“No One Knows”—Queens of the Stone Age

It’s Queens of the Stone Age Day here at 60 Songs! Listen as Rob finds a way to juxtapose heavy metal and stand-up comedy like only he can on his journey to celebrate the song “No One Knows.” Later, Rob is joined by The Ringer’s head of content and host of The Big Picture, Sean Fennessey, to further discuss the greatness of Queens of the Stone Age. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Sean Fennessey Producers: Bobby Wagner, Jonathan Kermah, and Justin Sayles Additional Production Support: Olivia Crerie Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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  What's up everyone, I'm Nora Princiotti.

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  And I'm Nathan Hubbard.

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  And we're coming in like a wrecking ball to announce a brand new series.

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  That's right, it's every single album, Miley Cyrus.

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  Deep dive with us into the career of one of our most creative and confounding pop stars.

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  We're starting, of course, with the best of Hannah Montana.

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  And ending with her brand new album, Something Beautiful, in June.

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  And don't forget about Miley Cyrus and her dead pets.

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  We certainly will not be doing that. So listen now on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

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  When the sun goes down, the appetizers come out. Yeah, you heard that right. Late night half-price appetizers are here at Applebee's. Saucy, sweet and spicy boneless wings, crispy cheesy mozzarella sticks, creamy spinach and artichoke dip. Your favorite app's half-price available every single night because why should appetizers have curfews? Tap the banner to learn more. Dining only for a limited time at participating locations. Restrictions apply. Copyright 2026 Applebee's Restaurant LLC. This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech. Breaking news out of the North Pole. Santa and his elves are swamped with requests for vehicle floor liners. And although elves are terrific toy makers, their little hammers and chisels

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  You want to hear my all-time favorite joke when I was a kid? It's the early 90s, I'm 12 years old or so, I'm watching HBO. HBO back then is the cable channel that shows Three Amigos during the day. Predator 2 in the evening and the porn adjacent adult shows Real Sex and Dream On late at night. That's about it content wise on early 90s HBO. The nudity offered by the porn adjacent HBO shows Real Sex and Dream On very rarely rewards the effort of staying up that late and sneaking back downstairs or sneak programming the

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  VCR in advance. It's not worth it in my 12 year old opinion. Just get Cinemax or better yet, just go to bed, you pervert. But nonetheless HBO second coolest cable channel after MTV because one day here comes this guy. What's this guy doing on HBO? Older white guy, black leather jacket, long poofy black hair, but also giant bald spot. His bald spot is visibly expanding. It is gentrifying the rest of his head even as he speaks, or rather even as he mumbles because this dude is half awake at best. He is a standup comedian who can

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  barely stand. He had evidently been violently roused from a decade long stupor 15 seconds before I turned on the TV. He's looking straight down at the microphone he's holding in one hand and he's clutching his head with the other hand like he's got a migraine. And this is his exact posture when he tells the funniest joke I have ever heard in my life.

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  My uncle was a clown for Ringling Brothers Circus. And when he died, all his friends went to the funeral in one car.

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  Steven Wright. God-tier stand-up comedian Steven Wright. Coolest ever guy from Boston. With apologies to some people I work with. Yes, to answer your question, Steven is the radio DJ voice. In the unnecessarily violent Quentin Tarantino film Reservoir Dogs, he plays the host of Kay Billy's Super Sounds of the 70s. This is Steven Wright appearing on the 1987 Comic Relief Charity Special, and he has just presented me with the funniest, the most profound, the most objectively perfect series of words I had ever heard in my entire life. I'm like 12, but still.

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  My uncle was a clown for Ringling Brothers Circus. And when he died, all his friends went to the funeral in one car. Just the beauty, the deadpan absurdity, the sublime morbidity of this image. All the clowns piling out of the funeral limo, wearing suits. It's like a Black Sabbath riff. This clown funeral image, suffused as it is with both silliness and badassness. This joke's like a riff from one of the softer and chiller Black Sabbath songs, one of the ballads. Yeah, Steven Wright's clown funeral joke is like the first 11 seconds of the 1971 Black Sabbath song Solitude.

