Independent Record Store Day 2011

This year's record store day saw a load of tasty releases from great bands, and brought well-received punters into our independent shops. I managed to pick up a Rekords Rekords 10" with one track each from Queens of the Stone Age, Alain Johannes, Desert Sessions 7&8 and Mini Mansions. I considered buying Kings of Leon's reissue of the Holy Roller Novocaine EP, but £19 seemed a little too much to spend on vinyl in one day.

Kyuss Lives! @ Bristol O2 Academy 06/04/2011

The stage is thick with dry ice fog, and behind there are surely several joints being lit in the crowd (much to the chagrin of the bouncers) filling the venue with the acrid smell of burning marijuana, fittingly for a band whose music owes such a huge debt to THC. Stoner rock as a genre pretty much began with Kyuss, drawing from psychadelic influences of the late sixties like Hendrix and the early seventies reefer-influenced proto-metal exemplified by Sabbath's "Sweet Leaf" and it's been over 20 years since they got the ball rolling in the Palm Desert, California (leading to the alternative genre title of desert rock).