Friday Full-Length: Fatso Jetson, Stinky Little Gods
Posted in Bootleg Theater on April 1st, 2022 by JJ KoczanThey say music isn’t a competition. Okay, fine. Tell that to every drummer I’ve ever watched warm up on the stage in front of other drummers. Either way, it’s hard to imagine sharing a bill with Fatso Jetson and not feeling humbled.
Stinky Little Gods is the first Fatso Jetson full-length, released late in 1995 through Greg Ginn of Black Flag‘s SST Records. The founding lineup of the trio — guitarist/vocalist Mario Lalli (also Yawning Man), bassist Larry Lalli, drummer Tony Tornay — had come together a year earlier, and hot damn, they sound like they showed up to play. Some records you listen to, some records serve you notice. For all its seeming to be screwing around, Stinky Little Gods has more chops than the original Japanese version of Iron Chef.
Let’s take the opening salvo. First three songs. Tracked and mixed by the band with Mike Thuney, Stinky Little Gods takes off with “Kettles of Doom” as Tornay‘s drums, Larry Lalli‘s punchy bass and Mario‘s bluesy, winding guitar lines, start-stop riffs and showoff swagger give damn near every rock band of the era their warning, be it fellow desert dwellers Kyuss or Primus. Later on, in the midtempo-swinging “Gargle,” the power trio will directly tackle grunge in a way that still seems to inform desert rock around the world, but the pedal steel twang of “Joke Shop” — and the hook that goes with — and the rush of “Von Deuce” that seems to draw directly from the surf rock hinted at on the record’s cover fill out the crucial-first-three songs that make up the initial impression of the album as a whole, and if you can imagine yourself hearing it for the first time 27 years ago, it’s hard to think of it as anything other than head-spinning. This, of course, would become a major theme for Fatso Jetson‘s entire career to-date. They came to play.
Like “Joke Shop” before it, “Von Deuce” hovers around two and a half minutes, and the subsequent instrumental “Captain Evil,” which feels complementary in its urgent launch from “Von Deuce,” is even shorter at 1:37, but it spends that time in jabbing hits and quick punkish runs, garage fuckery turned into the stuff of near-mathy precision, the band tight enough to be vacuum sealed as they move into “Pressure for Posture,” which is stunning in these decades of hindsight for how much like themselves Fatso Jetson sound. Granted, the production shows the hallmarks of its era — as, make no mistake, will the production of today — in where the drums are in the mix and some of the guitar tones, but the results of the performances are still electric, and 
as “Pressure for Posture” gives over to “Pressure for Posture” with a subtly gentle shift and side B of the 10-song/39-minute long-player begins with a new burst, the trio are nothing if not locked into their groove.
And it is theirs. The bounce, the sprints, the hops from verse to chorus, the physical twist and rush of “Nightmares Are Essential” and the willful mellow-out of “Gargle” — that song of a more grounded, traditionally structured kind with the also not-quite-full-throttle “Pressure for Posture” and “Kettles of Doom” — are forces to be nearly comprehended before Fatso Jetson turn you over to “Salt Chunk Mary’s.” Furious. Like “Nightmares Are Essential,” “Salt Chunk Mary’s” might show up in a setlist on any given evening (or it might not; universe of infinite possibility), but it underscores just how hard the band was ready to boogie on this first outing. It is gorgeous and rough, chaotic and controlled, and it comes to an end that leads into the returning surf/Western vibe of “Highway 86,” the first of the instrumental closing pair with the 10-minute “Corn on the Macabre” waiting right behind.
The decision on the part of the band to cap without vocals — the last 14-plus minutes of a 39-minute record is not an insignificant chunk, and it’s not the only instrumental by any means — feels important in terms of telling the audience at that point who they were and what they wanted to be as players and a group. They have the chemistry to pull it off, and the last track feels like a sincere jam even with the extra layer of guitar soloing throughout, perhaps nudging on some of the heavy psychedelia that would come to emerge in their sound more over time, right alongside the we’re-out-here-not-in-a-major-city-doing-this-thing dug-in nature of the Palm Desert, California, underground from which the Lallis and Tornay crafted the foundation of their approach. Consider Mario Lalli in Across the River circa 1985, or Yawning Man kicking around since about then as well. Stinky Little Gods feels like a culmination of all that sonic groundwork in developing ‘desert rock’ to the point it had then reached.
