DESERT AGE: A ROCK AND ROLL SCENE HISTORY 10th Anniversary Re-Release
Director Jason Georgiades explores the Coachella Valley music community that shaped influential bands including Kyuss, Queens of the Stone Age, and Eagles of Death Metal.
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 10th anniversary re-release on Nov. 20 via Jgeorgiades.com.
Featuring Josh Homme, Dave Grohl, Brant Bjork, Nick Oliveri, Jesse Hughes, Mario Lalli and more, 'Desert Age' chronicles the Coachella Valley music community that gave rise to a slate of influential bands including Kyuss, Queens of the Stone Age, Fu Manchu, Eagles of Death Metal, Target 13, Mutual Hatred, Dead Issue, and Across the River.
Through extensive interviews with key 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 through the early 1990s whose influence continues to resonate today.
Originally released in 2016, following a successful IndieGoGo campaign, 'Desert Age' premiered to a sold-out audience before screening at film festivals and receiving 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 at Eventbrite.
About Jason Georgiades
Jason Georgiades is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker whose primary focus is documentary filmmaking. He holds an M.F.A. in Film Directing from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). His most notable work, 'Desert Age: A Rock and Roll Scene History,' traces the origins and development of the Coachella Valley rock scene from the 1970s through the 1990s. He is currently developing a series of portrait documentaries focusing on notable figures from the era.
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