5/7/2010 Them Crooked Vultures @ Brixton Academy

Subject	Them Crooked Vultures @ Brixton Academy
PostedDate	7/5/2010
	I'm not normally much of a fan of 'supergroups', but two of the albums I've bought and enjoyed over the past year have been by them - Chickenfoot and Them Crooked Vultures. People have been raving about live performances by the latter, but this is the first time I've been able to catch them. Their album is certainly pretty good. On paper it sounds promising - imagine what you'd expect a cross between Led Zeppelin and Queens Of The Stone Age to sound like? Well that's exactly how they sound! OK, so we don't get Percy - but Dave Grohl makes a damn good Bonham substitute. If you like Zep or QOTSA or both then you're probably going to like Them Crooked Vultures too - it's pretty much 'exactly what it says on the tin'. Brixton Academy looks sold out, and it's very hot in there now we are finally getting some proper summer weather in London.  Them Crooked Vultures walk on to massive applause.They've only made one album (so far) so they haven't got a lot of material to draw on for their live set and we get pretty much the whole album. The sound mix isn't too great and I'm disappointed not to be able to hear very much bass. However, it was certainly an excellent gig! That said, to be honest it won't go down as one of my gigs of the year good though it was - but that was mainly due to the extreme heat and poor sound mix spoiling my enjoyiment of what was actually a great performance. I've seen QOTSA play a couple of better gigs - that band could be a bit hit and miss, but when they were good, they were really good!. Them Crooked Vultures had definitely the best rhythm section I've seen in a long time though - the best since the original Danko Jones lineup I reckon! John Paul Jones seemed to be having the time of his life, and I can well see why Dave Grohl was Lemmy's first choice as a stand-in Motorhead drummer when Micky Dee was on that reality TV show. I'll never get to see Led Zeppelin, and this is about as close as I'm likely to get. 'Elephants' in particular has some speeded up Page style riffing, and I'm sure John Bonham has always been a big influence on Dave Grohl's drumming - listen to 'This Is A Call' on the first Foo's album. Grohl is simply amazing tonight - the energy he puts out through the entire show is astonishing - fronting the Foo Fighters might be his 'day job', but you can tell be absolutely loves playing the drums! This is definitely a band I want to see again - but hopefully under better conditions next time...