Gracias captures aspects of this band’s personality in ways the regular albums can’t. I do wish we’d gotten a proper Kyuss live record, but I also wish we’d gotten about six more studio full-lengths, so take that for what it’s worth.

And while what could’ve been is fodder for alternate timelines and stoner rock headcanons, the work the members of Kyuss would do on their respective paths, sometimes collaborating, more often not, raises a fervent debate about whether it would be worth the tradeoff. That’s a fun question and completely unanswerable at the same time, but what matters is the 30-years-standing resonance of the work Kyuss did during their time. To this day, their sound speaks to notions of freedom and place in ways that are rare even among the hordes of acts working under their influence. It is a thing to be treasured.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

—

Next week is Xmas. Fine. On Sunday, barring disaster — it was supposed to happen last week but it snowed — I’ll be doing an in-studio with Solace as they work on their next album, due in Spring. That’s about the only post that’ll be up early next week, though, as I’ll be doing holiday stuff with family as well as working on my year-end post, which I think is going to be a big one this year. There is a lot to talk about.

My hope is to have that done by Xmas, but if not, I don’t honestly think anybody other than me will be bothered. It’ll get done when it gets done. I’ll be chipping away on it starting tomorrow, though how on earth I’m going to write an intro for having lived through 2025 and not have it be depressing as shit will be an issue I’ll need to tackle. That one might keep me up tonight.

That’s the big news — “big things coming!” as bands say on socials, except by “big things” I probably just mean 8,000 or so words — so let’s do a Zelda update.

Zelda update: I hate Majora’s Mask. I played Ocarina of Time 3D with a graphics mod and loved it. I played the original in high school (still have cartridge; it’s over there on the shelf), but this was my first time through the 3DS version on an emulator. But after having such a good time revisiting a game that, when I finished it years ago, I put down the controller and said I never needed to play another Zelda again (and didn’t until Breath of the Wild five years after its release), I decided it was finally time I embrace Majora’s Mask. I got the same kind of mod and have been using a walkthrough as I will, but Majora’s Mask 3D just isn’t fun.

I’m like three-quarters through and need to go back and redo a bunch of the dungeons because of some glitch, and I’m honestly not even sure I want to finish it. The best time I’ve had with it has been reading the guide while The Patient Mrs. handles the controller, but she’s not always available and I honestly just want to be done so I can go back to ground and dig into A Link to the Past. I could go on with my complaints about Majora’s Mask, but I highly doubt anyone’s interested. I’ll just say I hate mini-games and leave it at that. I understand they only had a year to make it, and I guess I can see how a cult following would have built up around the game from those who are gluttons for that specific kind of self-punishment, but yeah. I’m not a fan. The completist in me is kicking the side of my temple, but I don’t have a ton of not-doing-other-shit time, and I feel like I’d rather not spend it beating my head into a wall of polygons and revamped texture pngs.

So that’s it. If you’re celebrating Xmas next week, my best to you and yours. And if not, my best to you and yours. Stay hydrated, fuck fascism, keep warm, contribute to the year-end poll, all that good stuff.

FRM.

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It’s easy to see where, if Kyuss had continued, …And the Circus Leaves Town could have become the model they would follow. Released on July 11, 1995, this 30-year-old fourth and final Kyuss full-length — also their third working with Chris Goss as producer, their second through Elektra Records, and their first with Alfredo Hernández (Across the River, Yawning Man) on drums, if you want to play it by the ordinals — once again moves the band forward from where they were the year prior on Welcome to Sky Valley (review here) in terms of sound.

