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Rating: The desert is not only a geographical place, the desert is something we have inside... it is a place of the soul.
You can never have been to the desert and yet have a clear feeling of knowing it perfectly, like the corner behind your house or the makeshift soccer field where you spent thousands of hours sweating behind a Tango. Each of us has had our own inner desert, some only for a few minutes, others for longer... and some, like myself, as a natural and constant habitat throughout one's formation. And I repeat, I have never physically set foot in Rancho de la Luna near Joshua Tree (although perhaps, now, it seems the time has come to do so) and imagine the astonishment of my neurons and nerves the first time I listened to Gardenia Thumb or Whitewater... finally someone had expressed and made tangible that hidden mood of mine, those feelings and certain states of soul and mind.
I immediately went in search of all that is knowable and listenable on these young long-haired Americans, who resembled so much the flannel "heroes" that filled the pages, the newspapers, and the airwaves of the era, but how distant they were from them in the imaginative world they created, even though they shared historical/musical roots and I almost bounced against a rubber wall, few (very few, remember that the advent of the internet was still a good five years away) pieces of information, an almost mystical imagination around their figures, better to say smoky... but it didn't matter, there was their music and that was enough for me at the time. There were "Blues For The Red Sun" and "Welcome To Sky Valley" and these two MASTERPIECES increased the mystical aura around their figures, strictly desert and altered images increased in me the feeling of closeness between my desert and theirs; and the notes emerging from the speakers in constant balance between the arrogant power of Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath and the out-of-focus harmony of Electric Prunes and 13th Floor Elevators magically merged together, so much so that, comfortably stoned on my couch, I could feel the burning heat of the sand under my feet and the icy wind through my hair. A vortex sucked me in when I realized that after missing them live in Milan (it was 1995 in that terrible place known as the Factory) I had to realize that I would never be able to exorcise my desert in a frenzied pagan dance before the shamans John and Josh.
But certain "wounds," stitched up by years and aging, sometimes continue to cause pain, very often simple and irritating discomfort, except then fate or some powerful Navajo shaman gives you the opportunity to heal them forever, thus even preserving a pleasant memory, and this was possible for me on a mild evening in late March, near Milan, thanks to the stubborn tenacity (profit, many said and even if not inappropriately, who cares...!) of John Garcia. Never mind Josh's absence, never mind that more than 15 years have passed, never mind that, as I've heard, who cares about the Kyuss anymore and that the music has evolved over this time span... never mind my severe toothache, never mind that they did not perform "Demon Cleaner", patience... I (together with thousands of other souls, and some were not yet on this planet twenty years ago) participated in a ritual healing ceremony in the middle of the Mojave at more than 100 degrees in temperature, forever healing some old wounds in the presence of 4 mystical rock shamans, who I believe (in part) have also made peace with part of their (majestic) past... the satisfaction in John Garcia's grin or in Nick Oliveri's gentle childlike smile bear witness to this. A truly live war machine.
And never mind if they’re not called Kyuss anymore... Kyuss Lives!
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