No Filler Music Podcast - Sidetrack: Kyuss - The Desert Rock Dwellers of Sky Valley

Episode Date: October 6, 2019

On this week's Sidetrack we buckle up and head to Sky Valley with Josh Homme (HOM-ee) and his band Kyuss, the desert rock gods of the early 90s. The band garnered a cult following by the early 1990s, often driving for hours to isolated locations in the desert and plugging into generators to perform. These events, known as "generator parties", became urban legend among rock subculture. Episode Tracklist 1. Green Machine 2. Demon Cleaner 3. Hurricane 4. SASAMI - Morning Comes 5. DIIV - Blankenship Check out more great music podcasts on Pantheon: www.pantheonpodcasts.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. So how do you pronounce your last name so that I can actually get this on tape one last time to make sure that people don't? So you want the definitive version. So if I ever leave the States, it's om. That's what you go to France is om. If I go to the rest of Europe, it's om.

It's om. And in this country, how do you... It's HOMI. Ha-Me. Because H-O-M is H-M, and then M again, and E is me. Hom-Me. Okay. Homi.

Okay. And welcome to No Filler. The music podcast dedicated to sharing the often overlooked hidden gyms that fill the space between the singles on our favorite records. My name is Travis. Once again, got my brother Quentin with me. And if you didn't know who that was, I mean, he said his name. So that was Josh Hami, pronouncing his name for an interview that he did back in 2005 on KBZT radio.

So, Q, it turns out we were mispronouncing his name, the entire Queen of the Stone Age episode. Classic self-wise. Well, we've done that a few times. But anyway, our good buddy, Mr. Eric Nash, of the almost famous Minute podcast, he, brought that to our attention last week. So thank you, Eric. And the funny thing is he sent us a link to Josh's Wikipedia page. There it is right at the top, in parentheses, like phonetically spelled out how to pronounce his last name. So, yeah, check out his podcasts and many others over at Pantheon podcast.com. All right. So let's get into it here. We're talking about Kaias.

which we mentioned last week, and that is, of course, the first band that Josh Hami was in before he formed Queens of the Stone Age. And they are, or at least they have gone on to become sort of legendary desert rock gods, if you will, or deities. I like using the word deities here. but desert rock as i've touched on a few times throughout the history of no filler because we talked about um i brought a band to the table for a sidetrack actually i think it was a what you heard but it was yawning man yeah we talked about yawning man briefly and i i shared the same story that that you kind of associate with desert rock of bringing a generator into the desert and setting up your equipment and just having a jam session in the desert.

And that was kind of how these bands would essentially put on shows because there were no rock venues out in the desert in Palm Desert, California, or in the Coachella Valley. So these rock bands, you know, improvised basically and set up their own shows out in the desert, which is so sweet. You know, I mean, it's freaking awesome. There's this really great documentary that I watched. I highly recommend it.

It's called Low Desert Sound, and it's a documentary about the desert rock scene. And it interviews a bunch of the players from that era. It interviews Josh Hami. Anyway, let's talk about Kaius real quick. We'll do a quick overview. They formed in 1987. That's when we were formed, Q. So the original lineup was Josh Homi.

Fossit. Josh Hami. I'm going to fuck that up over and over again. That's fine. It was Josh Hami on guitar, John Garcia, vocals, Brandt Bjork drums, and Chris Cockrell on bass. And it's worth noting that Nick Oliveari was also one of the early members. And as we know, Nick Alivari goes on to become the bass player of Queens of the Stone Age.

So he's one of the original desert rockers that Josh brought into the fold for the Queens project when that started. So anyway, they started in 87, like I mentioned earlier, and they went by the name Katzenjamer, which is a German slang word for hangover. So one thing that is sort of, you know, sort of the stereotype of what Desert Rock is, or what people associate with Desert Rock, is it listed drug use, cue. Marijuana-driven instrumental jam sessions in the desert. Marijuana?

Exactly. That's why they went by Cats and Jammer because it means paying over. Anyway, so one of the things, and we talked about Josh's guitar technique and his unique sound last week. One of the things that he did, among other members of the desert rock scene, to get that heavy sound that is associated with desert rock is he would use bass amps instead of a regular guitar amp, and he would tune his guitar way down.

