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Them Crooked Vultures

Zenith in Munich, Germany

December 6, 2009

This from Amman254:

well i can confirm that the concert in munich was fantastic. and sweethead did start at 20:00. i made quite a few pics during the evening, and my first pic as they came out according to the time stamp from the camera was exactly 21:00:38, and as they hugged each other and left the stage it was 22:33:18. i am in the process of uploading some pics to rapidshare.

as i mentioned the show last night was simply great.

i went with such high expectations, i was almost worried that actually no one could meet the high hopes that i had placed in these three (four) gentllemen. but they did, and actually they took it a notch higher. when the concert started we were standing right in front of the left side pa, on the side that we expected JPJ to be standing at, judging from all that we have seen till now, and so was it. let me tell you the first four or five beats that JPJ and dave brought over that system set my heart, ears, and even my insides literally vibrating. this power, but with such clear vibrance was overwhelming. because i was standing right in front of the pa i couldn't really say that the sound was bad, because i was at the source.

the only drawback there, was that we couldn't see dave, because we were at such an angle to the stage, that he was blocked off from a couple of speakers or some other paraphenalia. so a few times during the gig, i moved back to around the sound board, so i could watch dave for a while. but honestly, all you could see of him anyway was his head with his long black hair falling over his face, and occasionaly flying up in the air sending a rain shower of sweat beads that could be seen in the spotlights even from where i was at the sound board, and then his arms constantly up and down thrashing his kit. so eventually i just went back to the original place, and watched most of the show from there.

at one point josh stopped to introduce the band. he started with dave, then alain, by each name then came the applause as usual, but as the applause died down after introducing alain he turned towards JPJ and the whole crowd just broke into a sontaneous roar of applause before josh could even mention his name, JPJ just bowed his head with a smirk on his face, and as the roar died down, he then introduced josh.

i've seen QOTSA 6 times, and i cant really remember seeing josh in such a relaxed, joking mood, often laughing, and joking around with the other band members and with the crowd. several times during the show, he grabbed what looked to me like a bottle of vodka, and was hittin it good. after one of the songs dave grabbed a bottle of good german beer, and josh said, "he loves this stuff", and dave held the bottle about 10 inches above his mouth and just poured about what looked like half the bottle down his throat.

the security had been grabbing the girls and guys out of the audience, where the girls were getting on the guys shoulders. at one point josh stopped, and said, "i got to talk with you about something here. now listen first off, i want to tell you guys from the security you are doing a fuckin great job, really. but listen, we are here to party, and have a good time. so if there are some sexy girls out there that want to get up on the shoulders, or do whatever...(then making the "fucking" sign with both hands), then that is ok, and we want to let them do it, so just let them go ahead" (this is not a word for word quote, i didnt tape it, but for the most part, this is what he said).

often there was laughing, smiling, interreaction between josh and the others, and between each of the band members.

at the end, dave crawled out from behind his kit, came around front, his clothes dripping wet with sweat, and hugged josh, and then they left the stage.

this show is so worth seeing !!!! dont anyone hesitate if they have the chance.

and since the members of the band were so obviously having a good time, and enjoying the gig themselves, lets just hope that this is not a one time thing, and that we can see TCV many more times.

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CD review: Them Crooked Vultures a super group with so-so songs

1halfstars.jpg

By ANDREW DANSBY Houston Chronicle

Dec. 4, 2009, 1:06PM

Them Crooked Vultures does a great service by putting Dave Grohl behind the drum kit. That's about it. The thing about super-groups? They still have to write songs.

This collaboration between Grohl, Queens of the Stone Age singer and guitarist Josh Homme, and Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones slogs its way through 60-plus minutes of largely forgettable muscle rock.

All that's wrong can be found in the opener, No Lone Loves Me & Neither Do I, a song that should surprise with its tempo shifts, but instead goes from mid-tempo lumbering to slower lumbering before racing into speedy lumbering. Only Dead End Friends seems to distinguish itself, offering something resembling a melody and a sense of lightness.

Both Jones and Grohl played in bands that thrived on variety. The touches of lightness gave Nirvana's and Zepp's darker tones a sense of release. No such break here.

Nifty band name. Striking cover art. Notable absence of songs.

http://www.chron.com...nt/6753420.html

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Them Crooked Vultures - Them Crooked Vultures CD Review

5 Stars *****

by Justin Press

Dallas Rock Music Examiner

November 28, 2:57 PM

Them Crooked Vultures

Them Crooked Vultures

Interscope Records

Mixing Led Zeppelin, Foo Fighters and Queens of the Stone Age is boner intensity for most rock fans and judging by the music on TCV's debut, there is going to be a lot of screwing going on to relieve those diamond cutter skin saws. Let's skip the chase here because we all know Mssrs. Jones, Grohl and Homme's pedigrees, it's pure legend, and let's dig into this 800lb bull. 'Mind Eraser, No Chaser" is spacey chaos due in part to Homme's "forever stoned" drawl that runs alongside a furious pace, with Jonesy playing roughshod on his bass lines with little regard for his own appendages. "New Fang" dangles Grohl's opening 4/4 jazz beat with Homme's slide guitars and the funkiest groove outside of Bourbon Street. QOTSA's ethereal punk metal raises its head on "Dead End Friends" as the quirkiest guitar hiccups play hopscotch with the same beat that drove the old Rocket From The Crypt tune "On A Rope", "duh na nuh, duh na nuh, duh na nuh…" Of course the inevitable had to happen as "Elephants" takes the Mighty Zeps Presence-era radio metal/power blues formula and works up a nasty lumbering beast, it's this same kind of thundering menace that used to hypnotize groupies into having fornication with mud sharks and other sea beasts. Check out the 60's Doors/Cream/The Animals influenced "Bandoliers", a low-fi nugget that is full of smoky confidence and restrained underplaying.

