The Desert

Once, in the early 20th Century, arthritis-addled citizenry might have sought relief for their malady in the warm, dry air of the desert. Decades later, Carlos Castaneda-addled graduate students set forth in the name of academic discovery and their senior theses, getting really, really baked in the warm, dry, visibly oscillating air of the desert.

Nowadays we head to the desert and basically it means that we'll soon be blowing a month’s wages at the Bellagio craps tables and crashing the Chicken Kiev in the buffet line. Throughout, the idea of the desert has basically stayed the same: it’s a fantastic place to disappear. In the spirit of both this week’s theme and the eternal Office Naps “I have no idea what happened to so-and-so artist” drumbeat, it’s a great pleasure to say exactly what these artists did, too: they went to the desert and disappeared.

1. The Sound Offs, The Angry Desert (Era)
Theirs was a vision of the Desert Southwest as a place where angelic choruses called wordlessly, a place where organ and relentless wind and surf guitars convened. A place where bad maracas went to die. In reality, the Sound Offs were probably just another group of studio musicians from Los Angeles, that epicenter of 1960’s Pop culture. Having obviously availed themselves of the latest in fuzz tone technology and, likewise, the latest in thunderstorm sound effects, the Sound Offs put it all to expert use in 1963 for this atmospheric instrumental.

2. The Desert Rats, Sohonie (Mink)
It’s inevitable. You finished reading “On the Road” and now you’re determined to have your own road trip into the American Southwest. You will sleep under the stars. You will commune with the spirit of American freedom and adventure. It will be your own existential odyssey.

Yeah, you go ahead and drive across the desert, pal. Wait until you run out of gas on some godforsaken stretch of Death Valley. Wait until you’re just another picked-over pile of calcified bone on the desert floor. You do whatever you want. If I want desolation, I’ll be at home, listening to “Sohonie” instead. Two guitars and a cymbal. That’s all I need.

The Desert Rats were another mystery instrumental group. And, like the Sound Offs, I’d also guess that they recorded “Sohonie” in Los Angeles, circa 1963.

3. Tommy Strange, Purple Desert (Shamarie)
“Purple Desert.” It goes barrelling forward like some runaway train in a John Ford panorama, all minor keys and demon runs up and down the piano keys. It starts out with a great deal of promise, but somewhere along the way it gets derailed.

It's Ye Olde Western Saloon. Upright piano players grin at us across the bar, and goldhearted tarts in chokers and fraying corset tops coo whiskey nothings in our ears. We're all living in a Norman Rockwell painting now.

Tommy Strange recorded “Purple Desert” in Fort Worth, Texas, circa 1964. Aside from that, it's a complete unknown. The flip side is a boozy mid-‘60s country tearjerker.