4/20: A Short and Heavy Stroll Down Stoner-Rock Lane

Here we are, another year, another April, and another April 20. Does this mean anything to you? Should it? Aren't most holidays really just a bunch of nonholidays anyways? Do you feel a little Irish when St. Patrick's comes about? Do you claim to be an observant Jew when Yom Kippur rolls around? Did you try to pull a Kwanzaa stunt this past winter season as a means to scrim on that paperwork your boss demanded?

In the end, holidays are holidays, and sometimes they are just so to a specialized crowd. This 4/20 thing, let's be honest, like stoners need a recognizable date to celebrate? Could they even remember through the sticky haze? Do you care? Do we even care, for that matter? No. But to us, this is just another wonderful excuse to put up some relevant music videos for you to enjoy at work or home (certainly not school, because County Grind supports your educational endeavors to the fullest, even if you're half-baked at the moment).

So instead of the usual Rasta-oriented music, let's take a short stroll through stoner-rock history after the jump!

Black Sabbath - "Paranoid"

Birmingham's pride and joy, Black Sabbath formed in 1969, and regardless of how many times one can mispronounce and/or misspell Tony Iommi's name or fondly remember Ozzy before reality television, a lot of folks like to point to them as the kickstarters of the genre.

Blue Cheer - "Summertime Blues"

We can't invoke Sabbath without mentioning San Francisco's Blue Cheer, who did exactly what stoner rockers will do by chunking up Eddie Cochran's 1958 classic "Summertime Blues." Arguably some of the earliest heavy metal recorded and to this day a solid track with which to melt away one's woes.

Kyuss - "Green Machine"

While Coachella might be known now for holographic displays of deceased musicians, the late '80s will remind some of Kyuss and the chunky, full-throttle, blues-inspired jammers like "Green Machine." Still the ickiest of the sticky after all these years.

Floor - "Scimitar"

Call it "doom pop" or "metal lite." The Grind owes it to the South Florida community to incorporate as many locals into our word counts as possible. Some of us who remember the early '90s will certainly agree that this legendary local outfit always went better with a monstrous bong hit. Motherfucking guitar bombs!

Cavity - "Marginal Man Blues"

Keeping it on the local tip, nobody took the Black Sabbath lesson better and upped it more than Miami's almighty Cavity. Easily one of the most respected outfits to emerge from South Florida, these denizens of the heavy brought the jams like no other, and their catalog instills the fear of Satan into the rest of personal music collections the world over.

Bongzilla - "Amerijuanican"

Wisconsin's Bongzilla has never shied away from its full-fledged immersion into cannabis culture. Nope. These guys were green way before being green was the norm. Not that we encourage you to follow suit into this type of green living, save of course, if you live in Madison.

Sleep - "Dopesmoker"

Perhaps the greatest love letter to marijuana consumption was penned by San Jose's Sleep. To say that "Dopesmoker," in its entire hour-plus glory, is questionable would be akin to forgetting the MacGyver-like ingenuity of stoners. 

If smoking paraphernalia can be manufactured from paper clips, rubber bands, and a wad of gum, there will be a stoner there to put it together. To create an awesome hourlong track is a testament of the human spirit. When it wants to get high.