Lo Sound Desert

- Something cool about the desert.

- It is a trippy place.

The obvious, big sky,

vast amounts of space...

- Sounds cheesy but you soak it up.

And you know, I think that it comes through in the music,

it really does.

- If you live in the middle of the city,

there's places people go where no one's around.

Whereas in the desert, you know,

I just have to go, like, two streets over

and I was looking at basically a horizon,

and I wouldn't see pavement,

a building, or a power pole.

It was on the edge of infinity there, you know.

I was like, "Fuck this, man.

"There's nothing out here and it's way too far away

"from everything," you know, 'cause it was literally still,

you know, not built yet.

Coachella Valley, this is our desert,

this is the whole thing.

10 East.

Right there, boom.

Highway 111, Palm Springs,

yeah, coming right into town,

this is where we are.

Cathedral City, Rancho Mirage.

That's all of Palm Springs back in the '30s.

Very little, right?

My great-grandfather had a cactus garden right there.

He came to the desert in the early 1900s

and homesteaded, pioneering white family,

and took this thing around finding water.

So my granmda and my great-uncle

were the first white people born in Palm Springs,

which sound insane,

but it was just Indians.

There was no, kind of weird, second-class thing happening.

They were poor white people and they were poor Indians.

("So Low She Rose" by Sean Wheeler , Zander Schloss)

* Waiting on a guilt trip

* Sitting out the flu

* Dying for a repeat

* Taking it for two

- This is my favorite back route right here.

This is the last little neighborhood.

Little zone.

That used to be my family's trailer park,

now it's a Motel 6.

* So low she rose up like the sun

* Up like the sun, up like the sun

* So low she rose up like the sun *

- Best neighborhood in Palm Springs right here.

For as uptight as, you know, America might be,

you've got your leather gay shop right there

with all the, you know, paddles, ball gags,

locks and chambers,

then you got killer Mexican restaurant,

and you got the Tool Shed,

leather boy gay bar.

And then you got all-nude girls across the street,

and you've got legalized marijuana, Big I,

right there too,

so this is a very...

It's a perfect little neighborhood.

You know, weed, drugs, girls, boys,

and good Mexican food.

- The desert's great.

Well, I appreciate it more now

that I'm seven hours away from it.

* Lucifer's here

* He sleeps in the rear

* Can't understand him and it's all that I hear

- But there's things I miss about it, though.

It's nice to come back.

We're setting the stuff up,

everybody's gonna have a good time.

It's not as hot as people thought,

so everything seems good.

It's how it goes.

Try to make a nice show for the people.

Have some fun.

- There's venues down in the desert now.

There's a couple bars that do music every weekend.

So, people aren't as desperate for that kind of stuff

as they used to be when I was growing up down there.

Boredom.

- Growing up, obviously, you do whatever you do.

You go out and it's too hot,

you try to entertain yourself.

Maybe as a kid you play sports,

or we liked to skateboard when we were young.

Then you hit puberty and you start to party and chase girls.

Everybody dates each other's girlfriends

because it's such a small town.

- We were waiting for the scum bus for like a half hour

in my Chuck Taylors and

the sidewalk being so hot that it actually

was starting to melt and loosen up the bottom of my shoes.

It's hard to be cool,

it's hard to be a punk in the desert.

All that shit you put on to be punk,

like mascara and hairspray,

it just starts melting and it burns your eyes.

- Palm Springs, where I live,

you know, it's a resort town.

The poor people stayed in the summer,

and rich people came here to bourgeois in winter.

But that's about it,

it's where old people go to retire and play golf.

You know, nothing to do,

unless you golf,

which I don't.

"Sonny Bono,

"Frank Sinatra, and other interments of interest."

Number 151.

We did a great show at the Graveyard in Palm Springs.

The singer for the bands that I was in then,

the band was called Valley Days,

his parents were the caretakers,

and they went away.

Sinatra was alive then, now Sinatra's dead

and he's buried here.

You'd see Dean Martin.

You'd see weird people like movie stars,

and then you think about that generation

and what they must have thought of us.

- Palm Springs at that time

was dominated by Frank Sinatra

and his Rat Pack culture.

He lived in Rancho Mirage,

which is just outside of Palm Springs.

- It was far enough away from their wives

that they could feel like they were in another state,

come here, and get laid.

They'd bring their girlfriends out here,

get drunk, shoot guns, play golf.

It was like you were in another world.

- The whole scene was around these little lounges

where Frank Sinatra-type of musicians

would sing "New York, New York."

So there grew up to be this Ring-a-Ding-Ding

type of swing culture that really hated rock and roll

because Frank Sinatra hated rock and roll.

So they basically banned rock and roll in the 1970s.

There was no concerts at all in the mid 1980s.

- Great voice, mafia connections.

- But you can't stop rock music from developing,

you can't stop kids from practicing their favorite art form,

so this underground singing developed, basically.

- To be honest, it never really got bigger,

it was always the same size.

It was always somewhere between 200 and 600 people.

And you knew 450 of them.

- When punk rock was happening in Los Angeles,

it naturally pervaded the Coachella Valley, also.

There was a band called Target 13

that was very influential.

- The theme song to Rodney on the Rock

was written by Target 13.

- The leader of that group

had a skateboard shop in downtown Palm Springs,

and so he was kind of a meeting place

for a lot of the punkers.

- Myke Bates, he was the only

punk rocker in high school

and he was the only one that was old enough to have a car,

that would take you to a punk rock show in LA.

- Those guys were all doing the same thing,

but not so much generator parties,

but they set it for us, you know?

- Yes it rock sound and stoner rock.

I'm 47 years old.

What was in my record collection growing up?

It was hard rock.

Blue Cheer.

Slade.

Black Sabbath, of course.

The most underrated AC DC album

that Bon Scott didn't sing on.

Cactus.

- My family influence was Jackson Browne,

The Doors, Hendrix,

and a lot of blues stuff.

Just a smattering of blues, Chuck Berry.

And then...

To punk.

Ology, Stooges.

I forgot to mention the Ramones in my influences.

They're number one.

The Misfits and Black Flag

and GBH and Exploited.

GG Allen, of course,

Glevel Surfers.

This album changed my life.

GBH.

- I knew when I heard it

that that was where I belong.

- I think the desert scene,