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Monster Magnet: A Better Dystopia (2021)

For those of us who became obsessed with ‘90s stoner rock, it didn’t get much better than Red Bank, New Jersey’s Monster Magnet (and Kyuss, and Sleep, and Clutch, and Fu Manchu), who reminded us that heavy sounds and infectious songs weren’t mutually exclusive concepts.

Little did we know that Monster Magnet masterminds Dave Wyndorf (vocals, guitar) and Tim Cronin (dope, lights, center of the universe) were the bearers of arcane knowledge, hip to all manner of as-yet-un-resurrected hard rock pioneers of the ‘70s and even late ‘60s.

Not until the Internet grew into a near-complete historical repository by the late ‘90s did we realize that Magnet favorites like “Twin Earth” and “Dopes to Infinity” owed a little something to forgotten stoner rock forefathers like Captain Beyond and Sir Lord Baltimore.

Of course it’s not like Wyndorf and co. were hiding anything, and they always padded their LPs with a few choice covers to educate us kids about everyone from Hawkwind to Grand Funk to, uh, Unicorn, so it was almost inevitable that they’d eventually record an entire album of obscure covers like 2021’s A Better Dystopia.

Indeed, the most surprising question is “what took them so long?”

And the beauty of this project is that, after all my explorations I’m still only familiar with about half these bands and tracks, e.g. Hawkwind’s (*) “Born to Go,” Macabre/Pentagram’s “Be Forewarned,” Poobah’s “Mr. Destroyer,” Jerusalem’s (*) “When the Wolf Sits,” The Pretty Things “Death,” Josefus’ “Situation,” and Dust’s “Learning to Die.”

Others like J.D. Blackfoot’s “Epitaph for a Head” and Morgen’s (*) “Welcome to the Void” still languish in my “must investigate” list (though not for long, now), and unexpected slices of post ‘80s punk like The Scientists’ (*) “Solid Gold Hell,” The Cave Men’s “It’s Trash,” and Table Scraps’ “Motorcycle (Straight to Hell)” were wholly unexpected surprises.

In other words, Monster Magnet is still helping me discover incredible old music, and I’ve gone ahead and placed *s next to my favorite performances out of this bunch, some of which (Jerusalem) never even hinted at their greatness until Wyndorf and his acid fiends got their mitts on them.

Finally, you gotta love the fluorescent cover art’s tribute to blacklight posters, and “The Diamond Mine” is apparently a free-association rap from popular ‘70s radio DJ Dave Diamond with music composed by Magnet, and here’s a sample of his spiel:

“Slide with me, now, down that purple shaft into the deep, inner depths of the diamond mine where we will witness the flight of the precious peanut butter fudge angel of love as she spreads her wings and flies high through the thundering silence of your vacuum-kept secret hiding out on the pulsating fringe of your bubbly, fudge mind.

Are we in the garden of man-eating dandelions or in the safety of the Tasmanian Tree House? Can it be? Will it be? Yes it will as you reach out for where it's at only to find when you're where it's at, it isn't where it's at at all! 

In the steam heated living room of the warm, teenage tangerine we must now somersault in slow-motion ... down ... down the sliding board to a diamond mine eternity. Crying ... crying, “is God alive?” and remembering so well that the hand that cradles the rock can certainly ... roll the world.”

Amen, brothers and sisters! 

And remember: “It’s a satanic drug thing ... you wouldn’t understand.”

So… I’m not a death eater and well… would I still be sentenced into the jar? Would the jar at least have jam 🥺

There is no jam in the jars. There is dirt, and some kitchen scraps - potato peelings, carrot tops, etc.

A new iteration of my table scraps is now available on my patreon. Get your hands on 7 original monsters that I featured in my patreon campaign.

The campaign is based on the pathfinder adventure path Carrion Crown, so expect lots of gothic horror goodness!

Check out the new Table Scraps here!

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