Whether you were there or not, part of the Roadburn experience each year is reliving it (and hearing the bands you didn’t get to see) with the flood of live audio streams that always emerge after the festival is over. As with last year, the fest was kind enough to grant me permission to host the links to the streams where you can listen, so here’s the first bunch. Some killer sets here from Acid King, Naam, Stone Axe (I’d recommend starting there), Evoken, Hooded Menace et al. Hope you like it heavy.

Acid King – Live at Roadburn 2011
http://3voor12.vpro.nl/speler/ondemand/44703686#ondemand.44703686

Naam – Live at Roadburn 2011
http://3voor12.vpro.nl/speler/ondemand/44703729#ondemand.44703729

Trap Them – Live at Roadburn 2011
http://3voor12.vpro.nl/speler/ondemand/44703723#ondemand.44703723

Stone Axe – Live at Roadburn 2011
http://3voor12.vpro.nl/speler/ondemand/44703718#ondemand.44703718

Hooded Menace – Live at Roadburn 2011
http://3voor12.vpro.nl/speler/ondemand/44703708#ondemand.44703708

Coffins – Live at Roadburn 2011
http://3voor12.vpro.nl/speler/ondemand/44703693#ondemand.44703693

Evoken – Live at Roadburn 2011
http://3voor12.vpro.nl/speler/ondemand/44703697#ondemand.44703697

Grave Miasma – Live at Roadburn 2011
http://3voor12.vpro.nl/speler/ondemand/44703701#ondemand.44703701

Special thanks to Walter and Roadburn for the many kindnesses they’ve shown The Obelisk, this among them.

The headline pretty much says it all, but I’ll back it up with the enclosed Acid King flier and the notion that if you’re going to book a flight over to The Netherlands for Roadburn 2011, now is probably the time to do it. Shaping up to be quite a year for the festival.

I’d load amps. I’d sell merch. I’d carry Lori‘s seven-foot commemorative Busse Woods bong. I don’t care, I’d just want to go. Here’s when they’ll be there. Sadly, I won’t:

Breaking news: As the video below for the song “Bad Vision” from 2005′s III album confirms, San Francisco stoner icons Acid King are indeed in a perpetual state of kicking ass. Reports are coming in from all around the world of Acid King-shaped bootprints in the buttockal regions of listeners everywhere. And though it’s been half a decade since they put out an album, any visitation of old material will find Lori S., Joey Osbourne and whoever happens to be playing bass that week assuredly delivering rump-tenderizing roundhouses as though it’s all they know how to do.

Point: Acid King still kicks ass. Of course, The Obelisk will follow this story as it develops further.

I was on Yahoo a moment ago, checking the daily stats for this site, when I saw their headline article was about a group of Burger King franchise owners suing the company for forcing them to sell double cheeseburgers at lower than cost. That’s kind of interesting in itself, but what really got me was the picture with the story:

Now, I don’t much care about Mr. Crossed Arms on the right, but the lady on the left sure as hell looks a lot like Lori S. from seminal stoner rockers Acid King. I don’t know if Lori owns a Burger King franchise, but it would rule on some level if she did special Acid Burger King promos. Here’s a pic of the band to compare:

Whether it’s her or not, there’s definitely a resemblance between the two women. Anyone got the inside scoop? Am I way off here?

It might be the all-time stoner metal classic. Not only was it judged as one of the five essential Man’s Ruin releases by this site, but StonerRock.com also rates it as one of the best albums of the last century. Acid King‘s Busse Woods — now 10 years old — is so potent that by the time you finish listening to opener “Electric Machine,” your eyes are bloodshot.

Busse Woods is that rare occasion where everything on an album works — the songwriting, the riffs, Billy Anderson‘s production, the vocals, the thickness of the bass, the art: all of it comes together to create a memorable, lasting, timeless impression. The obsession with killer Ricky Masso and the account of his ritualistic murders, Say You Love Satan, achieves a genuine aura of doom and ’70s biker horror chaos, and is the very essence of what this music is all about from start to finish.

At the time, San Francisco-based Acid King was comprised of guitarist/vocalist Lori S., bassist Brian Hill, who quit the band shortly after the record was done, and drummer Joey Osbourne (these days Mark Lamb and Black Cobra‘s Rafael Martinez share the bass slot), and the phrase “power trio” was perhaps never more appropriately applied. Every moment of Busse Woods is amped to the fullest and even the quiet intro to “Drive Fast, Take Chances” feels like it could explode at any moment. You can feel the air being pushed out by the speakers. It is thick and moist and dank. The Heavy.

Busse Woods takes its name from Lori‘s teenage hangout on the northwest side of Cook County, Illinois‘ forest preserve, and in crafting it, she managed to capture the recklessness of druggie youth. When Small Stone did their 2004 reissue with bonus Hawkwind and Bachman-Turner Overdrive covers, the record’s legacy was cemented. Simply put, it is among the highest points of its genre.

Lori took some time out to talk about Busse Woods, making the album, its legacy and when we might see Acid King issue the much-anticipated follow-up to 2005′s III. Interview is after the jump.

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First off, you’ll notice it doesn’t say “The 5 Man’s Ruin Albums No Home Should Be Without” and that’s because although these have been meticulously judged by a panel of no less than 17 home-bound experts (all of whom were me), this list could just as easily have included records from the likes of Nebula, Melvins, Fu Manchu, Suplecs, Desert Sessions, Beaver, earthlings?, Che, The Hellacopters, Sons of Otis, Operator Generator, Unida, High on Fire and more, or even just alternates from the bands listed. Let’s face it, until the label folded in 2001, artist Frank Kozik released a lot of good shit via Man’s Ruin, most of which costs a lot of money on eBay and Amazon these days.

Let it also be known that this list entirely excludes the vinyl output of the label. Why? Because that shit is even more expensive and that’s not a collection I dare start in these hard economic times. If you think the LPs, EPs and 7″s should be included, send them to me and I’ll put them right up, I promise.

Enough disclaiming. Click that little “read more” link right there and see which five CDs in your MR collection you should be proudest to own.

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