Original subtitles

[bass guitar playing]

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[Robbi] See, when you drive in the desert,

the roads seem to go on forever and ever and ever and ever.

Until it seems like, getting to a trance.

And every now and again,

a rocky outcrop,

which is kind of a old volcano will sidle up to you.

And whisper strange things into your ears,

ancient tongues, and then pass by.

And you would not notice,

when the Shaman climbed into your car.

And he'll be gone by the time he hit the next sun down.

And then, night time,

we have the voluptuous night sky,

and myriads and myriads of stars.

These are the tools that are pressed into the desert musician.

[grunge music playing]

[Dave] I think you're either a desert person

or not a desert person.

'Cause I don't think everyone can just go survive there.

Not much can survive there if you think about it, like,

the desert will sort of beat you down or drive you out.

No one ever expected to get out of the desert, least of all, me.

With music as the vehicle to get out.

It just was never gonna happen.

[Robbi] I never realized there was gonna be any of musical future

or any kind of scene future.

I mean, it just made really a handful of us.

Looking back on it was really fun, and it had to happen.

We all had a connection 'cause there was literally nothing to do.

We didn't know that there was a world out there,

until night time.

[Sophia] Hanging out in the desert and partying was normal.

And motivated everyone to create.

We want freedom, man.

There's no rules,

there's no one to tell you what the hell you can and can't do out there.

The desert is such a wide open blank canvas

You didn't know what was gonna happen.

It was one of the most special and magical, musical moments

that I believed ever happened.

And it is an age that is one of the only hopes for the modern music business.

And it's the Desert Age.

Palm Springs has this endless lure about it,

connected with Hollywood and Las Vegas,

as kind of an escape.

[Sophia] Palm Springs, is a beautiful desert Oasis.

You drive in through the desert

and then, all of a sudden, you come into this beautiful town.

Have a weekend in Palm Springs, sit by the pool,

sip a Margarita or whatever.

And you think of it as a tourist town.

[Mario] If you're an adult, that was a party town.

Night clubs, beautiful hotels, swimming pools, golf courses,

Tennis courts, all that kind of bullshit.

[Jesse] 'Cause that's what started Palm Springs.

It was where the Hollywood elite escape from the cameras

to do their dirty shit.

It's where some of the dirtiest shit in the world has gone down.

It's where they went to feel like regular people.

[Mario] My dad took over the old Chi Chi club,

which was the famous night club in Palm Springs.

My dad, got the keys and we walked in.

And my brother, my uncle or somebody was turning on all the lights,

and I was standing on the stage with my dad.

All the stage lights came on.

And the whole back of the stage

was a collage of cut outs

fromPlayboy magazine and not porno mags but nudie mags

and I was like, "What the fuck?"

[Sophia] So, that's what this conflict was like,

"Oh, my gosh, we're growing up in this tourist town. What else is there to do?"

[Dave] There wasn't really a lot set up for the kids to do.

You would occasionally have reason to go there,

if your parents would've dragged you there.

But these kids were super bored.

And really desperate for fun, or for a scene,

or for music or for anything.

[anchor] Swimming pools are every where.

Probably one out of every three homes has it's own private pool.

There are almost a thousand of them here.

More pools for the number of residents than anywhere else in the world.

[Sean] Rich people would leave Palm Springs for the summer.

We break into their houses, nice houses

drain their pool with a storm pool pump.

Kick in the door, fill the fridge full of beer, man.

Drag the refrigerator out, and set it up in the deep end

so you have another two feet of vert, you know.

Whoo! I'm on the fridge.

[Myke] Skateboarding, to us, was like a super renegade way of expressing yourself.

I loved it. I loved skateboarding.

[punk music playing]

[Sean] Skateboarding. Skateboarding like the punk rock band.

And Myke Bates, was a punk rocker.

He's the first punk rocker out here that was in high school.

The rest of us were in junior high, completely committed to it.

Here's some Palm Springs pools that we rode back in the day.

I was a young skater, as many of us were.

And there was only one store in that town.

And they had a little section of skateboarding stuff.

There was no skateboard store per se.

[Sean] Myke Bates was an entrepreneur in Palm Springs.

that opened the first skateboard shop.

Bates Skates, they sold punk pants and skate boards and shit.

We just go there everyday after junior High school.

It was close by. We'd just hang out, drink beer, smoke weed,

fucking listen to punk tapes.

Kids came in listened to the music,

'cause it was like the epicenter of where everybody

hung out, it was almost like a social club.

That was cool. We'd sit around listen to punk rock

He always had the newest this and newest that,

you know, that changed everything. [laughing]

[punk music playing]

[Robert] It was pretty primitive in the beginning.

There weren't lot of musicians. Nobody was into punk.

You had to buy magazines and look at the ads

to find out how you get bootlegs and this or that

or whatever record the Damned, Sex Pistols,

whoever, 'cause you couldn't even see that stuff in record stores

in Palms Springs at the time.

[Paul] You read about it, but we can't find the records.

So that made a big difference on, you know,

do you get out to LA very often, go to shows

while we don't own a car.

Having that skateboard store helped a lot.

Kids would come in and hear it.

Started musically vibing.

[Robert] So, it was the four of us.

I don't know that we played all that much anyway.

There wasn't any place to play.

And then when you played a party it's like, "What is this noise?"

"Where's Zeppelin?" You know, "Where's Van Halen?"

Van Halen was huge at the time and we just never fit.

[punk music playing]

Target 13, those guys were a little older than us.

So, of course we looked up to them.

But it was like a hang out family thing.

Of course they were very influential.

I mean, I think that's why more bands started.

This band from the desert that I saw...

at my junior high, probably in 1979 was Target 13.

They were the first band that got some air play.

[Rodney over the radio] Yeah, we're just gonna get it going here.

We've got something brand new here.

Since these guys will be coming to the Whiskey soon.

Here's a new single by Stiff Little Fingers.

[Myke] Rodney was a disk jockey on KROQ, in California.

And he would showcase a lot of underground bands.

So, I wrote a song...

With the other guys, you know, we wrote this tune,

"Rodney on the Roq" based on his show.

He said, "Well, you know, my dime will go to the studio and record it."

[laughing] Okay.

