The infamous generator parties that sparked the desert rock scene
Generator parties have become the stuff of legend in the rock scene, serving as the edgier precursor to events like Burning Man and Coachella – and the Palm Desert music movement was ground zero for these gatherings in the early 1980s and late ’90s.
Situated in the Coachella Valley, bands from Palm Desert found they were just far enough away from all the major surrounding cities that it was a massive inconvenience to drive to play there. Rather than travel the two hours it would take to reach Mexico or San Diego, they simply set up shop in their own backyard.
Despite its brutal heat, playing in the desert had its upsides. It was expansive and vast, which meant that unlike the DIY shows taking place at house parties in the city, cops were far less likely to interrupt. They could try, but the desert-goers would simply scatter across the dunes. And when they weren’t running from the police, musicians would be hauling amps and generators over the sand to fuel their rock-filled evenings.
The sounds these bands created at generator fuelled jam sessions have been dubbed ‘desert rock’, a souped-up mix of blues, psychedelia, and grunge. It’s a genre built on the foundations laid by acts like Yawning Man and Kyuss, both products of the Palm Desert scenes’ interplay with all kinds of local bands – session blues musicians, Latin artists, and small-time punk outfits.
There was a huge emphasis on repetitive drum beats, free-form jamming, and grindingly heavy riffs. More often than not, also a steady dose of psychedelics to encourage artistic freedom and creativity. It’s part of the reason desert rock is often interchangeable with stoner rock, a crossover that speaks to the variety of genres the generator parties fuelled.
Josh Homme, the former Kyuss guitarist and Queens of the Stone Age frontman, has explained that artistic freedom was crucial to the development of the scene simply because desert democracy meant that anyone could play if they wanted to. As Homme is often quoted as saying: “There’s no clubs here, so you can only play for free. If people don’t like you, they’ll tell you. You can’t suck.”
In keeping with that spirit is Homme’s Desert Sessions project, which he began in 1997. Intended to be an ongoing series of music spanning across multiple volumes, he’d collaborate with artists to work on songs written, rehearsed, and recorded in under a week – all in the Rancho de la Luna desert studio.
Many of his collaborators were familiar faces from the desert rock scene, but have also included the likes of PJ Harvey and Dean Ween. The Desert Sessions volumes have introduced fans of Homme to the likes of Fu Manchu, Fatso Jetson and countless others.