To this point the record is just a home run of ill proportions and when you get to "Caligulove" all of sudden back-up vocals are starting to sneak in and now TCV have gone from a must have to an addiction. And for fans of 70's funk, "Gunman" is the "Rollercoaster of Love" for white metal heads with a thirst for wild times and dancing shoes. It's a big luscious groove that grabs you by the groin and throws you unto the most delicate of vestal virgins, unstoppable, insatiable and unforgiving. And after that kind of body pillaging, it's only fitting that the intro of "Spinning in Daffodils" act as your post-coital cigarette before it heads to the "sinful place" again and you're onto breaking in the mattress again. Think of Them Crooked Vultures as a 3rd date fuck-a-thon, you've gotten this far, it's felt so right and you know you'll be back for more. Chemistry with so called "super groups" is a delicate matter, and with this trio, it's downright combustible.

http://www.examiner....-Music-Examiner

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Them Crooked Vultures

"Them Crooked Vultures" (DGC Records)

The supergroup Them Crooked Vultures is like one of those fantasy baseball camps, where Cubs fans pay big money to take the field alongside Rick Sutcliffe and Keith Moreland. In this case, we have drummer Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters and guitarist Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age - major league players in their own right - playing with Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones.

The result is an absolute gas, as the trio gets the Led out with some sledgehammer hard rock tunes that wouldn't have sounded too out of place on "Houses of the Holy" or "Presence." The album opens with a tasty backbeat and a juicy guitar riff (with a little cowbell for good measure) on "Nobody Loves Me & Neither Do I." "Reptiles" has a "Misty Mountain Hop" feel, thanks to Jones' bouncy bass line, and "Scumbag Blues" has more of a strutting Cream vibe.

Homme apes the wild guitar pyrotechnics of Jimmy Page and his other guitar god heroes, while Grohl bashes away satisfyingly on the skins in John Bonham fashion. The only thing Them Crooked Vultures is really missing is a Robert Plant - Homme's creepy vocals are serviceable but constrained. Maybe recruit Erika Wennerstrom of Heartless Bastards for the follow-up?

- Rob Thomas, The Capital Times, December 7, 2009

http://host.madison.com/entertainment/music/reviews/article_85a6bb3e-e0f0-11de-9c87-001cc4c002e0.html

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PreFix Mag.com

Them Crooked Vultures - Them Crooked Vultures

If nothing else, Them Crooked Vultures is a superstar group that consists of three legitimate superstars in terms of sales in addition to art. John Paul Jones, Dave Grohl, and Josh Homme have all sold tens of millions of albums. It's no suprise that they sold out their initial show in Chicago this summer without having so much as stepped in a studio; anytime the words "Led Zeppelin" and "Nirvana" are invoked in the same sentence in one band, you can be sure the house will be packed.

Despite being the (relative) young'un of the group, Homme (Queens of the Stone Age, Eagles of Death Metal) will essentially serve as the frontman of Them Crooken Vultures, with lead vocal/guitar duties. Once the album is released. Them Crooked Vultures will be touring the U.K., with all dates sold out months before arrival.

Ethan Stanislawski

http://www.prefixmag.com/reviews/them-crooked-vultures/them-crooked-vultures/33968/

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The only thing Them Crooked Vultures is really missing is a Robert Plant - Homme's creepy vocals are serviceable but constrained. Maybe recruit Erika Wennerstrom of Heartless Bastards for the follow-up?

- Rob Thomas, The Capital Times, December 7, 2009

How many times more? :rolleyes:

Besides, I can't agree, Homme is exactly where he should be and at the right time. While the author of this review seems to live in the past and without any fresh associations of his own. <_<

Of course the inevitable had to happen as "Elephants" takes the Mighty Zeps Presence-era radio metal/power blues formula and works up a nasty lumbering beast, it's this same kind of thundering menace that used to hypnotize groupies into having fornication with mud sharks and other sea beasts.

- by Justin Press

Dallas Rock Music Examiner

ha ha ha, although at the time I was way too young to be there to see the mud sharks and all, I daresay it was not the music that was to blame, and keep your hands away from "Elephants", thank you sir!

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Them Crooked Vultures

Columbiahalle in Berlin

December 7, 2009

Berliner Konzert

Them Crooked Vultures ergreifen ihre Chance

Von Michael Hufnagel

Berliner Morgenpost

Dienstag, 8. Dezember 2009 17:20

Supergroups, Bands also, deren Mitglieder anderen berühmten Rockgruppen angehören, haben ein Problem: Die Erwartungen in sie sind ungeheuer hoch und werden längst nicht immer erfüllt. Anders bei Them Crooked Vultures. Die Band um Haudegen von Queens Of The Stone Age, Nirvana und Led Zeppelin zeigen in der Columbiahalle, was man mit so viel Kompetenz auf die Beine stellen kann.

Die Zweifler brachten sich schon in Position. Man hörte sie stöhnen und sagen: Oje, eine Supergruppe! Ihre Skepsis hatte durchaus Berechtigung. Frühere Versuche, prominente Kräfte des Rock zu bündeln, schlugen zumeist spektakulär fehl, da muss man nur an Velvet Revolver, Neurotic Outsiders, The Power Station oder The Firm denken.

Die neueste Supergruppe der Rockmusik aber hat es in sich. Hexenmeister Josh Homme (Queens Of The Stone Age), dessen Adlatus Alain Johannes, Kämpfernatur Dave Grohl (Nirvana, Foo Fighters) und Basslegende John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin) haben den Hardrock zu unterschiedlichen Zeiten geprägt und weiterentwickelt. Nun präsentierten sie sich als Teil der neuen Band Them Crooked Vultures zum ersten Mal in der ausverkauften Columbiahalle.

Relativ schnell wird schnell klar, dass es Sänger und Gitarrist Homme ist, der die Clique anführt. Sein typischer, mit Blues, Boogie, Punk und Psychedelia durchtränkter Stil bildet auch hier die Grundierung. Er kann von Natur aus mit nicht dem Stimmumfang eines Robert Plant oder dem Shouting eines Bon Scott konkurrieren, aber das ist kein Nachteil. Homme gibt sich als zurückhaltender Zeremonienmeister, diese Rolle beherrscht er perfekt. Für Energie und Drive ist ohnehin Schlagzeuger Grohl zuständig. Seine wilden Bewegungen erinnern an den animalischen Trommler aus der Band in der Muppets-Show.