["Rodney on the Roq" playing]

[Myke] And so I wrote this song and we set the tune, and he really liked it.

They pressed it and I couldn't believe it. [laughs]

I ran up the stairs, cranked the boom box up,

jumped around like an idiot, "I'm on the radio." [chuckles]

It was exciting. It was a high point of,

"Look at this, we're on the map now."

Palm Springs music getting on the vinyl, that was crucial.

It helped legitimize the whole deal

because the scene started picking up a little bit of steam.

Target 13, they could show that, even though you're from the desert

that you could, kind of, make it up in that LA scene.

And make a name for yourself. And I think that maybe that was hope.

[Sophia] By then it just, kind of, exploded because it's starting to happen

in terms of, "There's a scene and we wanna be a part of it."

And the tribe started to grow.

[punk music playing]

I had a band. A little punk band called, "Mutual Hatred."

That was the one, my first punk band.

♪ Cover where I watch him die ♪

♪ Now this world's Gonna make him fry ♪

♪ Groupie sucks Groupie sucks ♪

♪ Turtle meat I love to eat

♪ I thrashed 'em beef For turtle meat ♪

♪ Groupie sucks Groupie sucks ♪

♪ Kill the seal Take his pill ♪

♪ Chop it up until you kill

♪ Groupie sucks Groupie sucks ♪

♪ Groupie sucks Groupie sucks ♪

[punk music playing]

[Sophia] Sean was kind of the leader.

I couldn't see him doing anything else

But being in front of an audience.

[Mario] He had a lot of influence over people,

'because he was kind of a trend setter

We also had a way about him that,

if he didn't like you or he didn't dig what you're doing or something.

He wasn't afraid to fuckin' bust your balls and make an ass out of you.

[Brian] I was looking at the guys like Sean.

They were just more hardcore than the rest of us at an earlier age.

'Cause they were kinda guttersnipe.

They had like street sense.

[Sean] I just had no education. I said "Fuck it."

I just wanna feel good all the time,

and pleasure bang dude 24/7. If it feels good I'm in.

[laughing]

[frog croaking]

[cameraman] Please allow me inside.

[snickering]

We got a man in the boat.

[Myke] I grew up in a family that partied always.

[grunge music playing]

Before I was even old enough to go to school,

I was raised pretty much at the car wash.

With my grandma and my uncle's.

[Myke] He comes from an interesting background.

I mean he had that car wash with all those

denizens that worked there, you know.

From all walks of life in that desert.

[Sean] Heroin addicts, quaaludes, cocaine, you know,

Chicks working there turning tricks.

This is the point, man. My mom had these people watching me.

This one dude, Gordy, was baby sittin' us.

He just nodded out on heroin on my toilet.

But back then I don't know heroin was, but I know now.

And Gordy's like... He's like...

[in a high-pitched voice] "Come on, Gordy.

Get up man, let's play some baseball."

And Gordy gets...

[grunge music playing]

My mom was always down, always, I had parties at my mom's house.

Always, we'd have bands playing in there all the time in the garage, you know.

Ditch school, drink beer, smoke weed, get high,

take acid, get laid, everything.

His mom wasn't around that much.

She was just always gone. So, it was always

a party in Sean's garage.

Always gave us a place to play.

'Cause couldn't play at the shop, but he had this great house

we can have parties and shows, and they were really really fun

and very memorable.

[punk music playing]

Sean's house was kind of a club into itself.

Kids just sitting all around the hall,

outside perimeter, and then

there was like four or five crazy dudes,

just like pogoing and hopping up and down,

and hanging from the rafters and I was so nervous,

I wouldn't face the crowd. So, I was facing my amplifier.

And I was just terrified.

[Sophia] Everybody was hanging around because they wanted to get high.

The first substance that I ever put in my body

that altered my frame of consciousness was LSD, when I was 16.

I had LSD before I had beer, weed or anything.

I tried playing bass on acid one time

and it felt like the strings were melting into my fingers

Trying to tune...

Bad trip.

[Mario] By then, all the guys I was hanging out with

had taken LSD and even they're frying all the time,

Cocaine. Drugs were a part of what was happening.

And I was really kind of scared of all that.

[Herb] All of us would do anything and everything.

Weed, quaaludes, mushrooms too.

There was a point in time when we were all heavily into acid.

Myself included.

The whole plan was just to all move to LA and pursue our band.

Get out of the desert. I hated the desert. There's nothing to do here, blah blah blah...

It was kind of a real turning point for me in my life really

because we had moved to Los Angeles to play music

from the desert, from this place we were very comfortable with,

to the strange land where all the shit's happening

in the clubs and the punk rock scene is serious here, man.

So, we were really excited, but I...

[Herb] We were finally all moved up there

we're working on the band and we're rehearsing.

But I was taking a lot of acid,

and got to the point where,

it was like one time was kind of the tipping point for me.

[siren wailing]

I had to come back. It was too hard

to maintain and try to get my head screwed back on.

I quit the band.

So, I did what I had to do.

I mean, it was nothing against them at all.

I probably should have talked to all of them a little more before I left.

I moved up to LA just because of him and the band,

and so, it's kinda hard, 'cause he was my best friend growing up.

And we went without him.

You know, some people got into the chemicals

and the powders a little heavily.

And I remember at one point of time, Herb,

was homeless and living in his car in the desert.

It's kinda painful to see.

But I don't think it was the psychedelics that really fucked with him

as much as say, the speed and then, of course,

there's a whole dark side that comes with that.

[railway bell tolling]

["Midnight Creeper" by Eagles of Death Metal playing]

[Scott] I would say this is the dark side of the valley.

Meth capital. Who knows what's buried out here.

It's basically just a scrap yard out in the middle of nowhere.

And this is where there's a bunch of tweakers

and dogs run around here.

But yeah, this is a...

This is where the real desert action happens.

[Sean] The desert went through a huge speed phase.

Like all of us kids, most of us.

It was before, this worldwide meth phenomenon,

where like, super labs and all that bullshit you see on TV.

Speed wasn't very popular.

But bikers always cooked it out here.

So, whatever little speed scene there was,

it was being manufactured in places like you went today.

In Garnet, if you met a real speed cook,

it was like meeting a fuckin' real wizard, dude.

