A five hour drive from Champaign to Columbus, Ohio for a nearly $50 show barely longer than an hour with no opening act? No thanks. But I made the trek Tuesday night anyway.
Them Crooked Vultures (supergroup of Josh Homme, Dave Grohl and John Paul Jones) set off on a mini tour of the US earlier this month with most of the hype spreading like fire on the internet (their debut show at the Lollapalooza after party sold out in minutes). The show was decent and the crowd was into it about as much as can be for hearing a band like that the first time. Nothing truly remarkable stands out, but here are a few take-aways:
- They pretty much sounded as expected with an accurate mix of Grohl’s thunder, Homme’s pseudo-sexy swagger and Jones’ subtle one-of-a-kind grooves.
- Having already seen Grohl and Homme onstage together during their first QOTSA tour, I camped out in front of Jones. I thought his 12-string bass would be superfluous, but it wasn’t. When his fret board lit up with blue lasers, however, that was superfluous.
- The songs were long. Prog rock long. Both Homme and Grohl were already leaning toward more complicated songs with their respective bands, so it seems all they needed was Jones to push the envelope toward 15-minutes (I wasn’t clocking them, but the dudes beside me downed three enormous joints during one song, so you do the math). I don’t think I have the patience for 15-minute songs anymore.
- Expensive light shows give me a headache.
- Anything that Homme lends his voice to will be hard to separate from QOTSA and this was no different. Luckily his voice was drowned out a bit in the crowd and the live performance carried a nice stomp. Like a solid “Good Times Bad Times” stomp.
- The crowd make-up was a diverse mix of young and old. The youngsters gave Jones strange looks, but I don’t think he looked any weirder than Pat Smear when he toured with Nirvana/Foo Fighters or Chris Goss during his on-again-off-again stints with QOTSA.
- With no real merch to sell yet, they still managed to exhaust their supply of t-shirts and koozies.
- It took Them Crooked Vultures to make me realize how indebted Queens of the Stone Age are to Led Zeppelin.
Them Crooked Vultures’ debut will come out sometime in November. It may or may not be worth it.