And he had sort of an explanation for why they did that. So let's listen to that real quick. I think people associated with two types of things in desert rock with kind of heavier dirgier and I think there's also this kind of spacious almost earthlings vibe. But the low tuning was a thing. Part of why we tuned down is to try to sound heavy outside and also because I couldn't afford to tune her. I thought this is something no one's doing that would make us different before we even played a song. So yeah, he said that he would tune down and just, you know, pluck a note and just let it kind of ring out in the desert, you know, as they were warming up before they even started just to like set the vibe, you know. Man, are there any clips?

Are there any, did anyone bring out a camcorder? Yes, there's all sorts of clips out there, dude. Like I said, check out that documentary because it shows a lot of early footage from that. Yeah, I want to see that. Yeah, there was just like this skate park out in the middle of the desert that was like abandoned or something like that. And that's where they were through a lot of these parties. And it was called like the Naked Bowl or the nude bowl or something like that. Anyway, so yeah, let's just let's get right into one of the tunes here.

There's really not much more to say about it. It's better to hear it. So I'm going to play one of my favorite Kaias tracks. This is off of their third album, Welcome to Sky Valley, which came out in 1994. And this song is called Demon Cleaner. Yeah, so here's the thing that, like, or at least with Kaius, I'm not saying this is true for all desert rock. Because the thing about desert rock is, you know, they're all characterized by certain sounds, but there's no, like, defining sound, I guess. Like some of it sounds more like

punk rock, you know? Okay. But I would say that Kaias, they almost sound more like like you're getting, I mean, this is 94. So like, never mind, already happened,

dirt came out by Alice and Jane's. Like we're in the grunge era. It sounds like grunge music, a little bit. The darker, more like metal-centric grunge music, right? Yeah, I think his voice is what makes it stand out as something different.

Yeah, and the fuss. And the guitar, dude, and the guitar. Yeah. So, like, one thing worth noting is that that's not, that's not, um, Hami on lead vocals, but he did write all of the songs on here. You're singing. The singer, his name is John, uh, John Garcia. He's also listed in a lot of the producers.

I thought Joshua is the lead singer. No. I mean, he does backing vocals here and there, but he is not, he's not the lead singer, but he does write, he does write the songs. So, I mean, it's his songwriting. So that's why. I liked the back and forth, yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So why? That was not planned. That's stupid. I liked it. So one thing, another thing worth knowing here before we move to the next song. Chris Goss is one of the producers, and he was...

Sounds familiar. Yeah, he was an assistant producer for Songs for the Deaf. He was also one of the DJs. I think he was the Elasticass guy on Songs for the Girl. Anyway, so Nick Oliveri is not on this record, just in case you were wondering who the bass player was. It's some guy named Scott Reeder. he's listed as being a associated with tool in some form or another.

I'm not sure how, but anyway. So the thing about Kaias, and it seems kind of similar to Queens is that, you know, there are the core members, but they kind of, you know, it reminds me a lot of, we talked about the music scene that Kevin Parker came out of when he was getting his start out in Australia.

It was the Perth music scene, right? We talked about that and how they all kind of shoveled around. And it's very similar in the desert, in the California desert with these desert rock guys. A lot of them just kind of rotate in and out of each other's bands. And, you know, in the case of Queens, you know, Josh brought some of these guys, you know, with him to the big time, you know, the big show, as it were, when he made the Queens of Stone.

night stuff. So anyway, I just think that's so cool, dude. I feel like if you're a musician, like that's, I mean, like, like, what more could you ask for you? You know, you find a group of, like-minded musicians and you just kind of shuffle around and just jam, you know? Yeah. No, I mean, it's like, I want that. I want that so bad. And that's the thing. It sounds like with these, um, these little towns that they grew up in, these communities, there was, you know, You're out in the middle of the desert, you know. And this was the 90s. So, you know, grab a guitar, grab a pair of drums.

A pair of drums. Grab a, yeah. You had to have two drum sets. Grab a floor time, I don't know. And just start jamming, man. And so this was kind of it. They were sort of rebelling against, I briefly mentioned this last week, but like, these were retirement communities.