You'll be like, "Whoa! Man!"

["Midnight Creeper" by Eagles of Death Metal continues playing]

[Jesse] The old fashioned desert meth cook normally was a bearded wizard,

who understood how to make chemical reactions abstractly.

And he lived and was able to survive and exist

on chemical fumes in a contained and compressed area

when it would kill everyone else.

Imagine seeing a dude that takes a big bag of meth,

and scoops it up on a bowie knife and eats it.

That's how a meth cook tests his product.

People don't know how to make meth.

Back then it was strictly bikers making crystal meth.

You know they're cooking out here in the desert 'cause you couldn't smell it.

[Jesse] Methamphetamine, is the predominant drug of the desert.

The desert, whether anyone wants to accept it or not.

If you're involved in the cultural scene,

you're under the finger of meth.

On a breezy day, you can smell the meth labs for sure.

Marijuana was not a part of the scene. Everything else was.

To me it seemed like speed really got in our scene pretty bad, you know.

Our scene was small and maybe not with everybody.

but the scenes met together through methamphetamine

Whoa!

Lot of the drugs and partying and music came from boredom.

We were kids with nothing to do, nowhere to go.

We were looking for excitement and fun, camaraderie. And we got it.

You know, and that comes with a lot of baggage too.

But that's why it all happened.

We were all 100% hardcore for sure.

[Mark] You know, it was really Dead Issue.

And hearing Herb and Scott, Mario

and Alfredo going just "Holy shit. That's what I want to do."

We've been struggling so hard to get everybody under the same roof

so we could just jam and and record all the time

And a couple of years before that, that was the dream was

to have a place, where we could just do that all the time.

[Mark] The band had moved to Los Angeles,

And now is about making a stab and making music our career.

Herb flipped out on fuckin' acid. It was really fuckin' hard for those guys

to deal with that and kinda what the next steps were.

It was like a real wrench in their game plan.

I was actually living in Palm Springs

and I'd take the Greyhound bus to Los Angeles.

And practice. And instead of Herb singing and playing guitar

I was playing guitar guitar, in "Across the River."

["Across the River" playing]

We were in the middle of really becoming kinda musicians I guess.

Discovering how to play.

[Mark] I was the kid who locked himself in the room

and played guitar for hours.

And so I had a technical ability.

And that was a little bit new.

'Cause everybody grew up

learning punk songs in their rooms if you will.

And so, I added that technical element.

[Mario] Scott, was the only guy that really knew any kind of music theory.

None of us could read or write music out.

When we started getting better on our instruments,

there was little more freedom and we could explore more.

The metal, the rock stuff was colliding with the punk stuff.

And we kind of ran with it.

[punk music playing]

[Mario] We never jammed.

And Dead Issue was a band that came with the song idea

and we worked on the song and I could... ya know punk heads don't jam.

We started having sections in the "Across the River" songs

where there would be a jam section for how many bars

until you felt like coming back.

We wouldn't stop playing, we just go on forever.

It's kinda like almost trancy, where people just fall into it.

[punk music playing]

[humming] And you just fuckin' an hour later, you look up,

and go, "Wow! That was fuckin' fun."

We would hang out and party with those guys.

Mostly doing psychedelic drugs.

Doing a lot of acid, mushrooms and...

[Mark] The room would be laid out with bubble wrap,

like wall ceilings and floors

underneath the black light

And everyone will be tripping,

rolling and banging off the bubble wrap

It was going pop, pop, pop, pop,

I got to a point where I would play on mushrooms, any chance I got.

And I felt really loose than to go anywhere.

We'd all take 'shrooms, we'd sit in a room

and we'd just fucking jam and we'd hit record.

And it added to the music and the vibe and the sound.

We were all brothers growing up and figuring out life playing music.

And it was a cool way to do it.

My friend, Dave Travis, had a small generator.

And we go up my home and drive.

And we'd just pull over and we'd set up a drum set and a guitar amp.

Just make noise. Drinking beers and going all night, till the sun came up.

It was like, "What the... This is incredible" you know.

When we figured out we could do shit

on our own, that was like... That was it.

The generator party was simple power source,

bring your band equipment, bring some beers, some light,

you just go and do it, wherever whenever, for the fun of it.

This spot, it went to a wash so it crumbled off,

and there was maybe a three or four foot drop,

and it was a perfect stage.

So the people were in the wash, and the bands set up on the pavement.

We ended up calling it Dust Fest, 'cause every time we go up there it'd be like

a dust storm and crazy wind and dust everywhere, you know, we didn't care.

That was the first generator party that I knew of in the desert.

A few months after that there was another one that was called the Dust Fest two.

[Sophia] Typically we'd have to write a map on the flyers,

because the desert was so difficult to maneuver at night.

You see that rock, the third rock on the left,

and go around it and you'll see the party.

I mean it's completely dark.

[overdriven distortion]

I was doing like a performance art piece about maniac depression.

With the cycles, getting crazier and crazier,

I mean I was frying my brains out at night.

[cheering]

[Mario] I don't need everything to be perfect.

I don't need all the special stuff to be built up around it

to make it happen.

There was a independent spirit there, undeniable.

[Mark] There was never any guitar techs.

You know, you loaded your own gear.

And it was all very much DIY, just in the moment.

The sound was weird like when the wind come up it carries the sound a little bit.

It's swirled, it's flangy. And it was so fun to play.

I made a lot of friends that night.

[grunge music playing]

[Seth] You know it was kinda like baseball, skateboarding, punk rock,

pussy, drugs, and then it was just drugs.

[rock music playing]

[Scott] The name of the band was

Zezo Zece Zadfrack and the Dune Buggy Attack Battalion.

That came from Charles Manson's kid.

And then the Dune Buggy Attack Battalion was Manson's followers.

[grunge music playing]

[Seth] Zezo Zece Zadfrack and the Dune Buggy Attack Battalion,

that was the band we were all in.

We're basically practicing in the meth houses

and stuff like that, so I just...

[Seth] You know that was whole thing and we were like...

And we are hanging around in this outlaw motorcycle club house.

And anybody who has speed and wouldn't kick us out.

Just dig in real deep, man. "I'm here for the long haul."