Das Publikum aber hat eine andere Vorliebe und sich eindeutig Jones als Favoriten ausgeguckt. Wenn er seinen Bass ablegt und sich ans Piano setzt, hallt sein Name laut durch die Halle. 63 Jahre ist der Engländer inzwischen alt, aber die lange Karriere im traditionell ungesunden Rock-Umfeld ist scheinbar spurlos an ihm vorübergegangen. Mehr als rüstig trotz er den klimatischen Bedingungen im miefigen Saal.

Jüngst hat er in einem Interview mit dem britischen „New Musical Express" geschwärmt, dass ihn die Arbeit mit Them Crooked Vultures an die Zeit mit Led Zeppelin erinnere. Und richtig: Damals wie heute hören sich die Songs an, als sei die erste Idee dazu bei einer spontanen Jam-Session entstanden.

Kommerzielles Kalkül kann man hier wahrlich nicht erkennen. In „Caligulove" wird garstiger Garagenrock mit einem offensiven Orgelsolo und orientalischer Atmo ausgeschmückt. Der Disco-Beat in „Gunman" geht in die Beine. „Warsaw" schließlich entwickelt sich zu einem wahren Blues-Marathon. So und nicht anders stellt man sich eine Supergruppe vor, die wirklich was aus den Möglichkeiten macht.

http://www.morgenpos...hre-Chance.html

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LOL, a friend of mine just can't figure it out no matter how long I explained to her...

Very nice work....listening to a tune by them "New Fang". Seems to have a Nirvana-Zeppelin sound to it without a doubt :)

"I decided I liked their music better than Cocker's or Farlowe's." - Bonzo

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Palladium Cologne, 08th Dec 2009

I wanna write a short review on yesterdays TCV gig. Just short, because my english is not very good ;-)

There was the day, Tuesday. The first time for me to see a member of Led Zeppelin live in convert! I was a nervous form sunday on. JPJ is one of my heros, because he is a living legend. I listend to the TCV CD a lot, but I had to admit to myself that I don't like that style of music so much. Its so different from Led Zeppelin. But of course some songs are great and rock!

I arrived at the Palladium at 7PM. I was really impressed how many young people have been there! And of course some older guys, with Led Zep shirts under their coats. At 8 PM, Sweethead, the support band stepped on stage. Uaaahhh, what a crap sound!!! And their style of was a little boring for me. No catchy melodies. Luckily, they played only for 30 minutes. Then, at 9 PM, it got dark again. I had my place next to the mixer and the camera-team from WDR.

Dave Grohl, Josh Homme, JPJ and the guest guitar player went on stage and the crowd (about 4.000 people were there) cheered. Josh said a few words to the crowd and then

the started with "No one loves me....". This song is one of my favourite!!! Next song was "Dead and friends", if I remember correct. Also one of

my favourite tracks from the album. The band was really on fire! JPJ and Dave Grohl had a fantastic groove in their playing.

The sound was awesome!! The drums sounded so good! And that is often a problem at rock concerts. The crowd really enjoyed the music and cheered loud after every song. The songs passed by very fast, though I don't like every of their songs (like I stated at the beginning). JPJ played a short Piano Solo between two songs (can't remeber the name of the songs). That was beautiful and showed again, what a fantastic musican he is! Josh joked a lot with the crowd and was impressed, how the germans like his new music. They ended with "Warsaw or the first...". This is one from my three favourite songs of the record. They extented the middle section, which gave them space to improvise. Sadly, the bass was not loud enough on this song! They ended at 10:40 Pm and played no encore! I wish they would have returned with a Zeppelin-song, but I knew they would not.

At the end, what should I say? Was it worth while?? Yes, it was. Though I miss songs with strong melodies, I have to say that the band

is great. They have groove and capability. Dave Grohl is a great drummer. I wish he would continue as a drummer rather than as a singer.

But who knows what the future brings??

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Ultimate Guitar.com

December 5, 2009

John Paul Jones: 'I Couldn't See How We Could Not Happen'

Interview by Steven Rosen

John Paul Jones was, of course, the bass player for Led Zeppelin, a band that has been gone for over 30 years and yet the sound they created continues to influence the sound of even today. Two of the musicians who have been caught in the sway of Zeppelin are Dave Grohl and Josh Homme and now the frontmen for the Foo Fighters and Queens Of The Stone Age respectively have hooked up with Jones and created a band called Them Crooked Vultures. Combining dark and pulsing riffs with Homme's vocals and Grohl's athletic drumming, the quartet rounded out by second guitarist Alain Johannes the band have just released their first self-titled album and have already experienced tremendous radio play accompanied by sold out venues.

John Paul was excited and rightly so about his new band and wanted to talk about it. Some 40 years after Zeppelin wrote the rules for all things heavy, TCV bassist Jones found himself in a new group that sounded nothing like Zeppelin and yet reminded you a lot about that band. Read this to understand what that means.

UG: When you first got together with Dave and Josh, did you feel the same sort of magic you felt when Zeppelin first jammed?

John Paul Jones: Yes, I did; I did. Umm, we kind of met at Dave's birthday party at the Medieval Times thing [a concept restaurant where knights joust on horseback] which was pretty strange. It was like a blind date with Josh but he sat us together and watched us from the seats behind. And Josh was reasonably embarrassed about being there at all, I think. But it was fun and we went into the studio the next day and just started jamming. And yeah, it was quite immediate. We just realized, "Oh, actually there could be something here." I could of expected that there would be; I couldn't see how we could not happen. How we could not be great. Because I've always liked Queens of the Stone Age and always thought Josh was really interesting Dave, you know, Dave is just great anyway. So I couldn't see how it could not be what it was.

When you first got together, did you bring in song ideas? Had you been stockpiling riffs and things?

Yeah, I had a couple. But once we got in the studio we just started working on stuff. It was like, "Well, what has anybody got? Got anything you wanna start working on?" Josh had a couple of choruses to start with and we just worked on those and then they changed into something else. Basically the machines were running all the time and we just put it all together; writing and recording pretty much at the same time. We'd work on a couple songs and overdubbing on others and it would just grow and we just sat back and listened and thinking, "Wow, this sounds really good."

It was an organic process then. You didn't have to push and pull and tug on each other to really find an identity for the band?

