Queens of the Stone Age

Well that was all rather long winded and slightly odd. We take a break from our scheduled viewing  to bring you some awesome. Namely some Queens of the Mother-Fucking Stone Age. Now i am a massive fan but watching their recent Glastonbury show i had forgotten just how balls-to-the-wall cool they are. With most of the bands at glasto this year either being ultra-established long runners like U2 or upstarts that are basically just a slightly shit indie band with a synth turned up. With this in mind seeing their blistering set was pretty jarring. QOTSA are real rock-stars where there really are few this year (Dave Ghrol Gets a free pass for being Dave Ghrol)

Listening to the crowd noise you can hear the QOTSA audience has a distinctly manly flavor, i guess this where they were all taking shelter from Beyonce. I would make a snide remark about them being on at the same time as Beyonce but to be honest she put on one HELL of a show and god knows how she dances and sings like that for that length of time, she does have at least a respectable number of ok songs and failing that just puts in the effort. Much of what surrounds her music is the usual industry guff but as a person and as a performer she is pretty dammed good. 

I guess will never see i QOTSA themed Glee episode, but i hope it would feature 30 minutes of someone just continually punching the little auto-tuned pounces in the face. Ok maybe not, Josh Homme is kind of big and the glee kids are kind of soft and breakable but you get the idea. In a world of pretty prescribed pop hits old fashioned hard-rock bands don't seem to have a place on the regular menu, there has been this slow decline in something that at one time seemed everywhere at once, the rock-band of old is an almost dead breed in the charts. They manage to be big enough to recognize but still be staunchly an alliterative to those who need it. Paradoxically despite being on one of the biggest stages in one of the biggest slots at one of the biggest festivals they are remain feeling underground. They totally aren't but they FEEL like they could be.

The re-release of the first album has caused a real buzz in some circles i was really not expecting, there seems to be a real ground-swell around the band and their music again. Despite not having a new album or even an EP or single to promote since really 2007 the band are still invited back to the big festivals. Hopefully their sixth album currently in the works can grab hold of the agenda and grab what has become the most prescribed musical agenda to date on the mass-market by the balls and hi-jack it for a second. Giving the n-dubz chart scene a real nuke up the rectum, if only for a fleeting moment. Just for one second, one tiny second i would like it feel like real music is winning again.