[Nick] The day I got out of Juvenile Hall,

I get out and my mom

drives me out to Adrian's night club in Palm Springs,

buy me a ticket out where these bands are playing.

[Joshua] There was club called Adrian's.

And the guy... No matter who you were

Adrian was like, "Why don't you play like the White Snake?"

And you set up on the steps.

So you're playing on the steps of this truly awful night club.

When I was 13, I once saw Sean Wheeler there.

He had like hair down to here.

Mirrored shades and it was like this Sci-fi drugged out biker.

Space rock, like I mean, it was just the most radical shit, dude.

[Joshua] It was just him in a pair of leather underwear

and this blue wig.

And I thought, "Man, they make leather G-String underwear."

That's crazy, I mean, first few songs was like I didn't know

if that was like available.

If I remember correctly, they didn't have a drummer.

So they had a taped drum machine and bass tracks.

[drums playing]

It was like, "Whoa! This guys are weird" at that, it was great.

But different and weird, you know like, what in the name...

So weird you know, I was like this is not normal.

This is "only in the desert" kinda thing.

It was the first time I had seen "technological music" in the desert.

'Cause it was like, not a rock band

conventionally with drums, bass guitars,

It was keyboard and drum machine.

So he was way ahead of that. That wasn't even permissible.

But because it was Wheeler, I was like, uh.

First band in the desert to use drum machine.

[laughing] This is Jesus,

the drummer for Zezo Zece Zadfrack and the Dune Buggy Attack Battalion.

Which year was that?

I brought this brand new from the Guitar Center in 1985. right when it first came out.

Our band used drum machine because of, one, Alfredo

was busy with Mario and those guys.

And there weren't many drummers.

It was almost like you couldn't have a band without Alfredo.

It's what how it felt.

[singing]

You never knew how a show would end up.

Everyone was tweaking.

We got lucky. We had drum machine

that at least kept the beat, but everybody else was a mess.

We wouldn't even have a rapper. We'd be doing our punk thing or the rock thing.

Then dudes would get up there and start rapping and I was like...

It was like a pre-Body Count kind of thing.

Speed is such a bummer, dude, like the more you think about it.

-And to think we started that. -Yeah.

[singing]

We played a couple of gigs in LA,

but we moved home, and we stopped being really active

in the music scene up here in Los Angeles.

And we were never active in that scene.

Me and Scott and Alfredo were all living together

and we were just getting somewhere and falling apart at the same time.

The house was getting very crowded.

My future wife, Renee, had moved in, we had a pit bull.

And our dog was tearing up the carpet

when we'd lock her in the room and we were gone.

We wanted to get our own place.

I think we were just kind of grew apart as kids just

ready to go off on our own.

We were really close in those days.

Had some really good time, a really creative time,

really free time in your mind I guess.

I mean in my opinion they could've made a huge impact on the music scene.

Over all the world I think 'cause they were that fucking had

a totally unrealized potential.

[Joshua] I saw "Across the River" on the ice skating rink.

Whoa! And they were fucking incredible.

When grunge happened years later I was like,

Oh, yeah, like "Across the River."

'Cause it was so heavy but on accident.

[Mark] This was a time well before Nirvana broke.

There was no glimmer of commercial success.

And punk or post punk, alternative music

the way that we think about it today.

There was never a benchmark like that.

So, success to us was creating music.

[punk music playing]

[Mario] Me and Alfredo kept playing.

But all of a sudden I didn't have a band really.

And around that time my friend Gary, moved into the house.

And then it molded into Yawning Man.

I don't even know how to tune a guitar honestly.

I just play it by ear.

I don't even know what a "E" is from the "A".

What's the point it's all the same notes.

I actually move around to the different areas of the guitar.

It's amazing because the only playing he had done

was pluckin' around on an acoustic guitar.

[Robbi] This guy doesn't know what he's playing.

I've jammed with Gary a bit, and I'm like...

I don't wanna play man, I just wanna listen.

[Myke] That's what was so inspirational it was like, we're still

playing in those slash and those chords

and that guys playing melodies on top of that stuff.

It's like "Wow! Where are you coming up with this stuff?" you know.

[Mario] A lot of punk rock didn't seem honest to me.

It seemed the things they wrote about saying about the sounds

that they used, the influences they had were so obvious.

It is supposed to be non conformist and it is actually

is one of the most definitive conformist things.

And at that point I started to disconnect from it.

A lot of it was the interfacing between Gary and Mario.

Just the way those two would work together.

[Sophia] I always liked the sound of the music.

And it's almost like,

they had their own language.

[drum beating]

That was it right there.

That was it.

We almost had the whole song.

Okay, I just want to do four all right?

Just four, just try something, just do four.

Just to one section. So you're gonna...

Ah... Just start playing.

Okay one, all right , sorry pal.

[metronome]

I think Mario, was a big time igniter of the idea of,

"You need to sound like yourself."

You know, "and nobody else."

I played at his house when I was 12 or 13,

in his laundry room, garage.

You know, at that time you're still finding your way,

and you just started to play in the first place.

So it'd be easy for some 18 or 19 year old person

to look at a 13 year old band and be like,

"This fucking sucks."

And leave it at that.

But to see something in it and be constructive,

and encouraging, takes somebody special to do that.

And Boomer, was that someone special who was encouraging, you know.

So I started thinking like,

what instantaneously within two seconds before you played will make it different.

So it was like, "I'm gonna start tuning down"

it's the one thing I never heard anyone else do.

[grunge music playing]

As the tone got bigger,

the amps need to be also scaled to take that tonality.

So I started playing through bass cabinets and bass amps.

And all of a sudden...

I was just happy for those guys when I heard it.

It was like really creative, didn't sound like anything we've heard before.

[Sophia] We drove around to this corner of this mountain

and the fire is burning, and this band is playing,

and hair's flying everywhere like, "Who is that?"

[grunge music playing]

We get out in the middle of the desert and we start playing

like it's hard to blast off these two minute songs.

Because if people are gonna drive an hour out into the middle of the desert,

they want to be entertained.

To me it was kind of the desert style of the band to keep playing

because we wanna keep having a good time.

When you're playing and you're looking at the sky

you're looking at the mountains, all of a sudden people are lighting fires

and drinking and there's car lights.