This can be heard in the smoother tonality that typifies the 11-song/71-minute outbound desert loveletter. The band at this point — Hernández on drums, John Garcia on vocals, Josh Homme on guitar and Scott Reeder on bass — had started out pretty rough on 1991’s Wretch (review here), and really, the trajectory of their career from their demo (discussed here) onward is a linear narrative of increasing accessibility that, in the ’90s, probably would have had people calling them sellouts, if they weren’t already for signing to a major label. This holdover ethic from the waning-post-Cobain grunge era a few years prior feels like a harsh judgement against …And the Circus Leaves Town, but there’s no question that ambition is part of the Kyuss story, and the hooks of songs like “One Inch Man,” “Hurricane,” “El Rodeo,” the chug-stomping “Gloria Lewis” and even the sprawl of 11-minute pre-secret-tracks finale “Spaceship Landing” — when you put the CD in, you’ll see it says the track is 34 minutes long; secret tracks were a thing at the time; Nirvana famously did it on Nevermind — seem to be trying to answer the question of what comes next for the heavier end of rock and roll. They were not the only ones who would’ve been glad to step into that spot.

Commercial rock radio and print media at the time, funded and propped up by a decades-old industry infrastructure soon to collapse with the explosion of the internet (don’t worry, it’s back and worse because now it’s tech companies and AI), were all driven toward the word “alternative,” which was less a definition of style than a catchall for staid, major-label pop-rock given a veneer of meaning through navelgazing black and white payola videos on MTV and moody balladeering. In terms of commercial potential, Garcia‘s throaty vocal style, as heard when he’s pushing out “Tangy Zizzle” late in the record or igniting the surges of “El Rodeo,” was no doubt a limiting factor, but like Homme‘s guitar tone, his voice became clearer in delivery over time, and …And the Circus Leaves Town is accordingly the most business-viable release Kyuss had during their run.

The narrative holds that part of that is owed to Bjork‘s departure from the band. Any lineup change brings a shift in dynamic to any group — this is obvious and demonstrable in nearly all situations; it’s sky-is-blue-level insight — but in light of the fact that Homme was soon to go on to form Queens of the Stone Age and find the next-level commercial audience that Kyuss never garnered during their time, and the context of his flourishing songwriting in that band, …And the Circus Leaves Town has less personality divergence in its material than did Welcome to Sky Valley. Bjork was a punk rocker, like Oliveri; Ramones and early C.O.C., among others, were an influence he worked under as a part of Kyuss that Homme didn’t. Without him, even with Reeder contributing “Thee Ol’ Boozeroony” and the penultimate “Catamaran” being a cover of Hernández‘s prior outfit Yawning Man (whom he’d later rejoin), the distinctive punch that birthed “Gardenia” and “Green Machine” earlier in the band’s career was absent.

That’s a bigger change in Kyuss than most will acknowledge, but the fortunate part is that while it’s different and arguably watered-down in terms of impact (that’s not an argument I’m making, but one could), the record also happens to reside at the foundation of the genre of desert rock. Arguably, even more than Welcome to Sky Valley or 1992’s Blues for the Red Sun (review here), …And the Circus Leaves Town fostered definitive characteristics of style. The warmth of Reeder‘s bass. The realization of Garcia‘s voice as malleable between a croon and pushing it out. The focus on riffs and the building of grooves around them. Songs about who the hell even knows what that can hit has hard as “Phototropic” or capture a sweet melody like the start of “One Inch Man” from which one might diverge to invent the entire branch of desert-heavy that leans into landscaping psychedelia. These elements and more besides stand testament to the fact that while Homme is a stronger writer with a partner to work off of — something he’d show again (and again) in Queens of the Stone Age — he’s perfectly able to set a pattern in motion from which others can learn.

And of course others did, or we probably wouldn’t be here. Kyuss‘ work spread after the fact through somehow-organic internet word of mouth. It was not a corporate ad program or backroom music industry handshakes. Yes, the success of Queens of the Stone Age would’ve caused some to look back with curiosity to Homme‘s origins, but more than that, Kyuss‘ own merits and character were able to become better appreciated and as massively influential as they’ve been over the last three decades because of the added listener satisfaction of having found them. It couldn’t have happened any other way; Gen-X and elder Millennials bask in nostalgia for the notion of a traditional underground, desert parties, and so on, while younger converts are won through an appreciation for something classic and the surrounding genresphere that’s been birthed since.