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  It's the hypnotic lull, the euphoric stupor of Tony Iommi's guitar and Geezer Butler's bass, waltzing together in the somehow audible dead of night on the phenomenal 1971 Black Sabbath song Solitude. I hear this song and I watch the black clown car pulling up to the funeral. I watch the clown car door solemnly open. I watch the clowns emerge. I don't know if this is gonna work. This conceit where I connect stand-up comedy jokes with heavy metal guitar riffs, we're gonna find out together if this bit makes any sense to anybody, myself included. And if it doesn't make any sense, too bad. So now I'm locked in on Steven Wright. This is the funniest dude who's ever walked the

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  earth, in my 12-year-old opinion. I am paying the maximum amount of attention a 12-year-old can pay to anybody. Sir, please tell me another joke immediately.

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  About a year ago, my girlfriend was on the pill using a diaphragm and an IUD all at once. Recently, she had a baby. Baby was born wearing armor.

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  I love this joke too, but I'm 12 years old and I have, let's say, a 65% logistical understanding of precisely what Steven Wright is referring to here. Contraception-wise, I gotta watch more Real Sex, I guess. I get the gist. This Steven Wright joke is quite a bit rowdier and bodder and more adult. So we need a much rowdier and bodder Black Sabbath riff for this one, preferably punctuated with a classic "Oh Yeah!" from Black Sabbath lead singer Ozzy Osbourne. I got just the thing.

• 7:27Speaker 03

  Oh, hell yeah. This bit is going awesome and makes perfect sense to me. Steven Wright's baby-wearing armor joke is like the malevolent bounce of the 1970 Black Sabbath song NIB, with the rad bassline and the Lucifer falls-in-love lyrics, both supplied by Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler. There is nothing more dangerous, and therefore nothing more metal, than letting your bassist write lyrics. That's why Black Sabbath are the best. Steven Wright's flat-lined, drowsy, head-clutching, deadpan vocal tone does not change.

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  Ever. The monotone, the monotony is central to the majesty. This word hypnotic, I overuse the word hypnotic as a dorky rock critic adjective. Right. But I do think there's a profound element of hypnosis to Steven Wright. A compounded soothing ridiculousness. He coaxes you onto his wavelength. He physically slows down your heart rate. It's like you're listening to him at 0.5 speed. If we're doing Black Sabbath, we got to deal with the quite famous Black Sabbath song, Iron Man, I suppose, speaking of babies wearing armor. What's the Iron Man riff of Steven Wright jokes? What we need from Steven here is something short, punchy and eternal.

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  We need something worthy of this.

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  The silliness and the badassness of Ozzy Osbourne, of Black Sabbath, of heavy metal. It all peaks here, in my opinion, with Iron Man, with the fearsome delight of

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  just doing that into a microphone right now, I feel like a total dork. And yet I also feel invincible. Okay, I found the right Steven Wright joke for this. Hit the deck.

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  I've been making wine at home, but I make it out of raisins. So it'll be aged automatically.

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  Anytime you can get drugs, alcohol, intoxicants, whatever in the mix. That's the right call. That's what heavy metal is all about. Yes. So, all right, Steven Wright making wine out of raisins. This is Iron Man moment. Simple, short, punchy, eternal. Fantastic work by everybody, myself included. But I find myself returning to the first joke Steven Wright tells onstage at the 1987 Comic Relief Special. This joke is quite a bit weirder and spacier and, dare I say it, stonder.

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  When I was out in the middle of the desert, a UFO landed. Three one-inch-tall guys get out. They walked over to me. They said, "Are you really one inch tall?" They said, "No, we're really very far away."

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  It really makes you think this Steven Wright joke. Yeah? It makes you think, "What?" But it also makes you think in the profound philosophical blacklight poster sense. "No, we're really very far away." I'm sure there's an excellent Black Sabbath equivalent to the Steven Wright "one-inch-tall alien" joke. But if we're talking about "one-inch men" now, what we really need is another band.