If you saw the view that I saw, you might start to just play like that too.

[Robbi] If I'm sitting with an acoustic guitar looking up at the milky way

what are you gonna sing about?

♪ My baby don't get on Well with me ♪

You know, you're not gonna sing about that.

You don't even wanna speak.

There was something about the space in their music.

Like they would let sections really develop.

It had energy and power and aggression

but in a way that built, it didn't just go like

one, two, three, four... [vocalizing]

It was like the sounds got bigger and bigger and bigger.

[grunge music playing]

[Joshua] It's all part of a greater atmosphere

It wasn't all about the bands, it was about big party

and there was a sort of native element

and you wanna play this thundering stuff for your tribe.

It was like punk rock, and there were hippies, and dudes into metal.

There was just like...

[Bran] And I thought Kyuss kind of represented it all.

[Joshua] What was great about generator parties is that

everyone was allowed to do their things to the extent of their willingness.

So in that sort of artistic anarchy

when it starts to go out of control

it's so fucking out of control, you're like...

Hey! Hey, everybody. Welcome to the desert

It's here. It was here before we were!

And the cans weren't. So bring the cans out with you. All right let's do this.

[Mario] This was our first big event.

This was a festival.

All of you people out there are really dirty and you smell too.

[crowd cheering]

And so do I.

I smell real bad and we're really fuckin' dirty.

We were so green, we're just like used to rumbling in our van out in front of the generator.

And it hit me like, "What the fuck are we doing?

We've invited 1500 people out here, and we don't even have water

Or toilets and no one directing parking.

What are we gonna do if this gets crazy 'cause the cops are gonna come right to me."

'Cause that's my thing, generating the power for all of this.

[band performing]

We were just getting ready to play,

and this woman comes up to me and she's like,

"Where is the first aid? Where's the first aid?"

and I'm like, "First Aid? There's no first Aid."

She said, "You're fucking kidding me right?

Shes said, "My husband just got clocked over the head he's bleeding."

And I'm like, "Oh, my God."

The party had attracted some gang guys that lived up...

down the street from there and they went in and ended up stealing a car from a guy.

And that guy called the cops and the cops came and busted the party.

And they got caught.

They ended up trying to steal someone's car.

And in doing so they cracked a guy over the head with a tire iron.

I panicked and just felt like,

"God, what the fuck am I gonna do

How am I gonna take care of this guy, what are we gonna do."

And I got somebody that had a car on the outer perimeter

that would take him to get some medical attention.

There was police choppers flying over the party

and then the cops came up and I was totally relieved

because it was scary.

And the cops said, "Everybody stay put."

Nobody leave.

Turn off the PA, turn off the music, turn off the lights.

Everybody stay here.

Back then when you make a mess everywhere,

you know, they wanna find someone responsible for that.

So you can get 'em to pay for the clean up or whatever it is.

And Mario got caught. And they went to court.

It was a big deal, he almost went to jail.

And they told him, "You know, you can't have that generator anymore."

Mario was the only one who had the generator and the van to carry it.

We would have never got anything

if it hadn't been... Especially my generation, Mario Lalli, making it happen.

He'd put on shows just to make sure that

kids, that next generation would have access to music

and actually be thinking of it like that.

Because he's more like a Godfather of music.

Boomer, was the first person who allowed me to...

We would be like begging, "Man can we play in one of these parties."

"You know I got this band, they're like 15, 16, you know.

"Yeah, fuck it man, you guys can go on about.

Just bring your stuff up. You guys can play first, whatever."

Every scene has that one person that really is like the glue,

and the one guy that sort of pushes everyone

to keep going and not give up,

and Mario's that dude.

I think he always wished for more for everyone and including himself.

And when it starts to spiral and become something that's not as cool,

and is a little more bone head, that starts to become an animal

that can't be controlled by a single person.

[Brant] It was very primal.

He didn't know what was gonna happen.

He didn't know if it's gonna get, the cops are gonna break it up

you know, there's always fights

Things just kind of work themselves out

After a little we're like, "Hey, we still wanted do some parties."

We say, "Mario, what's up with the generator?"

He says, "Just take it, I can't use it. You guys can use it though, as much as you want."

And so we cleaned it up, we got it running.

And I mean the next weekend, we're out throwing a party with it.

[drum beating]

[man] Well, we drive up this dirt road for 20 minutes.

And here was this Greek ruin looking thing.

That was essentially the raddest pool you can ever imagine

for skating, I mean, just,

it really was so far away from reality

I mean you're nowhere near anything, you couldn't see a building

you couldn't see a light, we called it... It was the nudist colony.

[Sophia] The nudist colony was out in the desert, there used to be a nudist colony there.

The building had crumbled.

There was a pool that was left and everybody skated the pool.

It had originally being called the Desert Hills Nudist Ranch

as myth and legend has it. It closed down sometime in the mid '70s.

And it's just sat there.

[man] It was ours. So when you got there

it was something that we can put a flag and just say

"Hey, man, you know, let's go there."

[Ian] Before the rock n roll happened we'd be at skateboarding.

In fact it was so hard to find a place to practice.

As soon as we started practicing in houses cops would show up.

So we'd actually start practicing up there and next thing, you know,

there's a huge party.

[garage rock playing]

We eventually saw Unsound, they were such a great punk band.

We were like, "Fuck, man, there's no need to try and carry the punk rock torch,

Unsound has it wired."

'Cause they were so great.

So we kind of went in the opposite direction.

In the desert if you sound like someone else

you were gonna get made fun of, you know.

You see these people the next day at school.

It's not like you can walk away from it and start over again.

These are the people you see all the time.

So there was that importance on originality.

[Brian] That was one cool thing about the desert.

You can play with like Yawning Man

and Unsound, they play the same bill.

A progressive jazz band...

and then a punk rock band.

[Brian] If you ask me, like, one quality about Unsound

I would say we had good energy on stage

that went further than just the four of us,

it went outwards, people could feel that.

[Jesse] We all had such a united sense of oneness.

That's what identified us or illuminated our peer group

was simply that, "You get this? Do you understand what we've we got here?"

It's special. Special enough to maybe make some records for.