In this way, what Kyuss created carries forward. It is worldwide. Heavy rock and roll is in every major city and pockets besides, but it remains largely unacknowledged by the broader population. Less generously, it’s like a cult. Obviously, this isn’t solely the doing of any one band, even if that band is Kyuss. The likes of Monster Magnet, the Melvins, Sleep, Neurosis and Godflesh, among many others, had roles to play as well. But among single contributors to the shape of what desert rock would become, Kyuss stand alone. They solidified the methodologies of earlier bands like Across the River and Yawning Man — even going so far as to incorporate members of these bands on later releases — and set a template that remains a point of inspiration spread daily across the planet. And perhaps its greatest accomplishment, it retains its identity and presence after 30 years of other bands trying to sound just like it. One can sit and thought-experiment what might’ve been had the circus not left town, but the legacy of Kyuss‘ last long-player is unshakable.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

—

Last Saturday we went to a WPHL game in Newark, to see the New York Sirens play Vancouver, who are a new team this year. We’ve gone a few times now, after hitting the Pride game last year and having it be so incredible. I wouldn’t want The Pecan to play hockey, though she does skate — she’s had one serious concussion in her life already and doesn’t need another; I’m a firm believer in avoiding TBI — but she likes going too and it’s a fun, easy thing because it’s not that expensive, it’s not overcrowded, and the vibe is killer. Can recommend Womens Professional Hockey League.

But anyway, we’re at the game. I offer to go check the merch to see if they have a throw blanket for our chilly-in-the-arena daughter and while I’m walking around the wrong way to the merch stand, I pass a mother and her child walking the other way. A little boy, wouldn’t have been older than six. As I went past with a little smile thinking of when my own kid was that age a couple years ago, the kid turned his head and — with no awareness or consideration for anyone actually being there as is developmentally appropriate for someone his age — let out a pusher of a cough, a cough-huff, directly at me.

Having lived through the covid-19 pandemic, this registered in my brain as it does pretty much anytime someone coughs in my proximity when I’m out. I don’t expect this will ever change. It is a generational trauma that, to-date, no one really talks about because apparently that’s somehow easier. “Well, that’s it, I’m sick now,” I said to myself.

Turned out I was right. By Monday I was dragging and by Tuesday I was what both my dear mother and Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull would refer to as a “dead duck.” The Patient Mrs. made me take a covid test and it was positive. I tried to go to the urgent care for paxlovid but the shitheel doctor was like “sorry the CDC says don’t give out medicine that works anymore” and I wanted to kick him in the dick so bad but of course just called him useless and left instead. Not to fully sidetrack, but I was pretty stoked on the review I left in the urgent care app. Here it is for my own later enjoyment:

Provider refused to give me medicine to treat my illness. Pretty much the only reason doctors exist in the first place. I would not go to him again, would not tell friends or family to see him, or ever set foot in City MD again if I can help it. From the wait time being wrong so I sat in the waiting room with my Covid for half an hour to the entire endeavor being a waste of time, I would have difficulty being less satisfied than I was with the experience. That guy can fuck himself off the side of a cliff.

Lest you think I only give positive assessments.

Yesterday was the first day I felt incrementally better. Today I feel about where I felt yesterday. I have little stamina for doing. Cough, fever, brainfog (though that’s nothing new), fatigue, sore throat, headache, general misery — all the hits. Last time I had covid was in 2022 and I feel like the horror went on longer, but Tuesday and Wednesday were pretty intense. I have to wonder how bad Wednesday might’ve been had that motherfucker actually let me have medicine.

The really bonny news is that The Patient Mrs., who has been testing a couple times a day for the last two days, is negative despite having developed a cough and though we kept The Pecan home today out of an abundance of caution — she’s watching Zeltik videos on her own laptop; her mornings usually start with YouTubing these days — she doesn’t actually seem to be sick.

When I finish this, I’m going to go buy myself some weed gummies and buy her a Lego for Mikulas, which is like the Hungarian Xmas, which is today. Just something small to start a new tradition. How the rest of my weekend plays out I think depends in part on how much running errands kicks my ass, so we’ll see how it goes.

