Great bands are a reflection of their environment. Beyond the sum of their collective influences, some bands are so in synch with their surroundings that it seems impossible to imagine them emerging from anywhere outside of their home base. The Beach Boys and Southern California, Darkthrone and Norway, The Clash and London. Yawning Man is one of those bands. Hailing from the Californian Mojave desert, and one of the original bands playing the area’s famed generator parties, their music takes its full meaning when placed in its vast, sun-drenched home. This couldn’t be any truer than on their newly released live record/concert film Live At Giant Rock, out on Heavy Psych Sounds Records. The incredible footage proves that, in pure symbiotic relationship, Yawning Man sounds like the desert and the desert sounds like Yawning Man.
For fans of the now famous Desert Rock sound, Yawning Man is a must. Jamming out together since all the way back to ’86, they remained relatively unheralded outside of their circle until the release of their first official album in 2005. The band made up for lost time since and now finds itself in perhaps the most prolific period of their career, for our pleasure.
We spoke to bassist Mario Lalli on two separate occasions, combined here into a single interview.
What have you been listening to the most lately?
I would say I listen to ELLIOT SMITH a lot lately. A band called DIIV. I’m also listening to PELL MELL a lot.
You actually mentioned in your original answers that their album Interstate is the record that you’ve listened to the most in your life, right?
I don’t know about most in my life, it’s kind of hard to recall. That’s a difficult statement to make but almost every time I’ve taken a drive on the freeway and taking a little trip or anything, it’s always part of the playlist.
What is it about that record that you really like?
It’s instrumental for a one thing. The band is all instrumental, but their music is very introspective, it conjures feelings and visuals. It’s quite cinematic in the way that, the minute you hear it, it sits in a place in your chest that’s kind of driven intuitively, by emotion…and I don’t mean a dramatic emotion…It’s conjuring. That’s the best word that I can use to say, it strikes deep. I mean, some of their music is playful but all of it has a thread, just another level deeper, that kind of strikes the emotions. It is pretty consistent in all their music, that element is there. There’s not much fluff, or stuff that’s just thrown out there to past the time. It has to do really with the melodies. Also, the guitar players are very unique, they have a minimal, very effective, deliberate approach. When I say deliberate, I mean that every note has a meaning, a deliberate, conscious place. And it’s very simplistic, they’re not virtuoso guys with all these crazy things.
A lot of music that loses me, whether it’s Rock and Roll, or Jazz, or Pop, or any genre, any music that loses me…and I’m guilty of this too, I don’t pass judgment on it…But what I’m saying is, I just disconnect with it at the point when musicians or even the vocalist, they’re just filling space or showing off the ability, the technique, and putting the technique and the ability before the actual melody, or the composition. Like, when you listen to a lot of Hard Rock music, there’s the guitar solo. We listen to the radio a lot when we’re driving and I find myself picking apart these songs that are so popular, that you’ve heard 1000 times. Like the one that came on the radio the other day was METALLICA. I’m not a fan at all, I’ve never really been. I have one of their records from when I was a kid and going through a phase of discovering some of these new Heavy Metal bands. I grew up on classic Hard Rock and I dabbled into that second wave of this Heavy Metal music. Anyway, there was this song Enter Sandman on the radio, and I think, for the first time ever, I really listened to what they decided was going on that song. There were a few moments where there was this kind of unique progression of notes that made some sort of a memorable melody but most of it was an exercise in, quote-unquote, Hard Rock or Heavy Metal guitar techniques. It wasn’t about the end result of the notes and the way they made you feel. Again, it’s not that every song has to make you feel a certain way or this or that but that’s what speaks to me.
You know, PELL MELL, very minimal but each note is placed because it has an effect on the way it makes you feel, that’s why I am really drawn in to their music.
I can’t help myself but to make a parallel with Yawning Man. Pretty much everything that you describe about Pell Mell is what I see in your band, especially thinking of the live concert at Giant Rock, where it’s all about the feel and the energy of the place.
Well, myself and our guitar player Gary, we’re both quite capable of mindless wanking *hums a guitar solo*. In our own limited, weird style, we’re capable of that but I’ve become more and more conscious of making that stuff. The musicians that I play with regularly, and have for 20 plus years, we improvise a lot when we play. We jam. Sometimes, improvising can conjure images of Jazz and it’s in the same spirit but in that jamming is where I learned a lesson. For that to remain a real enriching experience, and not just become passing time with your guitar in your hand, -which is a great way to pass time! With your buddies playing loud and rocking out.- But for it to really remain relevant and present and engaged and make it an interesting thing that you’re doing, to give the improvisation life, to keep it going forward, you need to distill those ideas and not just noodle, and wank and yank. Because that gets boring really quick, not only to listen to, but also to play. It’s almost like it’s just a step above sitting in the guitar store and going *hums a guitar solo”. It’s not really interacting, you’re not communicating with one another. To do that, you kind of have to slow down and choose the notes.