Very organic. I've not worked in that way before because normally I'm used to getting all the songs together and then going in and recording it all at once. This was literally it all happened in this one room; Josh's studio. Amazing.

You produced the album yourselves and didn't bring in anyone from the outside. Did you feel that no one knew better than the band themselves what direction you wanted to head in?

Yeah; you'd have to explain it to somebody else probably. But, uh, there are three produces and we all knew what we were doing and we could all produce each other. If anybody was doing overdubs or putting vocals on then the other people could be sitting in the control box and doing what a producer would do.

You talk about the sessions having an organic feel but how were they organized? Was it you and Dave recording rhythm tracks and then having the guitars as overdubs?

It was generally live. We liked to get all the tracks down and then the overdubbing would come later. But the whole point was to get live tracks down; get the feel and get the groove. Very similar to the way we used to do it in Zeppelin actually.

Certainly Dave was a huge fan of Bonzo.

Right.

Did it feel at all like laying down tracks with John Bonham back in Zeppelin?

It was very similar. Both Bonzo and Dave are groove merchants; they both like a good groove. I like to play with a good drummer that listens and can groove and has got that sense of swing. But also both drummers were interested in - without necessarily discussing it ahead of time or talking about it in words but just by playing and listening making a groove really work. Making a drum part really work and the more you play it, the more you kind of fine tune the part between the drums and the bass. So they work together. And that's what makes a really good rhythm section. That's one of the things that made Zeppelin different to a lot of other bands; we worked really closely. And that's what I'm doing with Dave in this band. I listen to what he does. And in the live shows, we're beginning to fill in the same places; the same phrases in the same sort of place just through improvisation basically. You play something and then you come to the same conclusion at the end of it and that's happening more and more and that's really gratifying.

You talk about the approach to rhythm as being similar to what you did in Zeppelin but certainly your bass sound is much different. It's more aggressive and bigger and has more distortion.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I just felt it needed a different sound to go with the way Josh was playing and the tones he was getting. And he would suggest [sounds]; he has all these old amps, a whole studio full of strange amps, and we were looking for tones on a couple things like "Scumbag" or something. And he's, "Well try this thing" and he'd bring out this old Guild amp and I'd use it as well as my regular bass amps. And then combine the tones at the end. And I'd say, "Well actually that's pretty different but it really works." It goes together much better with his guitar tones and stuff like that. And so I was really in a position to try out all different tones to get something that worked better with what we were doing.

On the videos, it looks like you were using a pick?

I used a pick a lot more; I did a lot of things with downstrokes and picks which I used to do a little bit with Zeppelin but not that much. And it's just a continuation, I suppose, of what I've always done. I've always wanted to do different things; not just get stuck in a groove. Always get stuck in a groove and not get stuck in a rut!

Was it different for you as a bass player playing with two guitars? There are a lot of guitars swirling around with slide parts and stuff.

I played some of those slide parts myself. So …

Did you really?

Yeah; because I play steel guitar. Quite a lot of the slide guitar was me.

I didn't have a copy of the album only various downloads so I didn't have the credits at all. I'm sorry about that.

No, no problem. I don't think I'm credited; it doesn't say. I play all sorts of things: four-string, 10-string, 12-string bass; all the regular bass mandolins on the record; regular mandolins. All sorts of things. And steel guitar.

So what is happening musically on "No One Loves Me & Neither Do I," the first song on the album?

I'm playing bass and steel guitar on that one; I did the steel guitar first and then dubbed the bass on afterwards.

That's such a strange way to record. All of this happened in the studio?

Yeah, everything was worked on in the studio; everything you hear on that record was worked up in the studio. I think Josh had the beginnings of that riff but then it got changed about a lot and it ended up as it was.

The first single, "New Fang," has a kind of crazy shuffle feel to it.

Umm, it has got a slight shuffley feel about it. It's a very straight-ahead rock thing; I think I just played straight ahead bass on that one. Is there anything else on that? They were Josh's chords as well as the first one. He would start off quite a few of the songs but then they'd all go different places. We'd all write different parts and sometimes it would change it a bit and sometimes it would change it a lot.

"Elephants" has a lot of changes in it. There's an amazing intro …

Yeah.

And then it goes into this completely different feel for the verse.

Yeah; that's all bass mandolin as well on my part. I don't play bass on that at all. Yeah, again, I think the main body of the song came first and then I can't remember who came up with the riff. There's different riffs by different people [laughs.] They'd be working on something else and then they'd go, "Actually that would be great to start this or to end it." And so it was a bit of picking and choosing from different things and just trying things out.

"Bandoliers" has a strange kind of Spanish/Moorish feel to it and sports some keyboards as well.

Yeah; there's a bit of Mellotrony stuff in the middle. I must admit I grew to hate the Mellotron mainly because I had to use it on stage with Zeppelin and they don't like being traveled around. But then I thought, "You know, actually I've got some Mellotron samples" and I thought, "You know, that would sound great in this." I grew to love the sound again and I did the same in "Caligulove" with the sound of the Vox Continental organ. I had a Vox Continental in the studio and I thought again, "This is an instrument I always used to hate in the '60s." I was a Hammond man but I thought, "Do you know? I want to make this sound good because it will be different. To use a Hammond organ would be just, 'Oh, everybody would expect that from me.'" So I just liked the tone and it just kind of fitted the mood.

Again it's all experimental in the studio; you try this, you try that. And, "Oh, OK, this sounds good or that's not so good. Let's try something else."

You touch on a really interesting point. You mentioned the Mellotron samples which is a throwback to a lot of your keyboard sounds from back in the Zeppelin days. So the band has this sort of classic sound about it and yet the sound of the guitars and the arrangements and vocal melodies are really forward looking. You can hear a lot of Zeppelin in the music. In other words, you didn't consciously try and tiptoe around your past. Does that make sense?

Yes. Well, you know, there's no point throwing the baby out with the bathwater, is there? All these things are in my past and if they're good, there's no reason why I shouldn't use them in a hopefully new and fresh way. And if they fit the song which they certainly did, I thought, then there's no reason why I shouldn't use them. And you don't hear those sounds that much anymore and so they're kind of fresh again.

Would it ever get as specific as Josh or Dave referencing the sound on a Zeppelin song?