In the meantime, this was the busiest news week in the last four months — because of course it was as I could barely lift my head let alone post, though I did — and I still have stuff to catch up on. The Heads announced an album — hell, Suplecs announced an album! — and Solace announced they were going back to Europe, for crying out loud. Acid King and Monolord tours. Multiple fest announcements. And today is friggin’ Bandcamp Friday so I woke up to an extra 300 emails. It’s been busy is what I’m saying and next week will be too, but it’s time for me to figure out when I’m going to do my year-end post and knuckle-down and start putting that together. That’s a multi-day, no-posts-otherwise process, so I like to do it Xmas week when it’s otherwise quiet. I’ll try and sort that timing this weekend.

And if you want a Bandcamp Friday recommendation, Arbouretum have their entire CD catalog on sale for $20 and I bought it because they’re rad. Maybe I’ll do another catalog series haha: https://arbouretum.bandcamp.com/merch/the-arbouretum-cd-complete-collection

That’s not an ad and I’m in no way compensated for including that link. I just think the music is good.

Okay, this has gone long enough. Whatever you’re up to this weekend, if your virus is on the up or down swing or you’re clear all the way, hydrate, have fun and be safe. These are still dark times. Fuck fascism forever.

FRM.

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The phrase ‘the mother of them all’ was invented for records like this. Okay, no, it wasn’t, but hopefully you get the idea. Kyuss‘ third album, 1994’s Welcome to Sky Valley (previously discussed here, and also here), is more than a generational landmark. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime record, whether we’re talking about for listeners, for the genre of heavy rock and roll, or for the people who took part in making it. ‘Desert rock’ might exist as a microgenre without it — it might — but it wouldn’t be the same and I can’t imagine it’d be half as warm.

Humans the world over have heard this record for the last 31 years and started bands in its image. Reasonably so. It’s desert rock’s most anticipated album and it came out in 1994. No list of the greatest heavy rock albums of all time is complete without it, and when you’re listening, it feels like a list of the best desert rock albums could be complete with nothing else. And more than any grunge album of its era, it sounds utterly free.

Welcome to Sky Valley — officially self-titled, but more likely to have its title shortened just to Sky Valley than to be called Kyuss‘ Kyuss — was the Palm Desert four-piece’s first offering through Elektra Records, and their second LP in a row behind 1992’s Blues for the Red Sun (discussed here) to be produced by Chris Goss of Masters of Reality.

I don’t know who first had the idea to pair the band and producer, but whoever was able to connect the dots of ‘weird and riffy like Sabbath‘ and be the first to draw a line from Goss to Kyuss — in 1994, the lineup of vocalist John Garcia, guitarist Joshua Homme, drummer Brant Bjork and bassist Scott Reeder, who’d taken on the low end role to tour the album prior — deserves free chocolate chip cookies forever. The depth of tone on Sky Valley — which I feel like is something I listen for on heavy records in part because of Sky Valley — is unto itself. It lets “Gardenia” begin the record with a sweep as the drums come in to kick out your legs, and it’s still there when “Whitewater” is dug, layered guitar and all, into the jam that launched a thousand ships; an arguable apex of Kyuss‘ time together.

But surely there’s more going on here than superlatives. Yes, though that can be hard to admit when “Asteroid” pushes air with its kick-in, or “Demon Cleaner” locks in a groove so slick Josh Homme had to go form Queens of the Stone Age about it. You know what I mean. For over three decades, the influence not only of this band, but specifically this record, has touched artists and groups the world over. From Dozer and Colour Haze to Howling Giant and Year of the Cobra, its reach is largely inescapable. That kind of thing can have an effect on how you listen, hearing the influence a band has had on others you’ve listened to.

And honestly, that’s part of the joy of genre — that larger creative conversation happening, almost with a collective voice, on a greater timeline than any individual involved can appreciate. That is to say, a genre evolves because people from different places with different ideas contribute to it, and that’s true of heavy and desert rock as well. I don’t necessarily think they knew when they tore into “100 Degrees” and then went immediate-chill across the seven minutes of “Space Cadet” that more than three decades later dudes would be sitting at keyboards waxing hyperbolic about the impact of their work on multiple continents, but they do sound like a band who realized what they had in terms of songwriting. Sky Valley‘s songs, from the rolling showcase instrumental second cut “Asteroid” through the clarion riff of “Supa Scoopa and Mighty Scoop” and on through the blast of “Conan Troutman” and the turn-around swing of the penultimate “N.O.,” shine with a character that even now feels like it’s just beginning to get its due.