Does that feeling translates to live concerts? Do you approach music differently live when you see a band, as opposed to listening to a record?
Yeah, it’s very different experience for me. There’s a completely different energy that I enjoy in the two worlds. When I listen to a record, it’s enriching for me on so many levels because there’s the song as a whole then, as a musician, I tend to focus on all the little elements of it, from the production to the different instrumentation, the roles that they play within the song. On a record, the ideas are so refined, the reaction of the listener is so fine tuned. Even with really raw, loud, crazy bombastic music, the communication between the sound and the listener is so refined. Live is different. There’s the energy of the performance, there’s the visual aspect of watching a performer. There’s the people around you, it’s totally different. I can remember a few times when a band plays a song that I really have a connection to, it’s always very exciting for me, to hear it live and to see it performed. It’s very exciting. It’s a different thing, so it doesn’t affect me the same way.
Is there any genres or even artists that you love live but can’t really get into listening to a record by them? Or vice versa?
I don’t know. I guess there might be some cases, but if it connects with me, it connects with me, and I’ll enjoy them both. There’s probably a lot of older Punk Rock stuff that I still listen to that I’m not sure if I would go see the band live these days because it would just be such a different experience than back then. For instance, I love BLACK FLAG, I love DEAD KENNEDYS. Or FEAR is a good example.
It makes sense because you’ve seen them in their prime. Actually, what are some of most memorable shows that you’ve ever seen? What makes them so special to you?
I saw the BAD BRAINS, MISFITS and BLACK FLAG at Santa Monica Civic in 82. It was the relevance of the music scene in my life. This was probably one of the two or three first concerts I have been to, other than attending maybe a concert with my brother and sister. Every one of those bands at that time were touring relentlessly and from my point of view, they were at the hardest working, strongest point that they have reached. The records that they were supporting at the time too, from Walk Among Us to I Against I to Black Flag’s Damaged, it was fucking crazy. At the show, each band was terrifyingly intense. I was actually scared. I was down on the floor when Black Flag started and the energy was so spooky, just over the top intense. I was there with a couple friends and this is kind of like, you show up with your boogie board to North Shore in Hawaii thinking that, because you used to float around in the waves in San Diego, you have any business getting in the ocean at North Shore. You jump in and this fucking 20 foot face wave’s coming at you, with huge rocks down beneath you and it’s like, fuck this! I’m going back to the beach! And that’s what it was like, I was like, okay, we’re done, I’m going to the bleachers.
You know, I was just a kid, man, so it was crazy. Black Flag was terrifying. The Misfits put on the most insane show. I remember that on the first or second song, the three front guys, Doyle and Danzig and Jerry Only, they’re right at the front of the stage, just fucking pummeling. And on the last beat of the song, they both took their guitar and basses and they just threw them behind, up and back, and they flew all the way to the back of the stage behind the backline. It was like, “what the fuck is going on?” And then the Bad Brains was just fucking crazy. They opened with Sailin’ On and the band started with the downbeat *hums the beat* and HR came sprinting from the side of the stage, and just lurched off the monitor and just flipped like a kid jumping off the diving board and doing some crazy flips, like three or four flips in the air. He just threw himself into the audience with the microphone, that was the opening song. My jaw was on the floor through the whole thing. There was something so scary about it.
You know, we got to remember that the mosh pit and all this stuff that we take for granted as part of live music culture now and there’s all these sub genres of Punk and Metal, back then, this was all just getting going. When the Hardcore scene started to get bigger and drawing more people to the shows, there was some spooky people that were attracted to the energy, the violence and the chaos. That added an element of danger and excitement to the big Punk shows. All that stuff was forming. It wasn’t going to the Vans Warped Tour and seeing a bunch of people trying to recreate or reenact this thing that makes, “this is what a punk show is!” The moshing and all that stuff was just being created. There was a whole other level of excitement because you just gone, “What the fuck is this? What’s going on?” So yeah, for those reasons, it was one of the most memorable shows. I came away from it and I told that story for weeks about The Misfits throwing the guitars and HR flipping like a fuckin’ crazy man off the stage and Black Flag being terrifyingly fuckin’ menacing and all the crazy people at the show. And that we decided to recoil to the highest place in the building, in the seats in the back, to feel safe. It was incredible man.
What is the most impressive band that you’ve toured with? The one that you just had to watch every night? Did you learn anything from them or by watching them?