No references anywhere for any band for anything. And I think that helps rather than anything else. Because you can address the song in the present; you don't have to think back at all.

"Reptiles" had a big distorted bass sound and had a really cool bass line with a lot of holes.

Yeah. Again what to do. Josh had a demo of that which sounds completely different. He had all these weird sort of acoustic guitary things going all over the place. And I remember Dave listening to it and going, "What on earth is that?" It's very odd. Then we tried to do something with it and it turned into what you hear. It was almost our interpretation of what Josh's idea was. And then it becomes Vultures music.

And the Vultures music album ends with "Spinning in Daffodils" with you on piano.

Yeah and 12-string bass which is tuned really, really weirdly. Every instrument I play has got a different tuning which kind of helps in a way because you can't get comfortable with it.

Your fingers just don't go to the same normal places.

Don't go to the same places. You end up just coming up with different stuff which is always challenging at first. It's a great mood isn't it, "Daffodils"?

In fact the entire record has a very kind of dark mood about it.

It is; we like dark.

What were some of the basses you played?

They're all made by Hugh Manson; Manson guitars. Uhh, yeah the four-string bass is normal but it's a Manson; 10-string bass on "Gunman" which is like a five-string bass with double strings, octave strings like a 12-string guitar type of idea. From low E to high C. The bass on "Daffodils" is a 12-string from low B to high C; a bass mandolin on "Elephants" which is tuned in fifths like a mandolin G to E again with sort of 12-string type octave strings. The 10- and 12-string basses are in stereo so the neck pickup goes to the bass rig and the bridge pickup goes to a Bad Cat guitar rig. So it gives a very wide sound. What else am I using? I use a Yamaha bass; one of Josh's many obscure Japanese guitars that he has.

What was your basic amp rig?

SWR 900 series. Great amps with a 4x10 [cabinet] and a 15; similar to my stage setup.

You've been recording your bass for such a long time; did you have an idea of what type of sound you wanted?

Nope; it depended on the song. It depended entirely on the song. Sometimes I used distortion, I used pedals; sometimes I used an old Guild amp that Josh had for distortion on a couple of tracks. I'd never used distortion before or not with Zeppelin; I think I used it on my solo albums a bit. I used a pick quite a lot which I didn't use before. So I tried to do things differently to suit the music. The music comes first and then you figure out how best you can realize it later.

The bass playing on the album sounds very intricate there are time changes and a bunch of different rhythmic things going on. Are you a better bass player today than you were back in the Zeppelin days?

I'm certainly different, yeah. I'm playing as well as I ever have; probably better in some respects. I'm actually practicing even sometimes which I never did before [laughs.] No, I'm enjoying playing bass again actually; I really am.

The response to the record has been huge. How does that feel? Did you expect that?

Oh, yeah, especially when we listened to it back. We probably didn't realize when we were doing it what we were doing but when we started listening to it back, when we got a few tracks and then you put it on, you think, "Wow, actually this really is something; it's exciting." Again people and another of the many parallels between this band and Zeppelin is people either really get it or they really don't. And it's kind of not much in between which is nice. It's not much of, "Oh, that's alright." Nobody says that. They say, "It's this or that and we don't like it." Those reviews always refer to every other band; it's very peculiar. And then quite a lot of the reviews, the majority thank goodness, they really get it. They say, "It's vital; it's dark; it's exciting; it's many-layered; it's complex. But it groove and it's fresh." And that's what I think of it.

What does it feel like being in your first fulltime band in three decades? There were one-off projects before this and various solo projects but you've never really been a member of a working band since Zeppelin.

Well, I feel lucky to still be able to do it. Umm, it's great music with great people. We travel on a bus; we do shows; people like the shows; it's really nice. I can't think of anything else I'd rather be doing at the moment. Put out good records that people like and yeah, I'm very happy.

The live shows feel great?

Oh, the live shows are amazing, yeah; every show gets better. It's really good. I was saying to somebody else that doing some of the European festivals, I looked down and I noticed that the first 10 rows looked exactly like they did in 1969! All the same hair and the same t-shirts. It's great.

You still have the fire?

Oh, yeah, very much. And I'm more dedicated in a way; if I can't get something I'll work at it until I can rather than doing something else which I used to do.

The album really gives the band a lot of freedom in what you could do on a followup album. There are so many different styles here.

Well, maybe there will be another record and we'll go through a few more directions.

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Times Online (London)

December 6, 2009

Them Crooked Vultures are supergroup nirvana

Mix one part Led Zeppelin with Foo Fighters and Queens of the Stone Age front man Josh Homme for a rock 'n' roll riot

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by Hardeep Phull

In the long tradition of rock mockery, the bass player and the drummer are almost always the whipping boys. Jokes about only being able to play one string at a time, or unflattering comparisons to tub-thumping Neanderthals, are par for the course for the rhythm section — but you'd be hard pushed to find &shy;anyone aiming these kind of cheap cracks at Them Crooked Vultures. Behind their kit is Dave Grohl, a man who spent the 1980s learning his chops in the American hardcore punk scene before joining Nirvana in 1990 and providing the kind of sonic muscle that would help them to redefine rock music. And that's to say nothing of his role as front man in the multimillion-selling Foo Fighters. For a bass player, Them Crooked Vultures go one better by boasting John Paul Jones, a man whose session work in the 1960s spanned hundreds of recordings before he eventually joined Led Zeppelin, where he would help inject guitar music with a dynamic, soulful groove like no band before them. And that's to say nothing of his multi-instrumental contributions to hundreds of records since.

"Dave and John are the greatest living rhythm section in the world," Them Crooked Vultures' front man, Josh Homme, remarks matter-of-factly in a dressing room at the Fox Theater, Oakland, shortly before he leads his band of icons on stage. The guitar-wielding singer for Queens of the Stone Age was previously a member of the stoner-rock gods Kyuss and, briefly, the grunge heroes Screaming Trees — so he's hardly lacking pedigree himself. Yet Homme happily concedes that in this most distinguished of supergroups, it's he who ranks as underdog. "When it comes to Led Zep and Nirvana, people are always like, 'Don't ruin my perfect thing.' It's a lot of pressure, but you have to put it in your back pocket and forget about it."

