Nebula

If you're reading this little blurb, nestled lovingly between the bosoms-and-beer hawking of this paper's esteemed advertisers, there's a chance that you're not terribly concerned with how the Rams fare in the Super Bowl on Sunday (are the Rams in the Super Bowl?) and are looking for something else to do. Friend, you're not alone in being blissfully ignorant of what happens in the world of American football. For you, getting God-awful crapulent on thin beer, viscous cheese and bean plop with hollering oafs and oafesses wouldn't be so grueling if there was something engaging, alive and real to bond over. How about actual, rather than televised, sweat atomizing into a fragrant mist as bodies collide? Is it tight butts in tighter pants you're a-cravin'? Who wouldn't want to be close enough to reach out and grab 'em? Despite what you might think, it's not too much to ask this Sunday.

Those of us who will not be watching the Super Bowl still have rock & roll to go all beer nuts over. The boys of Nebula are known to bring that rock with a lot of its accompanying roll in the thickest, heaviest and skunkiest of stoner traditions. Yeah, "stoner rock" is probably just as vague a term as "emo," but if you can picture a bunch of long-hairs in beat-up leather jackets passing around a joint of Humboldt County's finest in a Chevy van blazing down the Pacific Coast Highway, you should have a clear notion of what kind of music they're listening to. There's a nasty guitar jacked all the way up, snaking in and out of an X-rated bass line. The singer is singing something, but it doesn't matter what it is because he means it in that Motor City gospel revival kind of way. And yes, the drummer knows exactly where to play that damn cowbell. Stoner rock is what the jocks don't listen to, and this Sunday that's all that should matter.

(Of course, if Super Bowl XXXVIII is a must-see, the game should end early enough for you to catch Nebula afterward.)