I know the narrative has it that Yawning Man were there first (true) and Kyuss were the biggest (a major label helps), but Fatso Jetson rolled out an absolute beast with this first full-length, and it set their tenure as a band off to a get-off-your-ass-and-go start. They’d have four albums out in the five years before the turn of the century — this, plus 1997’s Power of Three, 1998’s Toasted (discussed here), 1999’s Flames for All — and they began the 2000s with Cruel & Delicious on Josh Homme‘s Rekords Rekords imprint. It was nine years before their next proper LP, Archaic Volumes (review here, discussed here), showed up through Cobraside, and six years and a slew of momentum-keeping splits and live releases, etc., before they offered a likewise awaited seventh album in 2016’s Idle Hands (review here) on Heavy Psych Sounds, bringing in Mario Lalli‘s son, Dino, on second guitar.
They’ve been active since then, as much as possible, touring and not. Last year they took part in the ‘Virtual Volumes’ livestream (review here) alongside All Souls, for whom Tornay also drums, and while I’m not sure as to the concrete status of anything new, they’ve teased upcoming news in that regard and they’re slated to be at Ripplefest Texas 2022, so it’s entirely possible we’ll know more by then. All the more reason to go back to the start, appreciate how far they’ve come and just how humbling they remain.
As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.
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We’ve been in what we lovingly call around the house “survival mode” for a few weeks now. Longer perhaps than we’ve realized it. The Patient Mrs.’ work is a clusterfuck. The university she’s at treats her and all faculty like garbage, and somehow she also wound up teaching an extra class this semester, and to say it’s been a multi-tiered drag does not feel out of line — physical and existential fatigue vying for dominance at any given moment. Throw my poor son who is so, so, so terrified of putting his pee and poop in the potty, behavioral concerns at school, and now running away in parking lots is a gam, and, well, it’s been a lot.
I guess that’s my way of explaining why I didn’t close out last week. Also it was a 10-post day and there’s only so much brainpower to go around. Today I need to write a King Buffalo press release, tomorrow (hopefully) I’m talking to Sean from Tau and the Drones of Praise for a bio I’m (maybe getting paid!) to write for their new album, and finalizing the next PostWax liner notes, for Dead Meadow. I’d like to send the next round of questions out too, but I have the feeling I’m not getting off that easy next time and I’ll need to transcribe a spoken interview, though it’s with one of my favorite bands and people to talk to, so that’s not a hardship in the doing, just the time. Plus I get a little nervous these days talking to humans.
What’s the good news? It’s Spring, so maybe we can spend some more time outside when it’s not raining. And The Pecan is slowly progressing toward the toilet, one babystep at a time. I made macadamia and hazelnut butter for myself last night, and though the inhaling of that invariably brings no shortage of self-recrimination — guilt for the enjoyment, the calories, the carbohydrates, etc. — at least I’m at a point as a person where I can periodically let the positives outweigh the negatives. My doctor told me to lose weight last time I saw him. I wear weights around the house, on my arms and legs now. It won’t help, but apparently I’m keen on resistance. See also my relationship with my son.
I am crazy.
This week I also took what’s called the Autism Quotient self-exam. Basically a personality quiz. I scored 40 out of 50, which is not the highest, obviously, but they say anything over 33 and, yeah, it’s a possibility of some kind of spectrum disorder. Not sure why I didn’t take it before now — either didn’t want to or didn’t think of it until The Pecan started OT and all the sensory stuff that is applied to him applies maybe even more to myself; also I’m not four — and I haven’t really the time or desire to follow-through with a neurologist, but neurodiversity an interesting possible frame through which to see myself and how I move in the world — and more, how I did when I was younger — and I’m nothing if not narcissistic enough to let it consume part of my daily thoughts. Fun fun fun.
I’ll probably ask The Patient Mrs. to book me an appointment with somebody sooner or later, if only to satisfy that nagging curiosity. I know and have known people who are severely autistic, and I’m not claiming to be that. They call it a spectrum for a reason, and it would be convenient for me to have some partial explanation of why I feel like I’ve felt like I’m from another planet most of the days I’ve been alive. Also, I tend to think a lot of modern autism pathology is the kind of thing that future humans will look back on as medical savagery in a hopefully more open and neurodiverse time. I guess we’ll see on that.
Gimme Metal show today at 5PM. Playlist is here and awesome, if you missed it. Sincere thanks if you listen. And speaking Desertfest London, I got a wonderful email this week from an American guy who’s taking his four sons (in their 20s) to the festival after reading about it here. Can’t even tell you how special I felt reading that. It was incredible. Inspiring on multiple levels.
And next week is the Quarterly Review, which I every bit intended to start writing this week in order to ease the daily burden on myself for the coming Sunday-Sunday but utterly failed to do so. Again, survival mode. We’re just getting through the days one into the next.
I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Hydrate, be safe, watch your head. Back on Monday with more.
Again, thank you for reading.
FRM.
