In the year prior to covid I was looking through the various articles that surface in my phone’s newsfeed and there was one along the lines of “Dozer is one of the most under-rated stoner rock bands” or something along those lines. It had a link to one of their songs in Youtube so I decided to check it out.
Now I’m personally a lover of classic, or classic-sounding, heavy metal (think Sabbath, Alice in Chains, Judas Priest etc) but had never heard of the genre “stoner rock”. I listened to the Dozer link and was really impressed by it. After that, I ended up down the Youtube rabbit hole, finding more and more stoner rock and it has been a fantastic discovery for me.
It’s like a huge range of alternate universe versions of a fourth Black Sabbath album and it’s been amazing to me, and they’re from all over the world:
Dozer - Sweden
Stoned Jesus - Ukraine (I hope they’re safe)
1000 Mods - Greece
Truckfighters - Sweden
All Them Witches - US
Two years later and I keep on finding new bands and songs that, to me, are just fantastic. Had that article never appeared on my phone, I would never have discovered this, especially just prior to two years of WFH during covid.
Has anyone else been blown away in that way by something on a whim?
A couple of decades ago, I found a really cool music video that was created with Legos. I was fascinated by it, and kept watching it over and over again because it was so well-done.
After watching the video a few times, it occurred to me that I also really liked the song. I looked up the band (The White Stripes) and bought their album, and then their second album. They became one of my favorite bands. But only because they had a neat video made out of Legos.
Back in 1976 or so I was walking through a mall (remember them?) in Anchorage, AK and heard a strange song coming out of a record (remember THEM?) store. I turned around and went inside to listen to the rest of the song. No words, just what I would later learn was vocalise. I was fascinated and asked what group was playing. Renaissance led to Fairport Convention led to Steeleye Span led to…well, you get the idea.
I was watching an episode of The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore (a short-lived news and panel show in line with The Daily Show), and one of his panel guests was rapper Action Bronson. Bronson’s a weird cat (a fat white guy with a beard and a grating voice) and I’d never heard of him, so I decided to look him up. I checked out several of his videos, including the one for Baby Blue. There’s a guy who does a verse in that video (3:33) and I thought he was hilarious and his rhymes were tight.
That guy is Chance the Rapper, and I went down a rabbit hole of him that very night, and became a HUGE fan. I listened to his mixtapes exclusively for months. I even ended up seeing him live. Still a huge fan!
