CANCELED Desert-rock heroes Fatso Jetson headline the Kilowatt in San Francisco's Mission
This show at the Kilowatt on Saturday, Jan. 13, has been canceled. Refunds for advance tickets are available.
One of the pioneering bands of Southern California's desert rock scene during the '90s, guitarist Mario Lalli's long-running group Fatso Jetson returns to San Francisco Saturday night to play the Kilowatt with noted local bands the Freak Accident and Disastroid.
Lalli had already emerged as a major force on the Palm Desert scene in the mid-1980s with his group Yawning Man that featured cousin Larry Lalli (bass), guitarist Gary Arce and future Kyuss/Queens of the Stone Age drummer Alfredo Hernandez long before Fatso Jetson came together. Yawning Man became a staple of the infamous underground generator parties held in remote parts of the desert, playing extended psychedelic jams that helped shape the minds of then teenagers Josh Homme, Brant Bjork and John Garcia prior to them forming Kyuss.
ALSO READ: CBS SF talks to desert-rock legend Mario Lalli (March 2020)
After Yawning Man ran its course for the time (the group would eventually reform and start releasing albums in 2005), Fatso Jetson came together in 1994 when the Lallis teamed with drummer Tony Tornay. Mixing elements of heavy rock, surf and psychedelia, the trio would be signed to Greg Ginn's SST Records, which released its first album Stinky Little Gods in 1995. While Mario would also spend time as an auxiliary member of Queens of the Stone Age and contribute to Homme's Desert Sessions recordings, Fatso Jetson would regularly tour and record through the rest of the decade for a number of labels including Man's Ruin, Bong Load Records and Homme's Rekords Records.
The band has continued to produce vital new music, now playing in an expanded line-up that includes Mario's son Dino Von Lalli on second guitar. Fatso Jetson was featured in an episode of Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters' HBO miniseries Sonic Highways in 2014. Its most recent full-length effort Idle Hands on noted hard-rock imprint Heavy Psych Sounds came out two years later. The band was slated to play the Heavy Psych Sounds Festival in 2020 before the COVID pandemic shut down pretty much everything as far as live music for the next 18 months. The group did manage to produce a recording during the downtime, issuing the live-in-the-studio split album with Tornay's other band All Souls that was livestreamed from Total Annihilation Studios during the shutdown. The physical release of the split was released through Ripple Music last year. Lalli also is playing bass in the new psychedelic desert rock supergroup Mario Lalli and the Rubber Snake Charmers alongside guitarist Brant Bjork (who played drums with Kyuss and Fu Manchu in addition to leading multiple bands), former Throw Rag singer Sean Wheeler and Brant Bjork/Stoner drummer Ryan Güt. Their debut album Folklore From The Other Desert Cities is schedule to come out on Heavy Psych Sounds in late March.
The current five-piece line-up of Fatso Jetson that features third guitarist Herb Lineau (who Mario played with in his high school punk band Dead Issue) returns to San Francisco Saturday night, playing the Kilowatt with support from a pair of local favorites. The Freak Accident is the long-running side project/solo band of Victims Family guitarist and founder Ralph Spight. While the musician has been dealing out a complex style of punk rock since first coming together with bassist Larry Boothroyd in Santa Rosa during the early '80s to start Victims Family (not to mention subsequent related bands Saturn's Flea Collar and Hellworms), the Freak Accident didn't come together as an alternative outlet for some of Spight's other music until the early 2000s.
Mixing elements of more traditional pop and rock songwriting with surf, punk and even Tom Wait-ish tango influences while always exhibiting the songwriter's surrealist barbed-wire wit and outlandish guitar pyrotechnics, the initial recording by the band for its self-titled 2004 debut on Alternative Tentacles was essentially just Spight singing and playing guitar, bass and keyboards with a variety of guests including fellow member of Jello Biafra's Guantanamo School of Medicine Jon Weiss on drums, fellow six-string virtuoso Eric McFadden and punk horn player Ed Ivey.
Since that first effort, Spight has put together a full band with another player from the GSM Kimo Ball (Mol Triffid, Plainfield, Griddle) on bass that would release several albums and EPs, included an instrumental surf tribute to Joy Division entitled Tropical Depression in 2016 that featured onetime Victims Family drummer Eric Strand. More recently, the Freak Accident has issued it's ripping third album Misfortune Teller as well as a lost set of songs recorded with an early line-up of the band back in 2009.
The band's latest acclaimed album Outer Space Is Boring features the current line-up of Spight with bassist Henry Austin Lannan (Othered, KnightressM1) and local drumming institution Stark Raving Brad (The Hellbillys, The Mutaytor, Marginal Prophets, Undercover S.K.A. and many others) and came out via the guitarists own Nerve Center Recordings imprint last spring. Opening the show is SF noise-rock/sludge trio Disastroid. Formed over a decade ago by singer/guitarist Enver Koneya and bassist Travis Williams, the band puts a unique twist on the typical stoner-rock formula by adding elements of early '90s AmRep/Touch and Go style noise rock and later instrumental post/math-rock to the mix.
The band issued a series of self-released albums and EPs starting in 2009, gradually building its local following as they refined their sound. More recently, Disastroid shared Bay Area stages with established touring acts like Fu Manchu, Mondo Generator, Helmet, Church Of Misery, Big Business, Fatso Jetson and Yawning Man as well as SF's own experimental punk mavericks Oxbow. In addition to appearing at the 2018 edition of the Psycho Las Vegas music festival, the band got signed to stoner/psych imprint Heavy Psych Sounds, which issued Mortal Fools in 2020. The label is set to release Disastroid's anticipated follow-up Garden Creatures next month. Fatso Jetson will also be visiting Santa Cruz on Sunday, playing an afternoon show at Moe's Alley with Bl'ast singer Clifford Dinsmore stoner-rock band Dusted Angel.
Fatso Jetson with The Freak Accident Helm and Disastroid
Saturday, Jan. 13, 8 p.m. $15
The Kilowatt