SACCHARINE TRUST. For me, their performances were so incredibly engaging. You know, when you tour with a band for a week or two or a month, you see them every night, every night, every night, there’s some bands that just do their set, they play it well. Even if they’re a great band, great musicians, it’s basically the same thing every night and every night. Going back to what we were talking about in music with improvisation, that can make a performance different from place to place, from time to time. It can be inspired, or sometimes it can fall a little flat. Sometimes it can add a whole new amazing dimension to witnessing a performance. So Saccharine Trust is one of these bands that not only their songs hit a special chord with me, Jack Brewer’s poetry, his intensity, his complete surrender to the time that he is up there with a microphone in front of the band. It’s like he becomes possessed by the music and his words. He’s totally present.
It’s an acquired taste for a Rock music listener, they’re not easy to go “Oh yeah, this got a good beat. The riffs are good.” It’s not that kind of music. It’s a very complex tapestry of weirdness that is contingent on each member’s contribution. They’re all very unique musicians, they all have a very unique voice on their instruments, from the drums to the guitar, Joe Bazai is one of my biggest influences, not in style and approach as much as just in theory and his mode of expression, the way he thinks about music and the way that he thinks about his motivation to create music. I have all those wonderful things from Joe and I also love the way he plays guitar. It’s a huge influence. I love his tone. His style is so unique, the minute you hear Joe Bazai play guitar, you know it’s him. You could have a fucking 10-piece orchestra over the top and you would hear Joe Bazai. Now, back to watching the band every night and every night, when you watch Saccharine Trust every night, it’s different for one thing and it’s always as intense as the night before, if not more. They never phone in a performance, they never just go through the motions, go through the setlist. It’s always an engaging expression of art. There’s a lot of musicians like that but I haven’t toured with that maybe.
Is there any up and coming bands that you would like to give a shout out to?
Not really up and coming but they’re younger guys, this band DIIV. They are a band that, over the last year, I got really excited about. They were on tour with a band called DEAFHEAVEN. This band is pretty popular in the states. It’s kind of Post-Rock Emo…I don’t know. I was working the floor at Pappy and Harriet’s (Note: venue in Pionnertown, CA) and they have this concert out back, outside. A lot of people showed up and Diiv was opening the show, and I’d never heard of him before. They’ve only put three records out but they have quite a following and one of the main songwriter, he’s quite talented. The guitar playing and his songwriting is very sweet and very pure and I really love the approach, speaking to what I was talking about earlier, about choosing notes and no filler, this is a band that exercises this kind of way.
So when I saw them play live, I was like, “wow, this is a band that I would love to tour with and be friends with”, because I connected with their music so much. “I got to know these guy, I can’t love this music so much and not know these people.” It was on that level where I felt like I had something in common with them. They were very sweet and nice that day that I was working and I tried to talk to them a little bit but I was working the door and stuff. So I reached out to their manager and I said, “I love this band and I want to have them be part of a festival that I do here (Note: Stoned And Dusted). She set me up with their booking agents, who I already knew from Yawning Man and playing some gigs with some of his other bands. But my partner in the festival didn’t think they fit the genre of whatever Stoned And Dusted is about so it never happened. I was so bummed because I thought it would have been a beautiful addition. Watching them out at night, under the stars in Pioneertown was a rad fit and that’s rare. It’s really rare to see a band play outside in the desert, and have it fit. It’s usually, “well, there’s a band playing outside in the desert”, or it’s like, “wow, this is a whole experience in itself.” I felt a kinship so that’s really the one band that I think I would say. Not so much up and coming though, they’re doing quite well, they ran a very successful tour of Europe when COVID hits, selling out two nights in a row here and there, playing large places. They’re young guys, 30 years old or so, originally from Brooklyn, but then moved to Los Angeles.
Note: The following questions were answered in early 2019.
Name five songs that you consider “perfect songs” and explain why or what they mean to you.
RICHARD THOMPSON- 1952 Vincent Black Lightning
NEIL YOUNG – Heart Of Gold
SLEEP WALK – Santo And Johnny
DEVO – Gut Feeling
ADOLESCENTS- Kids Of The Black Hole
Five hardest riffs of all time?
BLACK SABBATH – Sweet Leaf
BLACK FLAG – My War
KING CRIMSON – Radical Action (To Unseat The Hold Of Monkey Mind)
JOHN MCLOUGHLIN- Devotion
DISCHARGE – State Violence / State Control
Who are some of your favorite song lyricists?
Richard Thompson
Elliot Smith
Darby Crash
Tom Waits
Captain Beefheart
What were you listening to in elementary school, then in high school?
Deep Purple
Black Sabbath
Devo
Aerosmith
Ventures
Is there any band that you’ve always wanted to see live but never had the chance to catch them? Any classic show that you wish you could have experienced?
Captain Beefheart
The Germs
Gun Club
Jimi Hendrix
The Wipers
Tar Babies
What have you been listening to lately?
True Widow
Diiv
The Wipers
Richard Thompson
Pell Mell
Earth
Is there a band that you’ve discovered live recently that blew you away?
Angel Olsen
God Speed You Black Emperor
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