"We Noticed A Connection Between Danger And The Feeling Of Being Alive": A Brief Review Of The New Documentary On Desolation Center
Those words in my title come from Blixa Bargeld, vocalist for Einstürzende Neubauten in 1984, the time when the band participated in one of an extraordinary series of concerts put on by Desolation Center. The shows, arranged by Stuart Swezey, are chronicled in the superb new documentary, Desolation Center. The film, opening in select locations on September 13, documents an era when punk rock was the soundtrack to the activities of youthful promoters and musicians. And anarchists. With the wisdom of hindsight, these shows in the desert, far from the eyes of naysayers and establishment-types, must have been visceral and downright dangerous, sharp reminders that alternative music did, at one time, mean something totally antithetical to the mainstream.
Desolation Center is the rare music documentary that is concise and focused, providing just enough background for life in early Eighties Los Angeles to set the scene. In some ways, this portion of the documentary felt like a similar stretch of celluloid in Scott Crawford's exemplary Salad Days. This film, like that one, describes a punk scene at odds with the routine of the city around it. And, in the case of Los Angeles, it was a scene up against an openly hostile police force which did much in the era to curtail the explosion of energy around the punk venues. The result, at least for Stuart Swezey, was the realization that it was time to put on his own shows.
Inspired in part by Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo (1982), Swezey decided to plan a punk concert in the desert. Busing attendees out to a remote location, in the pre-Internet era, seems a foolhardy prospect for both the promoters and the ticket-holders, but that element of uncertainty paid off as the shows succeeded at capturing a handful of bands at the peak of their powers. While the unfairly-neglected Savage Republic played the first show, the film, and our attention, naturally goes towards Minutemen. Desolation Center features a generous selection of the two surviving members, George Hurley and Mike Watt, whose remembrances of the late D. Boon and the concerts in the desert, make Desolation Center a bittersweet and (oddly) heartfelt affair.
A concert after that one featured Einstürzende Neubauten and Mark Pauline from Survival Research Laboratories, along with Boyd Rice. It is here that Desolation Center begins documenting events that seem almost impossible to have been pulled off. Stuart Swezey was likely courting danger with this line-up, seeing as how, as shown in the film, Pauline and his crew were literally trying to blow up the hillside in the desert. Interview segments in Desolation Center with Pauline and Boyd Rice are colorful, providing a reminder of how transgressive this music and culture once was.
Far more illuminating are the interview segments with the legendary Blixa Bargeld and Alexander Hacke of Einstürzende Neubauten. While the band, whose name translates as Collapsing New Buildings were, as could be expected, a genuinely out there proposition in 1984 or so, the players were serious artists intent in offering up experiences and performances that would truly change lives. With a bunch of kids out in the desert, high on acid hits (according to Curt Kirkwood of The Meat Puppets in one colorful clip), that sort of experience was easy to achieve. Still, with the real threat of violence hanging over things thanks to Pauline and Rice, the concert was, as shown here, wonderfully anarchic.
In subsequent concerts, The Meat Puppets played on a boat with The Minutemen, and NYC noise-niks Sonic Youth and Swans played in the desert and at other Desolation Center events. Featuring informative interview clips from Sonic Youth members Thurston Moore, Steve Shelley, Lee Ranaldo, and Bob Bert (drummer at the time of Bad Moon Rising in 1985), Desolation Center reminds one of how vital the music of this band was, and what genuine ground was being broken by these musicians in this series of concerts. While Sonic Youth were on the verge of breaking through to larger audiences on this West Coast jaunt, Swans were a tougher proposition for listeners out there in Reagan's second term, though Michael Gira's brand of music must have been a nice fit with the stark surroundings of the desert-set Desolation Center events.
Filled with humorous stories, like the arrival of Redd Kross at a concert they had no idea the location of, and poignant remembrances of those now gone, Desolation Center works best as a snapshot of an extraordinary set of shows in an era when the straight world was positively soul-crushing. This film is wonderfully constructed, and, at the perfect length, it provides enough background to set the scene, while letting the events in question remain the focus. With brief diversions into the reaction to the untimely and tragic death of D. Boon, and a look at how attendee and performer Perry Farrell ended up forming the Lollapalooza festival after going to the Desolation Center gigs as a teen, Desolation Center is pure pleasure for a viewer, and the rare doc that actually illuminates with precision a neglected corner of rock history.
Desolation Center is out in select cities as of September 13.
More details via Desolation Center's website.
[Photos: Scot Allen; Mariska Leyssius; Bob Durkee]