What would have been a normal question that you'd have come to

quickly, like, "let's record and maybe we can do this."

Really took a long time to get to that first phase

and asking yourself a question like, "Should we record this?"

It wasn't based on any kind of like,

"Yeah, this band, you know, they're going places."

You know, it's just like felt like you were doing something for yourself.

Not just doing something for somebody else's approval

or benefit like, that is much as anything else.

Made me, like, wanna do it too.

For me it's the Friday night, the Saturday night.

It's like not for money or for chicks or fame or shit.

It's to play because that's what you do.

It never seemed like anything more we're gonna come out of it.

Freedom, you want freedom, man.

The punk rockers... You wanna do what you wanna do.

And we didn't let anybody tell us, where we can do it

or we couldn't do it, we just went out there and did it.

And we didn't give a fuck about the consequences of cops.

Those parties just took on their own life.

[cheering]

[indistinct chatter]

The scene is building, but it's not like bands are getting established nationally,

putting out records and touring.

It's just an insular kind of scene.

It's just freak luck that Kyuss got discovered outside of the desert.

This has to do with a woman by the name Katherine Enny, discovered us.

And she offered to manage us.

A friend of ours, his dad had played drums with the Osmonds and things like that.

He was like, "Well, I know a studio up here in Orange County."

And we went there and recorded and the woman that was the studio manager,

she was like, "I'll manage you."

And we got signed two weeks out of high school.

You know, I was on tour, two weeks out of high school.

I was trying to get out of the desert

I was always trying to go away from there...

When it got exciting I wanted to be there.

So to actually have the chance to like

"Let's go to LA or let's go anywhere,"

I was like, "Let's do it."

[Brian] Trying to break into the Los Angeles music scene was real fuckin' hard.

I mean, especially when you're a band from the desert.

"From where?" How many people they're gonna draw?

And what are they gonna bring? Two people with them?

[Nick] I ran into people who stood by the stage, like,

"Dude we saw Kyuss play" and I'm like, "No, you didn't.

You did not see us play."

"No, dude, you guys are great." "When? Where? Tell me when?"

'Cause when I was in the band, there wasn't a whole lot of people coming to see us.

We went out and got some notoriety.

Although people hated it

for most of the time that we were around.

And the reaction of us getting signed was mixed.

They're from the desert. But they were removed

because they all got signed to major label.

And became part of that machine.

You know then you have managers and publicists

and people doing everything for them, and rightfully so, they rocked, they're great.

It's amazing what happened.

[Joshua] The scene was so personal to everyone

that understandably some people are like, "What are you doing?"

You know, "Does that even happen? Is that okay?"

You know we've never dealt with this situation, I need a ruling.

And also the scene was like, "Do well, but don't do too well."

[Scott] Sure there were some local bands, but nobody was going for it, like,

recording and putting out records.

I knew these kids were really serious

and they wanted it.

We rehearse six days a week for 7 to 8 hours a day.

We could play our songs inside and out

and change them at moment's notice because it was, like, that's what you do.

Let's go try it, if we fail we fail.

Let's go play, let's go put on our music to these people.

'Cause they can't get it to me other way, you know, got to take it to 'em.

In 1992, the guy that was the singer of my punk band

when I lived back in Virginia, Scream.

He told me to go see this show

that was coming into town when I was living in Seattle.

The Obsessed that were a rock band, really heavy band from Washington DC,

were on tour with this band Kyuss.

When they started playing I immediately knew something was different.

'Cause I couldn't tell what type of person

each person was.

Like, Nick was wearing these greasy fuckin' stained gray sweat pants

with high tops and no shirt and his hair was down to his ass

and looked like he hadn't washed it in a year.

Brant, sort of looked like he was

in a fuckin' Cheech and Chong movie or something.

And then Josh looked like he played baseball or something.

He looked kind of like a real American kid.

And John it was funny like he'd sing

but then he would lay back and they would

go off on these jams that were just instrumental.

Which is unusual in, like, the underground punk rock scene

or whatever. They would go off on these jams that were fucking amazing.

Soon after that I went and bought Blues For The Red Sun.

And I was just totally blown away.

Nirvana was blowing up when Blues For The Red Sun came out.

And Dave Grohl was a Godsend for Kyuss.

In the wake of Nirvana people's attention and taste

were really brought to this music in a way that really never happened before.

Now, it's like the masses are there.

I think I bought that record for at least 20 people.

I just gave it to them. I gave it to my friends in Santa Cruz.

I gave it someone in Metallica.

I gave to my neighbors. I was just

like,"This is the fucking most incredible record, you have to hear this."

And everyone agreed, you know.

[Dave] He was raving about it inSpin magazine on MTV.

And it was like "Holy shit" it's on a whole new level now.

You can plug and hype the band all you want.

But it doesn't make us any more special than what we are.

[Joshua] It doesn't make people like you.

If writers want to hype the band

and say we're you know, great. That's... We were...

That's really flattering and we're into that.

But I don't want any listeners to think that we're some huge musical phenomenon.

We're just four guys that enjoy playing rock.

And that's all we'll be. That's all we wanna be.

[Scott] I got a call from Brant.

And he said, "Dude, Nick is out, can you fill in for few shows?"

I said, "Yeah, man. That'll be a blast."

And we got a phone call,

"You wanna go to Australia with Metallica?"

Holy Shit! Those guys didn't have passports yet.

Somehow they got their passports within a week.

And took off.

Played arena rock shows with Metallica, it was insane.

[audience cheering]

[Dave] That's a tricky transition to make.

Coming up in a small underground punk rock scene or small music community,

making that transition from there to being a big arena or stadium

is really weird. It can fuck you up.

I don't know, just in such a short period of time

to go from playing in a pizza parlor

next to cardboard cut out of some football player

to playing in arenas with Metallica was little overwhelming.

More so for some than others.

It was really trippy for me, because all I wanted to do

was participate, be part of this local scene.

And then I'm like opening up for Metallica.

When you're with your friends in your basement, in your van,

going on tour doing things on that level and on your own,

you are sort of in control of everything.

When your band starts getting bigger

and you make a jump from something like that

to a fucking stadium opening up for Metallica.

It can feel really threatening and weird.

If you over think it and think too much

you could really start feeling like it's just being swept out from under your feet

and it's not yours anymore.