If the sudden arrival of Them Crooked Vultures feels like an ambush, it was very much planned that way. The band initially came together out of a proposed collaboration between Homme and Grohl last year. The two met in the early 1990s and have been as thick as thieves in recent years, with Grohl joining Queens of the Stone Age on drums for their 2002 album Songs for the Deaf, and the subsequent tour. The inclusion of Jones was a little more arbitrary. He and Grohl met at an awards show in London last year, allowing them both to catch up on a professional relationship that had begun when the former Zeppelin man contributed piano and mandolin parts to the 2005 Foo Fighters double album In Your Honour. Grohl floated the idea of Jones coming to LA to make up a trio, and Jones — still fired up from Led Zeppelin's one-off show at the O2 in December 2007 — enthusiastically accepted.

"After Robert Plant said he didn't want to do any more Zep shows, the plan was for me, Jimmy


and Jason [bonham] to start a new band," the soft-spoken Englishman recalls. "But we couldn't agree on a singer and it just fizzled out. I'd been playing all year and the blood was up, so when Dave asked me to play with him and Josh, I was ready to go. I joined not knowing what it could be or what it might turn out to be — but I knew it couldn't be boring."

The nascent band jammed in utmost secrecy during the first part of the year, even going so far as to socialise publicly only in pairs, so as not to give the game away. Finally, the feverish rumours that surrounded their existence became reality in August, when they played their first show together (with the guitarist Alain Johannes as their live fourth member) at the Chicago Metro. The only promotion for the show was a logo of each member's best-known band posted on a flyer on the venue's website — enough to help the 1,100-capacity venue sell out in a matter of minutes.

"It made sense to be secretive," Grohl reasons. "Otherwise, we would have had press wanting us to talk all the time, we would have had a record company trying to get involved... there would have been all those things that can poison what you're doing just as it's being born. It was obvious that it was going to get attention from the get-go, but it needed time to become its own thing." Even after these birds were let out of the cage at the Metro, the band fought hard to retain mystery by not releasing any music and avoiding interviews — all of which actually increased the hype surrounding them.

"I had people coming up to me and saying, 'Dude, the marketing for this has been genius!'" Grohl laughs. "They assumed that it was some kind of business ploy, but it was just because we didn't want anyone to know. We figured that until we have something to say, let's not say anything at all." In an age of hypermedia and instant gratification, it's a campaign that has been remarkably covert, but the veil was finally lifted three weeks ago, with the release of their self-titled album. It revealed that Them Crooked Vultures now have a lot to say — and that they're saying it very loudly. It's a thunderous collection of songs, filled with dexterous riffing, seductively heavy grooves and sexual energy.

Indeed, for all the focus on the rhythmic dream team, it's Homme and his libidinal lyrics that are the key ingredient. In Them Crooked Vultures, Grohl is the heart, Jones is the brain and Homme is the genitalia. And in the traditionally licentious world of rock'n'roll, there is no part more important than that. "It's one of the greatest things ever, and there's not enough of that in music," agrees Homme, who confesses to having been hellbent, at first, on calling the band Caligula, before realising that numerous others had got there first.

"We're just that far away from animals... and that sounds great," he says. "I think people like to do what they want to in the dark because they feel like the dark protects them. I've always played to those people. I don't think you need the dark to do what you want, but if that's where most people start, I'll start there with you too. And maybe we'll get you out of there and you can be who you want all the time."

Homme has never been one to shy away from his hedonistic tendencies in his other musical projects, either. Arguably the greatest moment in the entire Queens of the Stone Age back catalogue is the ferocious one-chord chug of Feel Good Hit of the Summer, the lyrics of which consist solely of a list of the drugs Homme took during a millennium party. The only difference is that in Them Crooked Vultures he has the equally decadent throbs concocted by Jones and Grohl to back it up with. The end result is a carnal onslaught few other bands can match. It's a lifestyle Homme continues to embrace wholeheartedly, if only because he feels he owes it to himself.

"Every single time I'm on tour, and every time I leave my hotel room to go to a show, I always let go of the doorknob and say to myself, 'And little did he know what was about to happen.' If I'm gonna tour and leave everything that I love behind, I want my eyes to be open to everything that's out there. Sometimes, that'll end with me losing a tooth. I'm ready for all of that."

As our time comes to an end, Homme leaps off the sofa and prepares to bound out of the room on the way to his next adventure, only to stop moment&shy;arily and look back. "Hey, do me a favour," he says. "Find yourself a girl tonight and..." At which point he trails off and pretends to put his arms around an invisible woman, while making an amusingly suggestive growling sound. Before I can tell him I have a long-standing girlfriend waiting for me at home, he's gone.

The next words I hear from him come about an hour later, as Them Crooked Vultures walk on stage and kick into the set (and album) opener, Nobody Loves Me and Neither Do I. Grohl puts down a swaggering beat, Jones strokes out an assuredly sexy bass line and Homme sets the tone for the night perfectly by lustily crooning the opening lines: "Think I saw her for the first time maybe in a newsstand/She was picking a mag and dressed oblique." It isn't long before I hear the growl Homme left me with being repeated by the couples in the darkness all around me. It's the kind of primal response that Them Crooked Vultures would undoubtedly take any day over awestruck applause for their technical prowess.

Them Crooked Vultures is out now.

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I was at the concert, too

I've to say that the sound was awesome and the interplay between the band was as if they and not Zeppelin had their 40th Anniversary. I think everybody knows about the great qualities of the musicians except perhaps for Alain Johannes who really should be mentioned here, because he amazed me with a fine blues guitar solo!

What more can I say? Try to tune in to WDR 3 (german television station) on Tuesday Decembre 15 at 23.15 CET to get impressions of the concert!