Performance-wise, the band never sounded better. The rough exclamations Garcia belted out on 1991’s Wretch (discussed here) and 1990’s Sons of Kyuss demo (discussed here) have been refined. He croons, on “Space Cadet” and “Demon Cleaner,” most especially, in a way that makes his voice come through entirely more dynamic. No doubt he’s all-in when “Gardenia” hits the chorus and it’s all “Push it over, baby” and whatnot, and he’s right there careening on top of the riff to “Odyssey” like he’s surfing on sand, but as much as his style is typified by the harder delivery, the various sides enhance each other. Reeder, who played in desert cryptids Across the River — “N.O.” here is a cover taken from Across the River‘s 1985 Demo Tape (discussed here); Mario Lalli and Alfredo Hernandez were also in that band — slots into Kyuss gorgeously, giving space to Homme‘s riffs and Bjork‘s transcendent grooves and still-punk-rock fills.

Sky Valley is where Kyuss proved they didn’t need to hit full-force all the time, and while it’s not the only album on which their legacy is based, it is essential, both to understanding the band they became during their short tenure, and to understanding desert rock in general. Released with the quirk on CD of having the 10 cuts that aren’t the throwaway secret track “Lick Doo” (also somehow iconic) organized into three movements, Sky Valley both was and wasn’t of its era in terms of sound, but to say it holds up feels superfluous. Does the Great Wall of China hold up?

One could very easily sit here all day and talk about the influence Kyuss have had — it would probably be fun — but the thing about Sky Valley when you listen to it is that stuff still doesn’t matter. Inspiring generations and all that. It clearly didn’t matter then (because it hadn’t happened yet), and when you hear it now, it’s still so much more about these songs and where this band was at the time. Lightyears ahead, also behind the times, and completely in a place of their own making. Welcome to Sky Valley is a masterpiece, and if you believe in a canon of heavy, in key works that inform what a style of music becomes, or if you believe an album can make your house a home, or art can enrich your life, you probably don’t need me to tell you this one’s for you.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

—

Yesterday was Thanksgiving. We hosted for 18 people, which was a decent crowd. Only my cousin Rob was missing, and he was missed, but it was a nice day if also a fair amount of work. My wife’s mother did most of the cooking, in our kitchen, and The Patient Mrs. as well had a lot of baking and mac and cheese and such going on. Cauliflower gratin for me. And so on.

My mother was in a car accident last week. She broke two ribs and cracked her sternum. She remains sore as hell, but she came yesterday and it was both good to see her moving a bit and good for her to be moving a bit. The Patient Mrs.’ sister came down from CT with her two kids, my sister brought her two kids (everybody gets along; they’ve known each other forever), The Pecan played on the Switch 2 for like nine hours — and I had gummies and turkey and cheezycauli, so it was a total win.

There remains more cleaning up to do, which is what’s on tap for today, along, I think, with a lot of not-talking and hopefully mellow hangs. The Pecan will need to move her body. I need to shower. They’re up in the other room, but it’s a slow start to a no-school Friday, so fair enough. We’ll figure it out.

Next week? I just got asked if I would review the new Palm Desert album and said I’d try, so I guess that? Also premieres for Mother Crone and Skogskult, so look out for those.

Zelda update? I haven’t really had time to play. I got offered a chance to write for ZeldaDungeon though (it’s a volunteer thing) if I can do four articles a month. I’m not sure I have time to hit that mark, but I might try for a bit, just to change things up. Where I left my game, I finished Ocarina of Time 3D and started Majora’s Mask 3D with the same kind of graphics mod. I never played it. I was so exhausted after Ocarina of Time on N64 in 1998 I felt like I never needed to play another Zelda game. Funny now.