I had my own personal perspective of what Kyuss was

what we were doing and where it could go.

To me it was always just this extension of where our root was in the desert.

[Jesse] Kyuss is a beautiful band

and it's the testament to it's desert success.

They were getting success.

When Brant came back from the Australian tour with Metallica,

Brant decided to get all guilty that he was getting success I guess.

And he came back and we all went to a party

I picked him up at the airport, we all went to a party

out in the desert.

And he watched this punk rock band play and he was

he got into this, "Dude, the roots", like, "Okay, so that's them.

It's not you, you're not..." I mean, whatever, he decided to get all guilty feeling

and he shaved his head, that, to me, doesn't make any sense.

But that's what broke Kyuss up.

I was on an idealistic crusade for sure, man.

And I thought that's what the part of desert was, I mean that was what...

we came from such a primal environment.

It just made sense to me that we didn't turn into this super star thing.

People weren't feeling what I was feeling. So I was like,

you know I... Shaved my head and then quit.

It was about

to a certain extent flogging yourself as proof.

I think especially because when we left the desert

there was a little bit of shit we had to deal with

where someone was like, "Oh, rock star now", we were like, what?

As a proof of that you sort of like flog yourself in public.

For me in being involved with in this band

that was being recognized and taken out of the desert scene.

It's absolutely our duty to represent this environment, this scene.

And so for me that's where Blues for Red Sun was all about.

It was about us saying, "We're a desert band."

I love Kyuss. I love all their music.

But it stereotyped what a band is supposed to sound like,

if they come from the desert.

And that's so not true.

What if you have ideas that are beyond the boxes you built for yourself.

And that notion of being like,

"You're free to do what you want as long as it's inside these walls."

It's stupid.

I started to feel penned in by that.

Musically it had to be heavier than it was, you know.

So, it was a big driving force for why I felt I had to leave.

People spend too much time categorizing what everything is

Just throw it on your turning table, throw it on your CD player, whatever you have,

and listen to it, don't worry about what it is

No one cares, it doesn't matter anymore, you know.

That's what should have happened.

It shouldn't matter anymore what you are.

There are so many like fusion everything, whatever.

[jazz music playing]

[Mario] We started getting so experimental

with stuff that we became obsessed with

listening to all these avant garde jazz artists.

We've really started to move on

almost alienating a lot of the fans of the music scene in the desert.

Around that time, there was a shift,

as far as the type of people that would come to the party

I don't think they were necessarily there for the music.

I think they just heard it was the thing and so you really got this other element.

It was lawless.

There were fuckin' skinheads with Rottweilers and Mexican gang members.

And if you got into trouble, you' were getting yourself out.

If you get in a fight in the desert, there's nobody there to break it up.

People go, "Whoa! Whoa! Give 'em some room."

So this shit goes on till it's over.

And when you start having these locations that are free from the law

that can be amazing.

And then also it can be a total fucking calamity.

[cheering]

[Brian] So we were playing, in the middle of playing our set

and we played right near the pool, five feet from the coping.

Guys are skating and I think after a while

some guys wanted to slam dance in the pool

but there were guys skating. So the skaters were like, "No, fuckin' get out."

So the fight started and I think that one guy got his ass kicked.

And so he went and first started throwing rocks.

So we're kinda looking around and seeing the fuck was doing

and eventually this kid went and started a fire above and below, where we were at.

And he really tried to trap everyone I think.

I looked up and I can make out the ridge line in orange.

It kinda went from nobody noticed it

to everybody knew all at the same time.

It was windy and it quickly escalated to the point of panic.

Where it was like everyone was waiting for us to finish the song

and we were looking over our shoulders at the fire

getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

And pretty soon it's coming at you.

[Tory] And by that time the fire had advanced all the way down

to the bottom of the hill. I was second to the last

vehicle out.

And with the windows up you could feel the intensity of the heat from the fire.

We stopped playing and everyone panicked and people bailed out of there.

It had to be, like, a 1200 to 1300 acre brush fire.

[siren wailing]

[woman] I can't believe it. There they go.

Another fire.

That was the end because that party was huge.

Too big for that place to sustain, there's people from out of town.

So they bring out of town friends and it starts to get beyond the desert.

It's symbolically perfect that one night

someone lights the fire and burns the whole place down.

We watched it get destroyed basically.

I cried when I saw it burning

I know a few other guys that thought of the spot, as their playground.

It's yours. It's your home. And the colony was our home.

[Sophia] It was for us.

You know, we weren't trying to do anything else

but have our friends play music, party, and be left alone.

Sometimes you'd go and everything would be an awesome night

everything was great.

Then it turned into people getting stabbed.

Or people like, pulling guns out and it turned into a place that

got pretty scary and then it just turned into a place that didn't exist anymore.

They actually landfilled the new bowl and actually tore it out finally

because I guess some kid stabbed somebody in the pit.

Inside the bowl. And they had to take it out and it's a shame

'Cause it was like, a historical place.

To me, it should be like a historical landmark, like preserved.

Once it got real popular, people coming down that's when the cops showed.

It had a life of it's own for years.

So maybe someone's digging out again

I don't know it could be gone. I haven't been up there in so long.

You know, I mean, what became like punk rock

and having a good time, and couple of kegs

and some bands and then it turned into more and more people

and it just got more and more violent.

More and more uncontrollable.

And then it's just like, you know.

Nature kind of takes it's course.

[Sean] Zezo Zece Zadfrack and the Dune Buggy Attack Battalion

that band had it's moments, it was pretty good.

And then when we started shooting drugs, all of a sudden, I start listening to music.

That I never thought was cool.

Like when The Who and The Clash were on tour together.

This guys like, "Hey, I got a ticket.

Wanna go see the Clash?" like, "Fuck, no, I'm a punker, man.

I ain't gunna go to no rock concert and see the fuckin' shitty Who. I don't want to...

I go to clubs."

But then as soon as I'm shooting dope,

now all of a sudden, I want to listen to T. Rex and see the Stones

Johnny Thunders and all the fuckin' junkie heroes of the guitar world.

So I started bands like that.

