"So, dude, what's on the agenda for this afternoon?"
"I'm gonna clean my room, by which I really mean I'm going to clean my desk off, pick some shit off the floor, and wire my turntable. Then I'm going to drink beer and think about doing the dishes, which I'll probably end up doing around 2 AM."

And now the first of what may end up being a running series of record reviews entitled "Shit I Got Really Cheap That Kicks Mucho Ass."

Kyuss, Sky Valley
Vinyl LP
purchased for a quarter sometime in 2000 at the annual SHSU radio station sale

Years before I bought this, a buddy of mine had purchased Kyuss' Blues for the Red Sun and talked it up for a while, until he gave up on rock n' roll, moved back to England, and developed a drinking habit similar to my current one. (He was roughly 16 at the time, whereas I'm 25 now.) I remembered the record being pretty good, but didn't think much about it until I found this gem for a mere twenty-five cents.

For a long time during my last year of college, I went to sleep listening to Sky Valley. I would say it is the best thing Kyuss ever did, and one of the finest collections of soulful riffs ever put together. The whole desert rock scene of days past is pretty much crystallized here: vast sound, loose-but-tight musicianship, slightly off-kilter lyrical themes, etc. etc. Fuck, man, just go buy the album. You probably won't find it for a quarter, and probably not on vinyl, but you are doing yourself a disservice if you don't listen to it. It's an album for long summer evenings, and if you don't like those, well, you're missing out on something incredibly beautiful.