But so this is my first time through Majora’s Mask. I’m at a part where there are a bunch of mini-games and I’m not huge on that, but it’s pretty par for the course. I remember when Majora’s Mask came out though. I sold it at the toy store I used to work at; KB Toys #1051 at Rt. 10 & 202 in Morris Plains, NJ, when I was in high school and college. I still see people around to whom I sold toys for their kids. But I guess not much of a Zelda update other than I did Woodfall Temple in Majora’s Mask and with the holiday haven’t had a lot of time to dig into the game otherwise. I don’t know if I like having to put my rupees in the bank and losing all my items, but I hear Termina Field has good farming. Shruggy shrug shrug.

Alright. I’m gonna leave it there and go empty the dishwasher for what won’t at all be the last time today. Thanks again for reading. Have a great and safe weekend. Don’t forget to hydrate, stretch, maybe do some breathing. Punch nazis.

FRM.

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Kyuss, Welcome to Sky Valley (1994)

Yeah, I know. It’s technically self-titled. But you know, sometimes majority rule renames a record. The White Album was self-titled too, and I consider Welcome to Sky Valley no less pivotal in the influence it’s had in the two decades since its release — the 20th anniversary is June 28, wanna have a party? — bands around the world picking up the elements of what would become desert rock largely in this album’s wake. Kyuss‘ legacy is ongoing in Vista Chino and Queens of the Stone Age and all the groups who’ve taken cues from these tracks, presented in three distinct movements (plus a goofy “bonus” cut), but Welcome to Sky Valley, like any monument, is cast in stone.

Seems like overkill to rant about how great it is. If you’d like more, it’s in the Canon of Heavy, and was voted number one on the list of the Best Stoner Rock Records of All Time in the poll taken here a little while back. I feel like there are very few things that can be universally agreed upon, and Welcome to Sky Valley is one of them. If you’re on this site, reading this sentence, even if you don’t actually press play and listen to the thing, on some level you can probably get into it. At least that’s the hope.

—

So, today was my last day as editor of The Aquarian, which if you didn’t know was the last dayjob from which I hadn’t been laid off. I’m now completely unemployed.

The last couple days I’ve spent applying for different jobs, editor gigs, corporate gigs, one or two public sector deals. Nothing back yet, obviously, but I hear that’s how it goes. It’s been a pretty downer week, to be honest. My boss told me he wanted to talk on Monday and then blew me off until Tuesday. That’s right. I got blown off from getting fired. Imagine how little what you do means when that happens. All of a sudden I was Milton from Office Space. Except he still got a paycheck.

Welcome to Sky Valley is the blanket I’ve pulled over my head. At least it’s warm. I also thought I was getting pinkeye last night, though that seems to have abated.

Things are lookin’ up!

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Any discussion of all-time essential heavy albums is incomplete without Kyuss‘ 1994 full-length, Welcome to Sky Valley.

Officially self-titled, the Palm Desert four-piece’s third album following 1992’s also pivotal Blues for the Red Sun and 1991’s Wretch debut is to this day the single blueprint on which the desert rock aesthetic is based. The album was recorded at Sound City by Chris Goss and included the  simple instructions to, “Listen without Distraction.” Rarely in heavy rock has such sound advice been given.

You could argue that Blues for the Red Sun deserves induction into the Canon of Heavy first — I’m not sure you’d be wrong. The difference, however, is that where Blues for the Red Sun established Kyuss as a band apart from the grunge movement that was then sweeping radio, print mags and the greater rock and roll consciousness, it was Welcome to Sky Valley that showcased specifically the alternative they presented, the weight of their grooves, the loosely jammed feel of driving, punk-derived rhythms, the sheer power of a riff like that of “Supa Scoopa and Mighty Scoop” to stomp itself into the brain of a listener — I still try to tap out the hits at the end and get it wrong more often than not — and ultimately set the stage for the massive and ongoing influence Kyuss has today on bands all around the world.

Then comprised of vocalist John Garcia, guitarist Josh Homme, bassist Scott Reeder and drummer Brant Bjork, Kyuss would become a standard for those to whom even the commodified strains of alt rock left cold, and the sheer something else-ness of Welcome to Sky Valley continues to resonate and make it one of the best heavy records of all time, the best and most formative desert rock release ever, and an utterly timeless listen.