Cheers

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The Guardian 11.12.2009

John Paul Jones: Led Zeppelin's best-kept secret

John Paul Jones's career since Led Zeppelin has featured some impressive collaborations, none more so than his work with Dave Grohl and Josh Homme in Them Crooked Vultures

When he was the bassist with globe-bestriding hedonists Led Zeppelin, John Paul Jones was hidden in his bandmates' midst like some medieval scholar at a whirling Odinist stag party. Jimmy Page acquired both a heroin habit and Boleskine House, the remote edifice on the shores of Loch Ness where Aleister Crowley once enacted The Book of the Sacred Magick of Abramelin the Mage. Robert Plant cast himself as a priapic rock satyr, a self-proclaimed "golden god" from West Bromwich. John Bonham rode a motorbike down hotel corridors. But over the 30 years since Bonham died and Zeppelin – bar the odd reunion – ceased to be, Jones has quietly accumulated a CV to shame his starrier colleagues. The unlikely combination of Brian Eno, the Butthole Surfers and Nick Beggs of Kajagoogoo all feature on a resume that now also includes Anglo-American supergroup Them Crooked Vultures.

Page and Jones pretty much tie for astonishing pre-Zep employment, thanks to their ubiquity on the session scene in the 1960s. Jones played or arranged for Nico, the Shadows, Shirley Bassey, the Walker Brothers, Dusty Springfield, the Rolling Stones and Lulu. Page also worked with the Shadows, Nico and the Stones – and then clocked in with the Kinks, Van Morrison, Marianne Faithfull and the Who. But it's the post-Zep years that support the idea that Jones was the one ceaselessly trying to expand his horizons.

Jones played on Eno's Music for Films III album in 1988 and the rest of his post-Zeppelin career seems to have been dictated by the random factor of Eno's Oblique Strategies cards. On the more bathetic side, Jones provided the soundtrack for Michael Winner's 1984 thriller Scream for Help, a film so inadvertently hilarious the DVD release could only muster a rave review from Winner himself (admittedly Page had beaten Jones to the dubious honour of soundtracking a Winner film, recording the music for Death Wish 2 in 1982). Jones has also produced rock mystics the Mission and written string arrangements for US hair-metal goons Cinderella. He then played in a band that featured Kajagoogoo's titanically non-U bassist Nick Beggs. But, in keeping with the musical facility that saw him become a 14-year-old choirmaster and church organist, he's also worked with REM, Paul McCartney and Ben E King. Then there are the collaborations that surreally invert his position as "the quiet one" in Led Zeppelin. In 1994 Jones made an album with Diamanda Galás, the ferocious Greek-American voodoo-blues medusa. In 1993, he produced an album for the scatological Texas rock absurdists Butthole Surfers, Independent Worm Saloon. Even more remarkably, Jones's advice helped give them a US top 30 single.

Jones's surviving Led Zeppelin colleagues have operated less quixotically. Robert Plant's post-Zep career has been rootsily respectable enough to earn him a CBE, while the recent activity of Jimmy Page OBE has sometimes been governed by a gallumping market logic. How else can you account for his work alongside Puff Daddy, Limp Bizkit and – on a double-decker bus in Beijing's Olympic stadium – Leona Lewis and David Beckham?

No gongs for Jones, but next to some of Page's post-Zep combinations, his current supergroup is an honourable, impressive thing. With Dave Grohl on drums and Queens of the Stone Age's Josh Homme on lead vocals and guitar, Them Crooked Vultures reinvest and exceed standard supergroup weights and measures. The young Jones was both a Stax fan and a classically trained musician – facets manifested in the funkiness and compositional breadth he brought to Led Zeppelin. Such dimensions are also there in Them Crooked Vultures, giving them proximity to a Led Zeppelin's scope and scale.

In retrospect, maybe Jones's underplayed dash was there all along. After all, while his bandmates persisted with their prosaic given names, Sidcup-born John Baldwin renamed himself after a hero of the American war of independence.

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The Skinny (UK)

December 10, 2009

When Vultures Circle

From the belly of the rock world's most anticipated meeting of minds since Dio danced with Sabbath, former Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones reveals the genesis, the chemistry and the future of Them Crooked Vultures.

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by Dave Kerr,

When an unannounced act calling themselves Them Crooked Vultures started hovering around European festival tents at high noon this summer, spectators were treated to an update of Josh Homme’s desert-born robot rock, embellished by John Paul Jones’ psychedelic overtones and Dave Grohl’s deftly controlled fills, rolls and pummelling breakdowns. Grohl and Homme’s union on 2002’s Songs for the Deaf had already set a jaw-dropping precedent for any future collaboration, but the addition of Jones presented a tantalising prospect for rock aficionados of all generations.

Accordingly, as supergroups go, they don’t come with a bigger S across the chest or any greater weight of expectation on their shoulders than this trio. Their virtuosic pedigree – equal parts Led Zeppelin to Nirvana and Queens of the Stone Age – is a combination of the yardsticks that modern rock has come to be measured by. But can the music ever be greater than the sum of its constituents? The Skinny talks to John Paul Jones about the band’s genesis, chemistry and just how long they think they can keep this up.

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What were the circumstances of your first meeting with Dave Grohl and Josh Homme?

I played on a few songs that ended up on [Foo Fighters’ fifth album] In Your Honor, done some arrangements with them and conducted an orchestra for them at the Grammy awards. Then [Dave] came over to England for the GQ Men of the Year Awards and presented Jimmy


, Robert [Plant] and I with the lifetime achievement award or something. At that time he asked me whether I’d be interested in coming over to Los Angeles and having a play with him and Josh. Josh I hadn’t met, though obviously knew him from Queens of the Stone Age. It sounded like a really interesting proposition. So we got together at Dave’s birthday party at Medieval times, which was bizarre, you wear paper crowns and drink Dragon’s Breath soup. Once we got over the trauma of that we went into the studio the next day and just started playing. It was brilliant from the word go.

Are Nirvana and Queens both bands that you had come to enjoy as a listener before any collaboration took place?

Oh yes, very much, I was always a fan of Nirvana and I’ve heard quite a lot of Queens of the Stone Age over the years. And so, yes, I knew how they played and had a feel for their sensibilities a bit I suppose. Dave is just a killer drummer, probably one of the best drummers about at the moment and Josh has always been a really interesting musician, and a good guitarist, I’ve discovered. I didn’t appreciate quite how good his guitar playing was, and of course he’s a great lyricist and singer…so it’s a dream band.

