Photos By Lorène Lenoir (lorene@rockscope.com)

A Week With QOTSA

As some people might have noticed, I'm quite fond of the Queens of the Stone Age, and I tend to follow them around when they're in Europe (where they've been a lot in the last year) and when my fellow QOTSA fan friends plan to go too. In the space of one week, I had an excellent concert, a frustrating concert and a below par one, as I've become accustomed to with the Queens. It all began with the lovely city of Groningen (Netherlands) and with the extra small glasses of beer they were serving at that bar, which caused a friend to buy me vodka instead.

Thankfully I didn't have a photo pass for that night; it would have been a catastrophe. Anyway, for once, we had more than twenty songs (Mr Homme's gang settling more around the 16/17 count these days which is much too short.), with "Better living through chemistry", "Blood Is Love", "Tangled Up In Plaid", "If Only", "I Think I Lost My Headache", "In the Fade" and "You Would Know" in this long set, I was off my tits, it was brilliant.

Cut to a very hungover morning in a youth hostel, drive to Schiphol airport, take plane to Berlin, arrive in the Zitadelle in Spandau, meet friends from across Europe and get my photo pass obtained thanks to the ever lovely Dave Catching of Eagles of Death Metal.

Creature with the Atom Brain is Millionaire's Aldo Struyf's new band where he takes up guitar and vocals instead of keyboards. They recorded a song with Mark Lanegan, Josh Homme produced Millionaire's Paradisiac, not very surprising to see them here. Unhappily, their music wasn't really convincing, neither as their performance that was pretty bland. Might get better in a small venue though.

Especially when the Eagles of Death Metal take up the stage after that, with their tongue-in-cheek rock'n roll attitude, and that way Jesse Hughes has to look like a kid for whom it's Christmas, Easter and his birthday at the same time. The guy may look like he's acting, and he's conscious of it, saying "I know you must have seen on Youtube that I said that for every gig, but you're the most fantastic audience we've ever had", nevertheless I'm convinced his joy and pleasure to perform are genuine. They all have great fun and the audience also enjoy themselves immensely.

The Queens, though, look like they'd rather go back backstage to have fun with their friends. Homme has a vague look in his eyes betraying heavy drinking beforehand, and the setlist is just disappointing given it's a hardcore QOTSA family fans gig (there should also have been Masters of Reality, Chris Goss's band, but they cancelled due to Goss being kidnapped and raped by his muse). Lots of hits, a festival-like duration, Jesse Hughes comes to sing "Make It Witchu", and it all ends with fireworks on "Anarchy In The UK" by the Sex Pistols (why?)

Strasbourg was quite the typical French gig setlist wise (except for the exciting opening with "The Blood Is Love", very sexy), lots of hits, not many oldies apart from "Avon", and a sacrilegious "No One Knows" instead of the air-drumming fest "Song For The Dead" as an ending. I'm quite gutted the opening band, Warehouse, started playing at 7.30 instead of the 8.00 that was written on the ticket, cause I really love them, and it was mainly them I came to photograph… Only had the end of one song to do it, dammit! Anyways, not the best of the Queens of the Stone Age gigs, all in all. The guys played a bit like on the payroll, not very passionate, even though Josh Homme heckled some security guy being rough on the kids.

That was before he got a bit rough on a Norwegian kid at the Norwegian Wood festival, a few days ago. 102° fever-ridden, puking for three days ginger giants shouldn't be messed with. If profanity doesn't agree with you, I'd advise you not to click on the link.