If nothing else, let the fact that Welcome to Sky Valley is included second to Black Sabbath‘s Master of Reality in the Canon of Heavy be a testament to its standing among the classics. And yet how can we call Kyuss anything but underrated?

“The Desert Sound”

Among others, Kyuss cited local jammers Yawning Man as having an influence on their sound, and one can hear that in Homme‘s guitar work on “Space Cadet” and elsewhere, but in a way that’s both unpretentious and undeniable, Welcome to Sky Valley was representative of the Californian desert to its very core. Weird and a little hippie, there was nonetheless heat in the tonal fuzz of the guitars and an ecosystem at work in Reeder‘s basslines, and while Garcia mused with stoned, brazen abandon about who the hell knows what, Bjork solidified every move the band made with understated percussive brilliance. Whether it was the single-worthy psychedelia of “Demon Cleaner” or the landmark thrust of “Odyssey,” Kyuss was as much about the rhythm section as it was about riffs or melodies.

The closing duo of “N.O.” (a cover of Reeder‘s prior outfit, Across the River) and “Whitewater” emphasized that perfectly, but really, it can be heard throughout Welcome to Sky Valley, and the photos that comprise the album’s artwork, of cracked sands and a foldout of a windmill, only speak to the band’s connection to its geography and their intent in conveying that musically. Whatever it was that did it, Kyuss never quite fit sonically with either the hard rock or the metal of their day. A jammed-out instrumental like “Asteroid,” placed as the second track behind opener “Gardenia” in the first of the album’s three movements, is unlike anything radio would’ve touched at the time, and at the time, radio was how a band like Kyuss would’ve gotten big. So what we have is an act necessitating a new vocabulary that didn’t exist when they did — ahead of their time — an act forcing those who’d approach them to realize that heaviness didn’t necessarily have to come hand in hand with anger or some teenaged grunge moping.

How did all this come from the desert? Hell if I know. Thinking about a landscape like that, beaten by the sun, dry and cracked like in the liner note pictures, it looks heavy, making a subtle, nonchalant threat just by being there. You can get lost in the desert and you can get lost in this music. The two almost can’t help but go hand in hand.

The Movements

Let’s say you’re a rock band signed to a major label. You see that the audience is becoming less and less dependent on a full-album listening experience and to counteract this — because you’ve just gone to the trouble of writing a full-length’s worth of material and perhaps you believe in all of it and want it to be heard — you decide to block the 10 component tracks of your album into three movements, three in the first, three in the second and four in the third. Basically, you’re demanding that your audience engage the songs on the level you’ve chosen for them. They no longer have the power to skip to whichever track they want. The terms are yours.

First of all, you’d never get away with it. Today’s corporate label strata is so client friendly that so long as you’re willing to give even the slightest bit of money as opposed to just stealing an album by downloading it illegally, record companies will basically spoon-feed the music to your ears (that’s not to mention the homogenizing effect that the desperation to reach as broad an audience base as possible has had on commercial hard rock as a whole; it’s an issue for a different time), and if you want singles, singles you’ll have. Even Welcome to Sky Valley feels like the result of a compromise in this way. Kyuss could just as easily have presented the individual pieces as one 51-minute track. One wonders at the negotiation process that resulted in the three blocks of tracks that the final CD housed, a new meaning given to the proverbial numbers game of contract talks.

Promo copies of Welcome to Sky Valley went out to radio stations with the pieces split up individually, but for the general listening populace, Sky Valley more or less forced you to take it on as a whole and on that level flew in the face of its own potential for commercial success. In a climate that was having less and less time for a whole album, Kyuss decided they’d refuse to give anything less.