["Swingset Superman" playing]

I was running over with dirt bags shooting speed

I was like already gone to the next level, dude., I was already,

out with like, wizards, like, getting high always came first.,

before music or anything and then after I get high

I had to think that I was in a band and jam stuff.

What happened is that we all got tweaked out on speed

and in the end even those guys i think were bummed out.

Just fell apart eventually.

Even with a whole band of tweakers no one wanted to fucking hang out.

I was just lost trying to figure out more ways to get to spoon.

Then I ended up getting my girlfriend pregnant.

And I went into a rehab.

I didn't realize that it was a world beyond me, you know what I mean.

I was a little self centered as a kid.

[Mario] He went through a lot of searching.

By doing that he brought all these influences to the desert.

That I was always in awe of that dude.

He'd just hold court. He just had such a unique character about him.

And he finally found a way to funnel that into art.

[Joshua] I love him so much because I'm always like, "So anything goes."

He's loose and wild and there's that element

in the music that's beautiful,

purposeful, bone headedness.

Where it's like monkeys playing on the keyboard, you know, it's wonderful.

[Sean] I love the desert and I see the desert for what it is.

You know, beautiful. I love it here, man.

I've been clean 17 years and I generally feel okay.

And if anything, it's like,

what a bummer the way I might have behaved here and there,

but we all did and that goes back to just being fuckin' kids, you know, I mean...

So all my memories are like, of how I love these people.

Really. And not, and not like, You know, anything else.

[Joshua] Yeah, music is something that I could do it alone,

but then you'll be all alone. I think the desire to create

a family of people that have all these talents,

that are different than yours and that together,

the sum of your parts would be this amazing thing.

It could be something unforgettable something classic.

The desert is such a wide open blank canvas.

Generator parties, Across the River,

Zezo Zece Zadfrack and the Dune Buggy Attack Battalion,

Yawning Man, Unsound, Kyuss, and it all worked.

And so, to me it was an art thing.

[Mario] That freedom, that weird like, "Fuck it!

anything goes anything goes."

It was about art and it was about music and about ideas.

It wasn't about being drunk and on drugs, beating the fuck out of people,

and just expressing yourself, that way, there's something real there.

At the time Fatso Jetson came round, I had gone through some shit.

You know, and I didn't... [laughing]

I kind of had some things to write about, you know.

["Magma" playing]

[Dave] I got to see Fatso Jetson once.

Because everyone said "You have to see this band.

This is the guy that inspired all of the other dudes to play music.

He's the one they look up to, that's the guy.

And I got it.

To me he is what desert rock is.

If I had to answer it, somebody said, "Describe desert music."

I'd say "that guy".

[Mario] It comes down to expression, it has nothing to do with hair,

it's nothing to do with cool hats,

or fucking black fingernails.

You know, for me it goes into weird weird places,

cartoon music, circus music,

wherever it goes it's there's some weird way of expressing yourself.

That is the bottom line,

Mario would do this thing, every couple of years they change their band name

and the style would change just a little bit on the dial.

didn't matter if it's Across the River or Yawning Man

later on Fatso Jetson.

You know, click over another 10 percent

and that really was one of the great examples,

for me, of wanting to do that as well.

[crowd cheering]

We'd like to play one more song, you've got time for one more?

One more?

It really ingrained me like the name doesn't matter.

You should be willing to let all that go

and play what ever sounds good. No matter what it is.

Because music's the only goal.

["Long Slow Goodbye" playing]

It's just chasing music it's not chasing anything else.

And I think I witnessed that and got early inspiration of that

from watching Boomer just leave something behind and shed it like a snake skin.

And be like next thing on to the next.

♪ Where have you gone again my sweet? ♪

♪ Everybody wants to know

♪ Where have you gone again my sweet? ♪

♪ Everybody wants to know

♪ Where you gone...

At the time we didn't know it, but when Kyuss left town,

I think in a lot of ways, it made the other bands

go and look at that possibility.

You stop focusing on Friday nights and you go, "Wait, I can keep doing this?"

and even now I'm, like, someone's gonna come in here and be like, "You gotta go!

We're gonna turn this shit off and we just go, "Okay".

There's something in me that's always like that's gonna happen

because I just never expected this to keep going and still going.

[Brant] There was no destination.

We were just all stoked,

to like build something and get it out on the road.

It was built to just blast off.

And that's exactly what we did.

We were all from the desert.

Going nowhere at lightspeed.

["Long Slow Goodbye" continues playing]

♪ ...Where you gone?

♪ I'm just a ghost, I'm on your street ♪

♪ Waitin', when you Comin' home ♪

♪ I'm just a ghost, I'm on your street ♪

♪ Waitin', when you Comin' home ♪

♪ Gone so long

♪ Where you gone?

♪ On a long slow goodbye

♪ On a long slow goodbye

♪ I'm just a ghost I'm on your street ♪

♪ Waitin', when you Comin' home ♪

♪ I'm just a ghost I'm on your street ♪

♪ Waitin', when you Comin' home ♪

♪ Gone so long

♪

♪ Where you gone?

♪ On a long slow goodbye

♪ On a long slow goodbye

♪ In every voice I hear you speak ♪

♪ Waitin' by the telephone

♪ I close my eyes I just can't sleep ♪

♪ Roll and tumble All night long ♪

♪ All night long

♪

♪ Where you gone?

♪ On a long slow goodbye

♪ On a long slow goodbye

♪ On a long slow goodbye

♪ On a long slow goodbye

♪

♪ I'm just a ghost I'm on your street ♪

♪ Waitin', when you Comin' home ♪

♪ I'm just a ghost I'm on your street ♪

♪ Waitin', when you Comin' home ♪

♪ Gone so long

♪ Where you gone?

♪ On a long slow goodbye

♪

♪ I close my eyes I just can't sleep... ♪

[Sean] This is my fuckin' radical desert shower.

Boom! Check out the fucking sweet mosaic. We did this.

Sweet, don't it look rad?

Now they can't tear the house down dude.

If we had some art thing happening, we'll be like "Whoa! That's a landmark."

Ginger, can I get a light?

The legacy of it.

-Is it too perfect? -Yeah.

Preserving it--

Ow!

[laughing]

♪

[crowd cheering]

Good night everybody.

Thank you so much.

[cheering and applause]