So you'd have these, you know, senior citizens come in in the winter or whatever. and as a way to rebel against that they would get in their garage and crank up the amps and get the cops called on them you know yeah so I think you had mentioned last week that Sky Valley that's where they went out and jammed sky valley is yeah it's one of the cities out there in the desert so and I'm looking at the album cover

I mean I guess it's possible that this is a road that they took and they passed that sign along to to you know their jam session space oh yeah that's that sign is still up yeah it's really cool it's kind of one of those things where like if you're if you're out in the desert and one of the you know and you have the chance to to drive up people kind of pose in front of the sign you know and give like the the devil horns and stuff because this is kind of an iconic album such a cool album cover yeah I like the color. It's cool.

But yeah, this is, you know, another thing about the desert rockers is that they never, they never hide it, you know. It's always like front and center. Like putting, you know, naming the record after a sign into one of the communities, you know. They take pride in where they're in the roots. Yeah. And I don't know if we mentioned this at all, but Josh Hami, did I say that right? Josh Hami He puts together

These Desert Sessions Is what he calls him Yeah And I think he just announced That they're going to do another one Yep I've got a Pishfork article on that

Pulled up dude It's their first Desert Sessions album In 16 years They record this stuff in Josh Ritchery Which was a huge theme In the songs for the deaf album Right Because the whole idea was

that you're driving from L.A. to Joshua Tree. Right. So it's cool that they, that he brings out these musicians and they record out there in the desert, you know. Obviously, it's called the Desert Sessions. How stupid would it be if they didn't record the desert? Dude, look at the fucking artwork, man. It's so cool. Oh, that's dope.

That's, so that's volume 11 and then they also. Volume 11? I know. That's what I'm saying, dude. when I saw the headlines that he's releasing a new album and this is, you know, volume 11 and 12, it's like,

what? Like, I, you know, I never got into Caius or anything, but, you know, I'm a Josh Ami fan. Like, I'm surprised that I didn't know about this. Which I'm shocked that you didn't know about this, that they're 11, 12 volumes in now? Well, what can I say, man?

It looks like you got a lot of new music to listen to do. Yeah. All right, let's play another track here. This is from the very next album. This album is called And the Circus Leaves Town came out the following

year in 1995 and we're going to play the first track on the record. It's called Hurricane. Man, I'm all about the guitar. Yeah, I did. You know, hey, it's Josh. Yeah. Yeah, so again,

same crew from the last record. I bet you they record all the stuff around the same time. Yeah. But yeah, you mentioned this while the song was playing cue, but you just can't escape the similarities and the drums between this guy. His name is Alfredo Hernandez and Dave Grohl. But I mean, you know, I don't know if it's because like maybe, you know, did Dave Grohl

have that much of an influence on how people, you know, play drums around this time, you know because of nirvana probably yeah i mean from from what i've what i've read and like what i've heard about the impact that that um the never mind had is that like everybody started drumming like that um yeah dude you know smells like teen spirit was such a huge that that drum intro and smells like team spirit you know apparently that was pretty pretty um impactful like it you know you'd never heard drumming like that so yeah you know you can't you know you can't escape. I mean, the funny thing about the desert rock scene is that they

prided themselves on like being an alternative to the grunge scene. Like they even had, you know, they would throw on, throw shows together and like on the flyer it would say like screw Seattle, you know, like that was the

name of the show and stuff like that. So, yeah, they were trying to like be like an alternative to to grunge. But I mean, you hear it in the music like it, it sounds like a heavier grunge, you know. Yeah. Which is why I like it a lot.

Which is crazy because, I mean, you know, we've talked about, you know, three different flavors of this rock in the early 90s, shoe gaze, grunge, and desert rock. That's tough, dude. Yeah. And we talked about, I mean, the very first episode that we did was Alice and Shane's dirt. Right. And I talked about how that was sort of the heavier side of Grunge, you know. Yeah, yeah.

And this is just another one of those, you know, it's an offshoot. If you look at the music tree, you know, I would put Desert Rock as a branch of grunge, you know. I just would. You know what I would say? I'd say it's just another side of the coin. You would say that. But how many, dude, there's only two sides of a coin, bro. How many sides does your coin have?

You got multiple coins involved. I don't know, dude. That's confusing as fun. I know it doesn't work. Super confusing. Anyway, so, yeah, so one thing worth mentioning, and we can sort of, actually, you know what, let's take a quick break, cue, and then we'll come back, and we'll do our watch your herds. And we're back, and you know what, dude, I was thinking about it.

maybe we can just say it's just another face of the dye. Okay, yeah, because you know what? If you play like, you know, tabletop games, like you could buy like, you know, 12-sided die or something like that, you know? Sure, sure. Okay. All right. I feel better now.