Its Influence

Unless you’ve done it, I’m not sure you can understand quite how difficult it is sometimes to review heavy rock records and not just be like, “Well, it kinda sounds like Kyuss on Welcome to Sky Valley.” At this point, approaching 19 years since its original release, the album continues to have an appeal past any expiration date one might’ve ever wanted to put on it, and from California to Moscow, bands have tried to make even the slightest bit of its magic their own. Most fall short, but the mere fact that their inspiration can be traced back to Kyuss and in particular to Welcome to Sky Valley makes the album a standout in its generation.

The basic fact is that when Kyuss released this album on Elektra, yeah, there was a market for creative hard rock — the Melvins put out Houdini on Atlantic late in ’93, and Monster Magnet‘s second album, Superjudge, founding them riding high on A&M — but the number of bands taking the approach Kyuss were taking to psychedelia, to rock-after-punk (that’s not to call them post-punk), on the level they were doing it, well, it was pretty much them and nobody. The desert from whence they hailed may have had a vibrant scene at the time, with bands like the aforementioned Yawning Man or Fatso Jetson, whose guitarist Mario Lalli guests on lead for “N.O.,” but Kyuss became the ambassadors for that scene to a wider public consciousness.

Really, it’s a title they continue to hold to this day, and with the boom in awareness of what they were doing that came with the rise of the internet as a musical conveyance, their reach went global just a few years after they’d broken up. Already by the mid-to-late ’90s, Man’s Ruin Records was having an impact on listening habits, but today, the sound that took root in Palm Desert can just as likely be heard in Poland or New Zealand.

So Why Weren’t They Huge?

How can that be true — how can Welcome to Sky Valley have had such an impact on heavy rock — and Kyuss still be an underground band? Well, the commercial success that Josh Homme eventually found with Queens of the Stone Age — and let’s not forget it took three albums and a collaboration with Dave Grohl to get there — eluded Kyuss for the entirety of their career. Singles like “Demon Cleaner” and “One Inch Man” from subsequent album …And the Circus Leaves Town (1996) brought some attention, and the band toured hard, but they never quite took the steps that Homme would later take to embrace their audience. Songs were loose and half-jammed, Garcia‘s vocals biting and guttural, and like several others of their musical generation, Kyuss inhabited a curious zone somewhere in between hard rock and heavy metal. The difference is now two decades’ worth of bands have lined up behind them in that position.

The way I look at it is like “Lick Doo” — the “secret” fourth track after the glorious finish of “Whitewater” that’s a minute-long faux doo-wop organ number with Garcia singing, “Oh honey, you know that you can and will lick my doo,” etc. Kyuss by this time were getting to be professionals at their sound, realizing that they had something unique to offer on a stylistic level and setting themselves to the work of capturing that on tape, but they were also a bunch of desert-dwelling stoners goofing around. You think if they were up to taking themselves too seriously they’d have put “Lick Doo” after “Whitewater?” No way. “Hey, here’s probably the best song we’ll ever write, let’s end the record with it and then put this stupid outtake on after it for absolutely no reason.” Sorry, but if you’re considering your position in rock history, that’s probably not the choice you’re gonna make.

And ultimately, maybe that’s part of what makes Welcome to Sky Valley so special — that Kyuss may have been reinventing a long forgotten classic rock wheel, but they were basically doing so just by being who they were. And maybe that’s why all the people who’ve come along since, including Kyuss themselves, have never quite managed to harness the same feeling in a recording as these guys did at that particular moment in time, in that studio, with those instruments, those songs.

I know in the past it’s been “here’s so-and-so’s first bio,” but, well, there was this promo for And the Circus Leaves Town, and there was text on the back that I couldn’t read in the eBay listing shot, and so I had to make it mine. Reading it, you can really get the sense of how on the brink of mainstream success Elektra Records believed Kyuss was going into their last album, and in light of the just-announced Kyuss Lives! dates, I thought I’d post this for anyone else who might be interested. Click the image to enlarge it:

I think that Josh Homme quote at the end is my favorite part. You never really know if that’s the artist or the PR person saying that kind of thing in band bios, but it’s a cool and succinct summary of Kyuss‘ sound, with just a hint of arrogance for good measure, so I’d believe it. Also dig that “Thee Ol’ Boozerooney” is spelled wrong (or right) in the tracklisting. Nerdy fun.