Queens of the Stone Age
Rialto Theater, Tucson, AZ
March 1, 2003

review by: Matthew Scrivner
Date: 3/10/03

Last Saturday night I feel asleep with my ears buzzing into my pillow like there was a dead radio hissing underneath my bed. I was exhausted; all my adrenaline from the preceding hours had dissolved and I drifted into sleep with the tiny bones in my skull responsible for translating air movement to sound still vibrating on and on. It was nice. I have Queens of the Stone Age to thank for that temporary deafness. Their show at the Rialto earlier that evening was powerful, intense and energetic and I left that old theater into the neon night of downtown Tucson shivering in my sweat dampened t-shirt, wide awake and wishing I could pick up a guitar again myself. It was a show good enough to inspire.

I should note that I am addicted to concerts. Live rock shows are 100% genuine junk for me and have been since high school. Back when I saw punk bands lose themselves on stages and destroy their equipment or I joined in three hundred person mosh pits. I got hooked. So it's an experience I actively seek, even willingly driving in 110-degree heat without AC if I have to. And yet, though I cringe to make any statement that begins like this, I'm too old to mosh these days – I wake up the next morning with my neck cramped and stiff and regreting the bruises on my elbows and shoulders. But if there was a show I've seen recently that made me want to mosh again it was this one.

We arrived to the venue early, my wife and myself. You should meet my wife, she has this attitude of bemused detachment she wears and is a pro-circuit people watcher, so the twenty minutes we spent before the opening band came on was filled with vicious, whispered anthropological observations about our peers. Her observations were more witty than mine but I'll share mine since I am writing this review, not her: Does every person out there but me have their tongue pierced? And what the fuck is the deal with people wearing t-shirts of the band to the show? That doesn't make you look cool, that makes you look like an over-zealous pud, chuckie. The only thing that's worse is the morons in the parking lot beforehand that blared Jethro Tull and Journey and Yes from the crappy speakers in their Trans Am and drank tall cans of cheap beer from paper bags while nodding their mulleted heads to each other.

Anyhow, I should describe the Rialto a bit too so you can get a sense of the place since the atmosphere is ripe for good rock shows. It was the original playhouse theater built in Tucson, way back in 1919 when people still rode horse drawn carriages to see Shakespeare and melodrama and traveling orchestras, and it was allegedly the most luxurious venue west of the Mississippi at that time. There is still an element of this when you look around-old murals of people in Victorian dress adorn walls that haven't been painted over in night-club-black paint, gold leaf frescos, rod iron railing… the place has got this old-time, old-west vibe, that I just can't put my finger on. The ceiling is certainly from 1919 since there have been recent shows (such as the Uberzone/Crystal Method show last year) where large chunks of it fell into the audience from the heavy bass. It's got an old balcony which now acts as "VIP" seating. The place got a name change to "The Paramount" in 1948 and became a single-screen movie theater and then changed it's name again in 1978 to "Cine Plaza" and starting showing first-run Spanish language films until a boiler explosion in 1984 shut it down. They started restoring again in 1995 and now it's being used as a concert venue that has attracted musicians like Ozo Matli, Ani Difranco, and Fugazi. So you can see it's actually a fairly hip place to see a good band play.

The band that opened the show was not good. It was some indie band from Jersey City who could not even annunciate their own name clearly enough for me to tell you, by name, who sucked. Their sound was a mix of the retro-punk ala the Vines mixed with 80's hair metal that only people in Jersey City are still listening to. The lead singer strutted around stage in his demin jacket while the rhythm guitarist performed these ridiculous power kicks in the air like David Lee Roth in a Van Halen video. I have to give the lead guitarist some credit though. He had a few solos in some of the songs that were exceptional.

Then the Queens came on and blew us all away. The band opened the show with their "Feel Good Hit of the Summer," from their last album Rated R and soon enough the entire audience was chanting "nicotine, valium, vicodin, marijuana, ecstasy and alcohol" over and over again.

What followed was a generous dosage of their songs from both Rated R and Songs for the Deaf that got more intense and energetic as the show progressed. I think the song that got the majority of the audience's attention was the only one that's been seeing radio play, "No One Knows." Admittedly it's a strong song, the power chords vibrated something visceral in my belly and the solo that Homme played during it was spot-on. But certainly their strongest performance in my opinion came when they were playing the lesser known songs such as "Monster in the Parasol," "I Think I Lost My Headache," and "First It Giveth."

I was moderately disappointed that Dave Grohl was not the man behind the drums at this show, since his performance on Songs for the Deaf is excellent. The drummer this time remained unintroduced, and he wasn't quite as tight as Grohl. He tended toward more of a hard rock/heavy-metal drum style than the punk style Grohl brings on the album. The consequence is that a few of the songs felt a little rushed, and therefore less tight, and with less emotional impact.

The only other criticism I can offer about the show is that perhaps the volume was too loud at times. "There's no such things as too loud, dude!" says all tongue-pierced hipsters out there. But where the particular rock and roll sound of QOTSA stands, I think I disagree. A few of the songs, such as "Go With the Flow" and "The Sky is Fallin'," have been studio-mixed on the album so that the separation between each individual instrument is precise. Played live, these sounds bled together, drowning each other out in waves of feedback until it became difficult to differentiate chorus from verse, vocals from guitar, bass from drum.

Overall it was a great experience. The band sounds as good live as they do on your home stereo, and they are genuine, driving, and focused on stage, drawing the attention of the audience as much to their performance as to the music itself. There were no stupid antics or chatty audience conversations and the band members were sober, or at least sober enough to sound good. If you see an announcement for Queens of the Stone Age in your town, buy the tickets. You won't be disappointed.