I feel better now. It's all cleared up now. So are we moving on to Watcher Hertz? Yes. Now, we're going to keep talking about Desert Rock, Q. Okay. But we'll close out. with one more clip.

But yeah, let's do our watcher heard real quick. We didn't do those last week because the Queen's episode was so long and jam-packed with tunage. So anyway, Q, what you've been heard in lately? Well, I would have said it was tune-packed with jammage, but I didn't know you're going to laugh so. That's funny. All right. Okay. Well, guess where I heard this, dude?

Just guess. K-E-X-P? Correct. Because, you know what? I've got the station on often in my car. How much? Are they paying you, dude? No, dude.

I wish. It's pretty much. I want to be a part of that. We're doing like weekly ads for them. No, no, no, no, no. We have paid them, you know, to help contribute. Oh, you guys, did you guys get it like a tow bag or something? nah we didn't give them that much money yeah you gotta give them like 50 bucks to go to

something like that but uh we actually we give more money to k ua w which is our our mpr affiliate station yeah yeah uh so this is an artist uh who goes by sasami or sashimi or sasimi or i guarantee you do we're just gonna say all the word i'm just why i said all the different ways that it could possibly be. You've got yourself covered. Yeah, yeah. Which is actually her first name. Her full names is, her full names is.

Her full name is Sasami Ashworth. I felt like I had some of that for dinner the other night. Oh my God, dude. She goes by Sasami. It's stylized and guess what, dude. It's all caps. Of course it is, man. If you're a new band and you don't have all caps in your name,

you might as well just fucking give up. you're not going to amount to nothing. Yeah, yeah. So she's been making music since 2012, or at least been, you know, out there since 2012. But this is her first full-length album. It's self-titled. It just came out in March of this year.

You remember that artist that I played, I think it was when we first brought back our Whatcha Heard's. It was the artist named J-SOM. Yeah, I remember. Yeah. This is very much in the same vein. I haven't really listened to the album all the way through, but this one's a great track because K-E-X-P is so cool.

It's not a single, what they played it anyways. You know what I'm saying? So this is track three on the album. It's called Morning Comes. Man, her vocals remind me of something of a band. I can't quite put my finger on it down. You know who she reminds me of? Her voice and like kind of the way that she writes or melodies,

it kind of reminds me of Jose Gonzalez for some reason. You know who that is? Ah, I don't know about that, dude. Well, I didn't. Of course, I only know one Jose Gonzalez. So. Well, just, uh, okay, you know, I can maybe see it a little bit. Now that I'm thinking about that.

A little bit. A little bit. I like the drums in that, man. Just really, kind of straightforward. I like to do. Very, very repetitive. Um, yeah, I liked it. So again, that is Sasami and her first full-length album came out earlier this year.

It is self-titled. That song was called Morning Comes. So what you got for me, brother? What you've been heard into lately? Okay, so these guys are technically classified as shoegaze. Not to go back to shoegaze, but what can I say? Well, that's what you're doing, so. I've actually, I've been aware of these guys for a while now.

They pronounced by the name, or, uh, what? The name, guess what, cute. What? It's all capital letters, baby. But it's D-I-I-V. D-I-I-V. Pronounced D-I-V. Oh, I've heard of them.

Yeah, sure you have. So, um, they formed back in 2011. indie rock dream pop shoe gaze band from new york city which one is it that's all of us it indie rock is it dream pop or is a shoe it's all all actually that's yeah we already talked about how we did didn't we so there you go um it's synonymous the shoe case yep so um they they came out their their first album came out oh fuck what am i doing yeah i remember um them i remember that album cover yeah Ocean is what it's called.

So you see what they're doing, dive, ocean. I see that. And it's not, you know what? It's not spelled like you'd think ocean is spelled. No. And dive is not spelled like dive would be.

So that's, you know, they know what they're doing. So interestingly enough, the drummer, actually, no, I guess he's the lead singer.

His name is Zachary Cole Smith. And prior to forming dive, he played drums for beach fossils. and play guitar with a rock band, a psych rock band called Soft Black. So, you know, he decided, you know what I'm going to do my own thing now. So he started a band called Dive and, you know, basically enlisted his friends from childhood and brought in a guy that used to play for the Smith Westerns,

which is another dream pop band from that era, to play drums. on the live band. Anyway, they just put out a new single called Blankenship. And we're going to listen to that right now. That's that? Yes. There's not far.

