Part II: What John Garcia of Kyuss Knows: You Don’t Have to Suck Your Own Dick to Stay Relevant
From the Sound in Ruins Series: A Psycho-Musical Analysis of Sonic Environments
Some men become monuments to their own mythology. John Garcia didn’t.
And he’s playing Pappy & Harriet’s this weekend. Hell yes.
However, not everyone thinks “Yee haw!” There’s a certain kind of man - an arrogant man - who believes that once a thing is done, it should stay done. That what’s “dead” is best left buried. That its purity lies in the fact that it ended.
To revisit it, reinhabit it, or worse - reform it - is to desecrate the myth. These men write obituaries before the body’s even cold. Usually in service of their own legacy, which becomes more precious to them than the truth of what actually happened.
But not all sounds are relics.
Some are motherfucking roots.
Like I said, this weekend, John Garcia is playing Pappy & Harriet’s. No elaborate rollout. No massive PR campaign and millions of interviews with fawning buddies. Just a voice that carved itself into the dusty spine of this desert thirty years ago and never let go. He never stopped. Never pivoted into orchestral reworkings, fashion launches, or funereal-staged drama. He’s still doing what he did then - only with more muscle memory and zero need to posture.
There are purists who will scoff.
They’ll say the past should stay buried.
That if you weren’t there, you don’t deserve access.
That to play those songs again is to defile them.
That’s not principle. That’s ego in a vintage, hole-ridden punk rock tee shirt. True legacies are counted in centuries, not your latest hit record from last year or your band that’s been around two or three decades. Time ain’t on your side when it comes to what history decides was the “real deal” no matter how much money you throw at your image and brand.
This kind of “respect for legacy” smells like preservation as performance. Like a museum exhibit curated by a man terrified to age. What these monoliths never admit is this: all bands reform.
Every fucking lineup shift.
Every aesthetic pivot.
Every genre bend.
Every post-hiatus single disguised as transformation instead of what it really is - selective memory and PR fluff.
And let’s just say it. Some “evolutions” are just vanity with reverb. Publicity stunts in interesting locations. Desert couture parading as reinvention.
The difference is, Garcia isn’t pretending anything changed. Because some things didn’t. The sound still crushes. The desert still breathes like a cruel ancient god on mescaline. The voice still drags sand across your hard-on.
And it matters to hear it live. In the dust. With your beer sweating in your palm and the sun dropping behind land that doesn’t care if you’re alive or dead.
This isn’t reenactment. Not memory - it’s continuation. Endurance.
And that kind of infinite return? Whoo, baby, that’s the real magic.
Garcia doesn’t curate a legend. He carries it.
This weekend’s show isn’t a shrine to what was. Sure - there’ll be a little curated cosplay at Pappy & Harriet’s. Some desert-chic girls and boys pretending not to film.
That’s fine.
The desert has always been a place of contradiction. And this weekend, it will be loud and lousy with it. Yee-mother fucking-haw. Awww, but what the fuck do I know? I’m from the South.
To read the Part 1 of this series - Rethinking the Concept of “Desert Rock” - click here.
