Let's start with that last title first. I should have been asleep at least an hour ago, on account of I need to be at work early to finish something that I was still writing at 8:30 (thats 2030 to my European readers) tonight. But as is usually the case when I work late, my decompression takes a fixed amount of time. If I'd gotten home at 11 (2300), I'd still need 4 (4) hours to unwind.
Of course, even when I get home at 6 (1800), I still don't get to sleep much before 1 (0100).
Be that as it may, I love the Internets. Yesterday, a crisp, warmish fall day that only a muggy-summer apologist such as myself could find fault with, my day was salvaged by a padded mailer in my mailbox. Barely 48 hours after I'd placed the order, my Back Taj record had arrived (from Tennessee, I think). Let's hear it for micropayments, small record labels, and Your United States Postal Service.
Part of the reason I'm still awake is that I thought it might be good for me to have some quality time today with the mere thrumming sound of the blood rushing through my head, instead of augmenting that with the stoner-Zep stylings of Black Taj, as I have been doing since tearing open the package yesterday. I've seriously been listening to it essentially nonstop, with some time out for Arrested Development last night.
On the whole, clearly, it's a fine, FINE record. As you might expect, there's a lot of Polvo in the sound. But there's also a lot of other stoner-rock from the QOTSA end of the Polvo/QOTSA continuum in there too. The "Skynrd in Morocco" crack I made the other day is still largely true, though maybe not the Morocco part. (One R, two Cs....) (I can't figure out what country Skynrd would have to go to to make this record, but that's fine; I bet they wouldn't have gotten a visa.)
And get this: one song, which I remember from the show, and which kicks major ass, is called Octastone. And that, for better or worse, now makes me think of this.
Final note: the review of the Black Taj show I saw in '03 is actually quite inaccurate. This band shreds, and "acquired taste" or "stoner shit" don't apply.
Final note #2/aside: because two Black Taj folks had also played together in Idyll Swords (along with Chuck Johnson from Spatula, whose record Even The Thorny Acacia was a touchstone of mine when it came out), I was moved to dig around in the "archives" for the one Idyll Swords record I have. No luck yet, which is worrisome.