The Ongoing History of New Music, episode 877: Secrets of Queens of the Stone Age, part 1
How old is rock’n’roll now? If we use 1955 as a some kind of arbitrary ground zero, rock is now eligible for all kinds of senior’s discounts.
That’s a long time. And the older rock gets, the more difficult it becomes to stick out, to find distinctive approaches, and to be unique in a vast ocean of other acts. Hell, there are 60 million tracks available on the digital music services. How can you compete with that?
Let me ask you this: How many bands can you name from the last, say, 20 years that has a sound so distinctive that you know exactly who they are within just the first couple of seconds?
I have one: Queens of the Stone Age.
There’s something about what they do that sonically sets them apart from everyone else. But it’s more than just guitar sounds, arrangements and lyrics. The elements required to create this uniqueness are complex and varied–and, I think, worth of study.
In fact, you can separate the sounds of Queens from their history, which is also very, very complex. Let’s see if we can untangle everything.
Songs heard on this episode:
- Queens of the Stone Age, The Way You Used to Do
- Sons of Kyuss, Deadly Kiss
- Kyuss, The Law
- Kyuss One Inch Man
- Gamma Ray, Born to Hula
- Desert Sessions, Volume 1, Girl Boy Tom
- Queens of the Stone Age, If Only Everything
- Queens of the Stone Age, Regular John
Naturally, Eric Wilhite has this playlist for us.
Don’t forget that you can get the podcast version of this podcast through iTunes or wherever you get your on-demand audio.
The Ongoing History of New Music can be heard on the following stations:
- 102.1 The Edge/Toronto – Sunday night at 7
- Live 88-5/Ottawa
- 107.5 Dave-FM/Kitchener
- FM96/London – Sunday night at 7, Monday night at 11
- Power 97/Winnipeg (Sunday nights at 11)
- Rock 97.7/Grand Prairie – Sunday nights at 6.
- Sonic 102.9/Edmonton
- The Zone/Victoria
- The Fox/Vancouver
- Live 105/Halifax
- WAPS/WKTL The Summit/Arkon, Canton, Cleveland, Youngstown
We’re still looking for more affiliates in Calgary, Kamloops, Kelowna, Regina, Saskatoon, Brandon, Windsor, Montreal, Charlottetown, Moncton, Fredericton, and St John’s and anywhere else with a transmitter. If you’re in any of those markets and you want the show, lemme know and I’ll see what I can do.