I think he's had that reputation as an accomplished player from a young age, much like you. Blues for the Red Sun by Kyuss is a classic, and he was still in his teens when they recorded that, long before Queens…

I wasn’t aware of Kyuss previously, I’m quite aware of them now of course [laughs], but they did some great stuff.

How do Them Crooked Vultures balance songwriting, with your background as a composer and Josh and Dave's roles as principle writers in their other bands?

It’s all pretty democratic. Josh tends to – well, in this project – we’ll have recorded the tracks for the songs and Josh comes up with the lyrics last. Which is not usual for him, I think he found it quite difficult…he’ll say so himself. But we all had great input into the tracks and melodies.

How is it to be back recording and touring with a band again?

It’s brilliant. I was kind of up for it when Dave asked because I’d been rehearsing with Jimmy and Jason [bonham, son of late Led Zeppelin drummer John]. I think after the 02 [benefit concert for Ahmet Ertegün held in December 2007], we’d put in so much work we thought it was silly just to say goodbye. We thought we’d like to start another band – not Led Zeppelin without Robert Plant, as was reported – we just wanted to do another band, although obviously we realised we would have to play some Zeppelin songs if we actually went out on tour. We couldn’t agree on singers in the end. It was just around the time when it had all come to a halt that Dave asked me about this new band. So my mind was in kind of the right place for touring and recording…I jumped at the chance.

You played a series of shows as unannounced special guests at a number of festivals this summer, where were you with the album by that point?

It was pretty much in the can, pretty much there. We had to finish mixing and mastering whilst we were on the road. It was done before we played a single show; although there’s one song we play live called Highway One which may have changed a bit. Since we’ve been playing that we’ve added bits to it and so that’ll probably change. It has been recorded but we’ll probably go back and work on it.

Do you consider Them Crooked Vultures a one off, or might this become a more serious long-term proposition?

I don’t know how long-term it can be, with all the other bands involved, but it could be I suppose. Josh is in three bands at the moment anyway, so it could continue like that. We definitely want to do another record, so it’ll certainly last that long. We’ll probably want to tour that, so it’ll go on to last that long too [laughs]. I suppose we’re taking it as it comes, but there are plans for it.

Was there any fear that the project might not live up to your respective legacies?

We’ve never really thought about respective legacies. I mean, basically those legacies were great for getting us into the press, getting us noticed and getting people along to the shows because nobody had heard the music when they first came along to the shows. There wasn’t a record out or anything, so that was kind of novel. It didn’t concern us, we knew the band was good and we knew the music was good. We were happy to have it stand on mostly its own legs.

What's your own favourite track on the album?

It’s definitely a three man project. We all had a lot to do with the forming of the tracks, obviously not the lyrics. Everything else was very much a band project. Favourite tracks? I’ve got so many of them unfortunately – unfortunately for you [laughs], but not for me. The likes of Mind Eraser, [spinning in] Daffodils and Scumbag Blues – they’ve all got their own things. It was agreed that nothing would go on the record unless everybody was really in love with the track. And that’s pretty much what happened. There was no ‘[groans] oh, ok, I’ll play on this then’ [laughs]. It was never that. It’s a band record, we weren’t working on a Queens of the Stone Age record.

How do you think Them Crooked Vultures would have fared supporting Led Zeppelin back in the day?

Ooh, well I’d be knackered for a start! [laughs] We’d have given Zeppelin a run for their money, I think. We’d have certainly wanted to give them a run for their money.

Was there any particular Led Zep show you look back on as a particular landmark or turning point for the band?

Bloody hell, that’s hard! There was a load of them. The Forum shows were great, there was one particular one at Filmore West in San Francisco very early on in ’69. That was one of my favourite shows because it was like a big breakthrough. The Madison Square Garden shows were great, there were literally hundreds.

Any memorable performances in Scotland?

Yeah, to be honest all shows in Scotland were pretty memorable because – I don’t know how it is now, because I haven’t played up there for years – in the old days it was always much more livelier and exciting the further north you went. By the time you got to London everyone was sitting there with their arms folded thinking ‘OK…what have you got?’ I don’t know about nowadays but in the old days you always seemed to have much more fun up north…more receptive and certainly more demonstrative! [laughs].

After all the rumour that surrounded Led Zeppelin since the O2 gig, and new speculation about next year’s Glastonbury, do you see any future plans with Jimmy, Jason and Robert unfolding?

Well, Robert has stated that he really doesn’t want to do that sort of thing anymore, so I think the answer is no. There definitely aren’t any plans and I can’t see anything happening either.

Have you been invited along to appear on the next Desert Session? There are rumblings that Josh has been working on another for a while…

Oh really? [laughs], I don’t think Josh has had much time to think about anything else at the moment, not since February, it’s been pretty full on. Yeah I would though, should he invite me. It sounds like fun. Any excuse as far as I’m concerned [laughs].

Will Them Crooked Vultures continue to be active throughout 2010?

Yeah, there’s going to be festivals, there’s going to be quite a lot of dates I think. A lot of touring. But as I said, I was in that mindset, so I’m ready for it. We’ll make another record; I should think that’ll happen next year.

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Them Crooked Vultures Take Flight In the UK

Posted on Dec 11th 2009 6:41AM by Julian Marszalek

With their sold-out debut UK tour under way, Them Crooked Vultures - the supergroup formed by Queens of the Stone Age's Josh Homme, Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones and Foo Fighter's Dave Grohl - have spoken about how they keep three superstar egos in check.

Speaking to BBC 6 Music, singer-guitarist Josh Homme said, "Ego is a real problem normally; you can't be honest when people have an ego and everything is so overtly personal, but we pursue the best ideas available to us regardless of where they come from, that it doesn't really matter."

For Dave Grohl -- returning to what many see as his rightful place behind a drum kit -- it's the live experience that keeps things together.

He explained, "The shows are so rewarding, that it doesn't matter how sick of the road you are, when you go out and play it really makes up for the other 22 hours of the day when you might be exhausted."

Indeed, for Grohl, the moment the music stops is the moment that the drummer realises how much he loves what he's doing. "After the America tour and our last show in New York City, there was a real come down from that -- a real crash. It was such a great gig, and then you realise you're not going to do it for another two weeks, and that sucks."

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