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Desert Rock

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I’m off to The Lakes in a couple of weekend’s time with 2 very good friends from University days. We’re all now past 50 and we’re all consciously making time for each other following the death of a mutual friend. We’re attempting a couple of big walks including the 23km Kentmere Round that takes in 6 or 7 of Wainwright’s peaks. On the musical front I’ve been listening to and sharing with them via Spotify playlists a lot of American rock music in recent months and have really got into 70s ZZ Top and the sub-genre of Desert Rock. I’m familiar with what Josh Homme’s contributed to this style of ambient blues rock and my ear horn’s lasso also takes in bands like Calexico, Giant Sands and even The Pixies (e.g. ‘Ana’). I’d really appreciate any recommendations for songs that fall into this category and by way of example I’m throwing up ‘El Diablo’ by ZZ Top, a song that for me typifies the mood this genre evokes. We’re 3 blokes who have very diverse music tastes but this music is something that we’ve come to enjoy together when we meet up, walk for hours and then head back to enjoy a glass of something strong as we talk into the early hours.

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  1. Ah yes the ‘desert rock’ sub-genre. There was a list of the 10 best desert rock albums to own on vinyl on some page I follow on Facebook just recently. I fully expected At least a showing from the Calexico/ Giant Sand front. Not a bit of it – apparently they aren’t of that genre. To be complete honest the list comprised bands I’d mostly never heard of and so memorable I can’t remember any of them. Kyuss perhaps?

    • Yes. I know what you mean. It’s that weirdly self-aggrandising thing when a music journalist comes up with a name for some “new music” because he or she has listened to something they’ve never heard before and then in a moment of self-delusional revelation decides to monopolise their notion that a new genre of music has suddenly been discovered by their fair hand when anyone who’s ever listened to music outside of a social media timeline can rest-assuredly exclaim, “You know, Miles Davis/Roy Harper/Dr. John/Graham Gouldman/Gene Clark/Bessie Smith/ *add favourite musical innovator here* was mining this musical ore many moons ago but was too busy being fucking brilliant to rest on their laurels and repeat themselves.”

      • Woah, hang on. Desert Rock is a well and long established sub genre, not some passing Facebook fancy. Think big fuzzy bass and Sabbath riffs, Kyuss and Fu Manchu, anyone on Mans Ruin. Much as I love Calexico, I’d never call them Desert Rock, their geographical situation notwithstanding.

        • I know, I accept that. I was pointing out in a jocular way that there is a tendency to talk about music in terms of a sub-genre because some journalists declare it to be so and then some people get all anal about what does and doesn’t qualify as Desert Rock ‘cos them that know say so. To me it’s about the mood evoked as much as the fact that a band like Kyuss is representative of the genre. To me they’re at the epicentre but then there’s rings of influence and sound around that epicentre that you can connect. So that’s why I think certain songs by the likes of Giant Sand and Calexico count because they match the mood even if they’re not as stoner or as rocky.

  5. Thin White Rope? To me they would be the epitome of what I would think of as desert rock, which as far as I can remember WAS a genre back in the days when bands like Giant Sand( & other bands, that also got classed as Paisley Underground) started. It’s been kinda usurped by the more heavy stoner bands now. Label shmabel anyhow. Yeah, Thin White Rope. I only got to see ’em live once. They were ferocious! Turn this vid up to 11 & ye might get close to it.

  6. Maybe some Green On Red? Am very fond of The Killer Inside Me album from way back.

    Dan Stuart is still putting out music(for now, he says he’s quitting soon) from where he’s living in Mexico, which has a kind of deserty feel to me. Might be too mellow for what ya want.

  8. And I’d deffo put early Giant Sand in there, especially from their time living out in the Mohave desert. Howe & I were penpals way back for a few years when I was having a tough time of it. He was living out in Rimrock managing a 4 room motel for a friend of his. He’d send me pictures of cactuses & his truck to cheer me up & rough tapes of jams from the Red Shed out back where they’d record a few of their albums on 4 track. I’m still here, so I guess it worked.

  10. A couple more then. The Geraldine Fibbers, to me, would be the female equivalent of Thin White Rope. They had that same brooding intensity, & one o’ the best ever frontwomen in Carla Bozulich

  12. Lets lever these in here. Are they desert rock? Probably not. More psych, but I love ’em, & I’d be quite happy to listen to ’em in the desert (or anywhere else for that matter) Just saw ’em live last month when they came to do a small tour in the UK. They are playing here again in October I think. Go see!!

    Albums available on Bandcamp

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