Queens Of The Stone Age preview

Queens Of The Stone Age
Riviera, Chicago
Thursday, October 25, 2007

When did Queens Of The Stone Age get so stinkin’ boring? Maybe the better question is what made the Queens so stinkin’ boring? The answer is pretty obvious.

All you need to do is look for the element present during Queens’ best records, 2000’s R and 2002’s Songs For The Deaf, and missing during their worst records, 2005’s Lullabies To Paralyze and this year’s Era Vulgaris. The answer is, if you haven’t already figured it out, bassist Nick Oliveri, whom Queens frontman Josh Homme booted from the group in 2004 for being too much of a loose cannon.

Oliveri is a wild man for sure (case in point, he played with The Dwarves) but was perfect in Queens, where his hardcore punk upbringing kept Homme’s (the two also played together in Kyuss) psychedelic jamming in check, and vice versa. Oliveri was a loose handle, and could be the Queens’ live show himself, but beyond the fights and arrests, he was also a major musical contributor who co-wrote and sang much of the group’s best material. No doubts Oliveri was an absolute nightmare to babysit, but he made the band unpredictable, a quality sorely missing from both Lullabies and Vulgaris, where Homme plays it safe enough The Strokes’ Julian Casablancas feels comfortable enough to do a guest spot. Oliveri, by the way, now fronts Mondo Generator, whose album, Dead Planet, comes closer to capturing the essence of “classic” Queens than anything Homme has done in the last three years.

The Black Angels and Biffy Clyro open.

— Trevor Fisher

Category: Stage Buzz, Weekly