I guess it's all the way. Blankenship. Children need the cry. You're so good. Yeah, man. Killer drums, killer bass. Yes. Yeah.

So I wouldn't, there's nothing about that that gives off a shoegaze vibe to me, except for maybe a voice, maybe. I think it's the distortion and the maybe. Yeah, maybe. The fuzz, the fuzz. The fuzz. Now, that's not to say that, like, that band, that, their first record, which we talked about, Ocean, definitely has sort of the signature shoe gaze guitar sound.

A bit more droney. Yeah, but they've kind of evolved. and it sort of changed their sound from record to record. But I just really like that. Yeah. So that single, it's got three tracks on it. That's the title track. Again, that was called Blankenship.

And that was a band called Dive. All right, Q. So this is a sidetrack episode. So we're going to keep it short and sweet as we tend to do. But I wanted to close out with the really cool clip from that documentary that is a A live, must have been some, you know, home video. Somebody recorded a couple of the guys from Yawning Man just doing like a jam session. And this guy who's on guitar, which is what the clip mainly focuses on, his name is Mario Lolly.

And he went by the name, Boomer. Like that was kind of his nickname. But he and his brother, I think it was his brother or his cousin or something like that. one of his family members. He played bass, and they would just do these jam sessions. And Josh Ham, or is it, Hami, Josh Hami mentioned Mario as like sort of this, the way he called it was unheckleable, as in like, while he was up there playing, like, nobody would ever even consider yelling like, you suck or something like that, you know?

Because like, the guy was just. so pretty good. He was just so awesome. And like Josh said that that was his goal was to just be unheckleable like this guy. So anyway, here's a quote from Brandt Bjork, which as I mentioned earlier was the, he was the drummer for Caius, but here's a quick quote from him. He says here, yawning man was the sickest desert band of all time. You'd just be up there in the desert.

Everybody'd just be hanging, partying, and they'd show up in their van and just mellow, drag out their shit, and set up right about the time. Sun was going down. Set up the generators. Sometimes they'd just go up there and drink beers and barbecue. Sometimes it would be a scene. Sometimes it would be very intimate. It was very casual and loose, and everybody would like, while they're playing, everyone would just lounge around. They were kind of like a house band.

It wasn't militant like Black Flag. it was very drugged, very stony, very mystical. Everyone's just tripping, and they're just playing away for hours. The greatest band I've ever seen. I'm pretty sure now that I'm reflecting back on it, I think I said this exact quote. Yeah, when we did. That's cool.

Yeah, but that was, you know, a long time ago. So anyway. A while ago. And that's kind of, remember what I said earlier that, like, the desert rock scene didn't really have a, like, a, for sure, like, particular sound, you know? Like a lot of the yawning meant stuff has like some surf guitar vibes like all up in it.

Dude, if you say yawn one more time, I think I might actually have to yawn. Well, you're not going to be yawning when you hear this clip did. All right. Next week, we're going to do our first, I would say, legit metal band on our metal month. We're going to talk about a doom metal band

from Denver. They go by the name Kimmiss, K-H-E-M-I-S, and they are probably my favorite metal band to come out, like new metal band to come out in the last five years. These guys are young guns, man, but they can shred like nobody's business, dude. Okay, so we're going to talk about Kimmiss next week, and that'll do it for this episode. we're going to have Mr. Mario Lami. Wait shit

Is that I pronounce his name? It's Lammy. I don't know. We're going to have Mr. Mario Boomer Lolly close us out with a little guitar jamming and check out

more great music podcast over at Pantheonpodcast.com. You can find a link to our website there. And from our website you can check out all of our previous episodes. all of our show notes. And that's that. My name is Travis.

And I'm Quentin. See y'all next week. Watching guys like Boomer when I was 12, 13 years old. I remember thinking that Boomer was unheckleable. There was no way you could say, you suck. He just, he was so, he meant it so much. And I remember thinking that's what I want to be is unheckleable. At the time, Boomer was a big, really big guy, you know, and his cousin Larry, like a stick skinny, and they're the same height. So they were just this beautiful odd couple.