The Desert Sessions, Vol. I & II

Imagine you’re an alien sent to Earth on a mission of galactic diplomacy. You’ve done your homework, read the full portfolio, and you feel pretty confident in your ability to get here, know the score, drop off your pamphlets about joining the interstellar union of planets (that’s not to say “Galactic Federation”) and get back out again. Easy peasy.

So you find what seems to be a decent parking spot for your craft at a strip mall or wherever and land outside a record store. You have your clipboard under your arm to give you a sense of authority and you walk into the place — because in your portfolio it says that record stores are where Earthlings conduct their most important diplomatic transactions; totally true, by the way — and blaring through the speakers is the 1998 compilation Desert Sessions Vol. I & II. You hear John McBain‘s weepy lap steel guitar on “Monkey in the Middle.” You hear the bizarre preach that starts off the record and the even more bizarre preach that finishes it. You hear Josh Homme and Dave Catching‘s intertwining guitars on the jazzy and psychedelic “Cowards Way Out.” And what the hell can you possibly think is happening? Wouldn’t you have to immediately get back in your ship and space-truck the hell out of there? Final report: Earth is too weird for first contact.

The first of them issued some 20 years ago this month, the Desert Sessions releases — there would wind up being 10 of them recorded between 1997 and 2003, compiled two per CD, with the first six pressed independently on vinyl — have become something of a legend of desert rock. A glorious tale of shroom-laden spontaneous creative endeavor, spearheaded by a recently-enough post-Kyuss Josh Homme, at that point really just getting going with Queens of the Stone Age — who over the subsequent years would derive songs like “Avon” and “Monster in the Parasol” from Sessions material — working under the moniker The Acquitted Felons at Rancho de la Luna in Joshua Tree, CA, with the even-then-unfuckwithable lineup of McBain (Monster Magnet, Wellwater Conspiracy), Brant Bjork (ex-Kyuss, Fu Manchu), Alfredo Hernández (Yawning Man, Queens of the Stone Age), Ben Shepherd (Soundgarden, Wellwater Conspiracy), Pete Stahl (earthlings?, Goatsnake) and studio owners Fred Drake and Dave Catching, it’s a narrative almost too fitting to the genre: anti-establishment, raw creativity, drugs. It’s so on-its-own-terms it might as well be in its own language.

And in a way, it is. First released in 1997 as Volume I: Instrumental Driving Music for Felons and 1998 as Vol. II: Ships Commander Butchered (well, at least we know what happened to our interplanetary diplomat), the first two Desert Sessions installments were independent vinyl EPs before Man’s Ruin brought them together as a single 10-song/39-minute full-length CD, which frankly works better. Whether it’s the nine-minute bizarro-garage push of “Cake (Who Shit on The?)” or the more straightforward “Johnny the Boy,” on which Homme seems to do his best vocal impression of Fatso Jetson‘s Mario Lalli, whatever else you might say about The Desert Sessions and the stories of their making, they are vibrantly creative outings, especially earlier on. Spontaneity abounds throughout the first two volumes, and pulled together on a single disc, the listener gets a sense of being at Rancho de la Luna with The Acquitted Felons as they draw inspiration from the land around them, from each other, and yeah, probably from a healthy-ish amount of psilocybin. These tracks and the others in the editions that would follow have become something of historical footnotes perhaps to the wider stylistic contributions of Queens of the Stone Age, Masters of Reality, et al to the sphere and scope of this era of desert rock, from which much of the subgenre’s influence continues to derive, but even so the substance of the release itself more than justifies holding Vol. I & II in such regard. Two decades later, it’s a disc that remains gleefully, irrepressibly weird, and in so doing captures an essential part of the spirit of desert rock too often lost in favor of simple fuzz tones and Kyuss-style riffing.

Frankly, I’m surprised it’s not a model that’s been followed more often. When I think about locales with booming heavy undergrounds — from Austin, Texas, to Portland, Oregon, to Berlin, London, Barcelona, Rome, Athens, and so on — it seems like there would or should be someone picking up this form and bringing something new to it. It doesn’t have to be a “desert session,” necessarily, but just the notion of getting a group of musicians together who respect each other, putting them in a studio fora  couple days and seeing what comes out of it. Can you imagine if members of Causa Sui, Papir and Baby Woodrose got together? Or Electric Moon and Øresund Space Collective? You could have 10 “sessions” of material in an afternoon! Or how about Gabriele Fiori from Black Rainbows putting together a team with contributions from Ufomammut members and others from around the Roman underground? Or the 1000mods guys leading the charge for Greece? There’s so much potential in the notion, I suppose, that it’s kind of sad it hasn’t happened.

I guess these things can be hard to coordinate, even if they might end up staving off an alien invasion.

As always, I hope you enjoy.

—

Going to make this quick because it’s five in the morning and as good as this coffee is, I’m writing with one eye open as a result of being so gosh dern tired. I got back last night at about midnight from seeing Corrosion of Conformity and Red Fang rip it up in Worcester, Mass., which is more than an hour away from where I live (what isn’t?) and was magically awake again at 2AM, so yeah a bit of punishment.

I’ll be reviewing that show for Monday. Next week is also packed with streams and premieres. Here’s the notes, obviously subject to change:

Mon.: All Souls album stream/review; C.O.C. live review.
Tue.: River Cult track premiere/review; Zhora video.
Wed.: Green Lung EP stream.
Thu.: Green Druid review/track premiere; Six Dumb Questions with Black Space Riders.
Fri.: Lonely Kamel track premiere.

Like I said, packed.

As regards a personal update for anyone who’s been keeping up the last couple weeks or who reads the photo floatovers — not that there’s ever anything to read in the photo floatovers; please ignore the snark behind the curtain — it’s been a really tough time. I’m being treated for an eating disorder and it’s playing havoc with my body and mental state. I’m doing the work I need to be doing, doing what I’m told and all that shit, eating, but yeah, it’s been a really low time for me on a personal level and that has manifested in some pretty dark thoughts and impulses. I’m doing my best to get through it for my wife and our baby. That’s all I really want to say at this point about it.

On a brighter note, a lot of people said a lot of really nice things about the site this week on the occasion of the ninth anniversary, here and on the social medias, and that was thoroughly appreciated. Thank you for giving a crap. It’s the reason I’m up at five in the morning putting this post together. Well, that and persistent anxiety issues. But the point is it’s definitely both as a factor, and your ongoing support of The Obelisk means more to me than I can say. Thank you.

I hope you have a great and safe weekend. I’m going to eat a hamburger today. I’m a little nervous about it and unsure if I’ll have it with eggs or on a bun, but either way, this thing is happening. That and singing Deep Purple and Dio to my son while changing his diapers will be my adventure for the next couple days.

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Tags: California, Desert Sessions, Desert Sessions I & II, Man's Ruin Records, Palm Desert

This entry was posted on Friday, February 2nd, 2018 at 3:49 pm and is filed under Bootleg Theater. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.