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The Yawning Man, born in 1986 from the extra-sensory aspirations of Gary Arce, Alfredo Hernandez, and cousins Mario and Larry Lalli (who later played in the equally legendary Fatso Jetson), were the band that first established the stereotypes, still firmly held today, related to the Palm Desert, California scene, the yawning man that best captured the boredom and desire to escape surrounding the Californian deserts. A jam-band of extraordinary versatility, contributed significantly to creating that exotic and mystical imagery of places and sensations that would later be summarized in the single term "stoner-rock". They were the first to bring to life the generator parties at the edge of the desert with their endless jam sessions, and they were the main inspiration for the bands that definitively institutionalized the genre with the masterpieces of the '90s. Just quoting the words, more weighty than mine, that Brant Bjork released in a 2002 interview, suffices to quantify their importance:
<< Yawning Man is the most incredible desert-band of all time. You just had to be out there in the desert where everyone was partying. They would arrive in their van, set up their generators as the sun was going down, and simply play for hours and hours. It wasn't militant music like Black Flag's. It was very drugged, stone-y, and mystical. Oh, ultimately, they are the best band I have ever seen play. >>
The first publication under the name Yawning Man came only in 2005 with the LP "Rock Formations", followed by two more, even more recent, discographic chapters, all works that can be considered "minor" compared to the historical significance of this monumental two-disc anthology, which gathers what are, in all likelihood, the first stoner songs in history and best capture, in their most prolific period, the prime movers of the Palm Desert music scene. These are thirty "samples" of their late '80s desert jams, showcasing their extraordinary improvisational capability. Indeed, they range from some bizarre and limping rhythmic experiments, sometimes tinged with surf music, reminiscent of Greg Ginn's post-Black Flag free-form guitar work (not coincidentally, Gary Arce also released some discs in the following decade with the free-jazz project Sort of Quartet for SST Records) and even venturing into freak-funk deliriums like "Saco", to true heavy-metal outbursts ("Fire of Papas Chile") and the osmotic psychedelia present largely on the second disc, which precedes all subsequent incarnations of stoner-rock. Indeed, the lysergic guitar work of "SLAB", the circular and liquid progression of some songs ("Devil's Ladder"), the dreamy sound of others ("Bet I'll Six"; the almost Doors-like and colorful "Moroccan Stash") not to mention the nine-minute cosmic trip of "Deaf Conductor", are already bona fide blues for the red sun, true leitmotifs made available to the stoner groups of the following years.
So, is there a need to add anything else to prove their historical importance? Perhaps yes, since even Kyuss, the most famous shamans on the planet, paid tribute to them with their cover of "Catamaran" (present in this collection), in their "...And the Circus Leaves Town" (1995, Elektra Records). If, in fact, the '80s had already known extraordinary interpreters of desert rock who, however, more faithfully revisited the heavyweight acid-rock of the '60s, Yawning Man were the first to adapt the heavy psychedelia, the heavy-psych of Blue Cheer, Hawkwind, Jimi Hendrix, and Black Sabbath to the moods and drugs of the Californian teenagers living on the edge of the desert.
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