After three days of extreme sweat and fatigue from running between stages in Grant Park for Lollapalooza (post TK), ordinarily there'd be zero appeal to a midnight Sunday show in an overcapacity rock club without a working air conditioner. But there was nothing ordinary about last night's gig at the 1,100-person Metro in Wrigleyville. And it went even deeper than the trio of marquee rock stars at the center of it all: with record leaks having killed the "event" of the album release, and YouTube and music blogs (ahem) making it impossible to resist hearing a band's new live songs before they come to your town and present them personally, there's no such thing as a communal listening experience anymore. But this was one time where everyone was in the same boat. Nobody knew what to expect from Them Crooked Vultures, aside from that Dave Grohl/Josh Homme/John Paul Jones lineup that sounded like an alt rock holiday party in-joke gone too far -- not a song's leaked, not a descriptor afloat aside from Dave's 2005 assertion that this group "wouldn't suck." He didn't set the bar high, but hey. He was right.
Before the show the Metro sidewalk was a mob scene, or at least a mob scene for midnight on a Sunday on the heels of a three-day festival with the sort of weather conditions that should have sucked dry these people's wills to live, or wills to see music live. People on the sidewalk joked they wouldn't give up their tickets for anything less than $2,000, although I suspect that wasn't much of a joke at all. Once inside, those same people probably would have paid that amount to get an air conditioner, but no matter: the Metro was a sweatbox, the transferred perspiration just one more thing bonding all those in the room holding essentially a priceless ticket. And out walked Them Crooked Vultures shortly after midnight.
The band: Josh Homme on guitar and lead vocals, Dave Grohl on drums, John Paul Jones on you know what. Plus, for last night's show at least, there was a fourth Crooked Vulture: longtime Homme affiliate Alain Johannes held down rhythm guitar and joined Grohl and Jones on the occasional backing vocal and hollerback harmony. A supergroup of three big names with a lower-profile fourth? Familiar. Last night I called them Monsters Of Rock.
The music was full of big riffs and QOTSA stomp and grit, occasionally proggy segues melding dirty blues rock to a more alt, grungy thump. Grohl may have slipped into his Bonham worship mode on the big beats and bigger fills, or maybe that's just what you hear when half a band's rhythm section happened to be in Led Zeppelin. Josh, for his part, is not Jimmy Page. Nor is he Robert Plant. He's Homme through and through, and in taking vocals and guitars he more than defines the dynamic. So ultimately it was a Homme-led affair that was QOTSAy in its essence with overtures to the other dudes' primary affiliations at the periphery. There were outliers, naturally: "Daffodils" was a spacey, psychedelic epic closing with a John Paul Jones piano outro (and subsequent show-stopping applause), another featured a long jazzy improv with JPJ taking the bass for a walk under a fiery two-guitar solo session that hit sorta like a steroidal Allmans jam.
Songs had titles like "Scumbag Blues," "Caligulove," "Interlude With Ludes," and "Bandoliers." There were something like 14 of them in total I think. There was no encore. It wasn't particularly innovative, and it wasn't always interesting, but that set-closer, "Nobody Loves Me"? Awesome. That's your big-riffed hit right there. Which means we'll probably have it for you soon. And with that many original songs already under their belts, we'll probably have a full record to report on for you soon, too.
In the spirit of an old-school communal listening experience, cameras and the like were forbidden. That said, we'll include a/v footage when it surfaces.
Setlist via Chicago Sun-Times: "Elephants," "New Fang," "Scumbag Blues," "Dead End Friends," "Bandoliers," "Mind Eraser (No Chaser)," "Gunman," "Daffodils," "Interlude w/ Ludes," "Caligulove," "Warsaw," "Nobody Loves Me"
[Pic via flickr.com/leyla_arsan.]
