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George PaulGeorge A. Paul
Freelance entertainment writer
Riverside, CA
*covering entertainment since 1990*
George Paul
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Coachella Valley
rock music
documentary
SoCal
films
Ten years after its original release, “Desert Age: A Rock and Roll Scene History,” a documentary chronicling the people, bands, and events that shaped California's influential desert rock scene, gets a special anniversary re-release on Nov. 20 via Jgeorgiades.com.
Featuring Josh Homme, Dave Grohl, Brant Bjork, Nick Oliveri, Jesse Hughes, and more, “Desert Age” chronicles the Coachella Valley music community that gave rise to such bands as Kyuss, Queens of the Stone Age, Fu Manchu, and Eagles of Death Metal.
Through interviews with figures from the scene, rare archival footage and photographs, “Desert Age” captures the people and places behind the emergence of desert rock, documenting a musical community from the late 1970s-early 1990s whose influence continues to resonate today.
Originally released in 2016, following a successful IndieGoGo campaign, “Desert Age” screened at film festivals and received a limited theatrical run. The film was subsequently released on DVD and digital formats, with the original distribution deal expiring in 2020, leaving the film unavailable to audiences for the past six years.
“This was a passion project from the beginning,” director Jason Georgiades explains. “I was working at Vice and on the weekends, I would head to the desert, researching everything I could about not just the music, which I already was a fan of, but of the history of the area, what brought that specific, now unmistakable heaviness, to the bands that came out of the Coachella Valley. Mario Lalli and so many other people embraced my desire to share the incredible story behind these bands, bands like Kyuss and Queens of the Stone Age, and the musicians that came before them.”
The new 10th Anniversary Special Edition expands the original film with additional material centered around Black Flag’s historic 1981 Palm Springs show, including audio and photographs from what would become an early collision between the Southern California punk world and the desert community that would go on to develop its own distinctive musical identity.
The film’s return begins where the story itself began, with a Nov. 7 screening at Festival Theaters in Palm Springs, followed by a Q&A hosted by Coachella Valley historian Natasha Berenek and featuring Mario Lalli, Brant Bjork, Sean Wheeler, Sophia Possidon, director Jason Georgiades, and producer Trevar Cushing.
Tickets are available now: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/
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