The following is a pretty-much-verbatim translation of a letter I wrote to a friend after seeing Them Crooked Vultures at ACL. I’ve cleaned up the grammar and the vile language, but that’s about the only edit.
I saw a great band this weekend; the kind of band that you can only describe using swearwords.
This weekend was the three-day Austin City Limits Music Festival and the bands were great overall – everything from arena headliners[1] to smaller regional bands[2]. But despite the great music none of them really offered life altering experiences; except this one band whose name I didn’t recognize…
The back story is that Anita, Adam and I went down to ACL for each of the three days by car with my bicycle in the trunk. And then when Anita and Adam would go home I would walk back to the car with them, get the bike and then head back down to the festival and later cycle home. On the Friday night the car was parked up on a hill above the festival grounds – about half a kilometer from the entrance – and, after seeing them off, as I started heading back to the festival I suddenly heard an ultra-righteous riff. But please understand that when I say righteous I mean righteous as in right – as it should be; righteous and loud, really loud – as it should be.
According to the schedule there wasn’t a big name band playing on any of the stages at that time so I obviously didn’t know who it was. But the closer I got to the gates the more it became clear that somewhere on one of those stages something really serious was going down. Some or the other band was busy torching a bunch of amplifiers. I flew through one of the express lanes[3] and down towards the Xbox360 stage from where the rock ‘n roll was blasting. And as I walked closer the guitarist/vocalist on the big screens started looking familiar… and the riffs sound familiar… and the band is tight and clearly nothing but quality musicians… and there bursts forth a guitar solo like a German bomber over a foggy London-morning – BLAAAA!
By this time I’m busy moving through the crowd to get closer to the stage and suddenly there’s a close-up of the guitarist on the screen and holy Hell! – its Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age! Damn and freakin’ shit! Its josh Homme and he’s a baddass, with killer solos and a guitar that’s tuned down to the point where the riffs are like bass parts and an attitude like a rock star, as if his black shirt sleeves are drenched in blood that you can only see when you get up close – dangerous and vindictive.
So it’s obviously a side-project of Homme’s and I think to myself ‘hmmm… it’s obviously a side project of Homme’s in the same vein as Eagles of Death Metal or something similar’. The band consists of four members – Homme, another guitarist, a shaggy drummer and an old dude on bass. And the crowd goes wild. And as I get closer to the stage the drummer also starts looking familiar… and after one of the songs Homme goes over to the drummer and they chat for a while and laugh and then Homme comes back and says to the crowd something to the effect of ‘this next song is a really good one – I promise. If it’s not you can have Dave’. Dave being the drummer – Dave Grohl. BLAAAA! More riffs and solos.
So now I’m watching a live show with Josh Homme and Dave Grohl and I have no idea what the name of the band is and the old dude is on bass. And the show rocks and the riffs are rough and the solos develop organically. And at some point the old dude plays a delicate piano solo and then a weird 8-string slide guitar which is totally tuned down to the point where it produces nothing but a guttural rumble. Great show. Great show! And loud – clearly the sound engineer has been told to get value for money out of that speaker stack. And the last song is a killer and the crowd goes wild! WILD!
Afterwards I went and checked the schedule and found out that they played under the name of Them Crooked Vultures. And the following day I found out that this had been only about their fifth public performance and that an album is planned for later in the year and that for now they’re basically just working on songs and playing shows. Oh, and by the way, the old dude’s name is John Paul Jones.
I nearly fainted when I it hit me that I had seen a show with QOTSA’s front man, Kurt Cobain’s roadie/drummer and one quarter[4] of Led Zeppelin. Holy shit.
It was, without doubt, the best show of the weekend[5] and it had nothing to do with the almighty royal bloodline flowing through the stage. It is heartening to me that the quality of the musicianship was clear even from the hill where the car was parked. All the way from the car, down the hill, through the gates and through the crowd up to about 40 feet from the stage it just got better and rougher and louder. And the music was modern and relevant and nosebleed loud.