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  Oh my God, this song rules so hard. This song is called "One Inch Man." It is brought to you by the great American rock band Kyuss. That's K-Y-U-S-S. It's a Dungeons and Dragons reference. Kyuss formed in Palm Desert, California in 1987. Initially, they called themselves Katzenjammer. That's German. And then they put out an EP under the name Sons of Kyuss. And then they changed their name to just Kyuss. Just Kyuss is way better. Kyuss put out four rad, full-length stoner rock albums in the first half of the 90s and then broke up. The song "One Inch Man" appears on the last Kyuss record, released in 1995 and called

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  "And the Circus Leaves Town." I was recently informed via Facebook that my 30-year high school reunion is next year.

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  And I did not appreciate receiving that information. And I swear to you that if I do attend my 30 year high school reunion, I'm just gonna walk into the gymnasium or whatever with a super pointy electric guitar, like an Ibanez maybe, and a giant amp and a guitar pedal or two, a big muff pedal perhaps. And I'm gonna plug in and I'm gonna crank the amp up to 11 and I'm gonna bust out Kias's One Inch Man to the terror and delight of my high school classmates, who will all immediately agree that I am the raddest dude who ever lived, and they all feel terrible for not being nicer to me in high school.

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  And then I'm gonna bounce.

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  Adios amigos. I will then immediately leave my 30 year high school reunion to the dismay of all the ladies. The after-party will take place at Denny's. I'll take a French slam and a large chocolate malt, motherfucker, and you can leave the giant freezing metal cup with an extra malt in it. Can you imagine being the human being generating the One Inch Man guitar riff? Can you imagine how eternally cool you would feel?

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  Does Steven Wright have a joke worthy of comparison to the One Inch Man riff? Of course he does. The one about how he's gonna put a humidifier and a dehumidifier in a room together and let them fight it out, that's a killer joke. But we're on to Kias now. We've changed metal bands. So why don't we go ahead and change stand-up comedians as well? We need another legit candidate for the coolest stand-up comedian who ever lived. Someone a little younger, somebody with long hair and colored glasses and a pristinely disheveled demeanor and a litany of phenomenal one-liners. We need somebody with, shall we say, big black light energy.

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  We need him.

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  So I wish I could play Little League now. I'd kick some fucking ass. I'd be way better than before.

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  Mitch Hedberg. God-tier stand-up comedian Mitch Hedberg. My all-time favorite stand-up comedian. If you want the truth. Coolest ever guy from St. Paul, Minnesota. Prince was born in Minneapolis. I looked it up. That's a separate city, right? Okay. I wish I could play Little League now. I'd kick some fucking ass.

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  Mitch Hedberg and Kias align perfectly in my head. That phrasing is very important, by the way. Kick some fucking ass. What Kias and Mitch Hedberg both know is that whatever sentiment you're trying to convey, there is one exactly right way to put it. One pristine, profane, bong-loading phrase that ties the whole room together. I got an ant farm, but they didn't grow anything. That's a good joke, right? No, it ain't.

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  I got an ant farm. Them fellas didn't grow shit.

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  Now, that's a good fucking joke. Them fellas didn't grow shit. Just a miraculous series of words. What is the Kias song that best exemplifies the profane majesty of them fellas didn't grow shit? Let's try this one.

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  Incredible.

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  This song is called "Son of a Bitch", and it appears on the first full-length Kias album, released in 1990 and called "Wretch". That's W-R-E-T-C-H. The lineup shifts over time, but Kias in 1990 consists of John Garcia on vocals, Brandt Bjork on drums, Nick Oliveri on bass, and Josh Homme on guitar. That's Josh Homme, H-O-M-M-E. Coolest ever guy named Josh. With apologies to all other Joshes. We're dealing with teenagers here. Kias are kids. They're kids in Palm Desert, California. Palm Desert is east of Palm Springs, but is not as nice,

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  or at least not as posh as Palm Springs. It is also, you know, hotter. Palm Desert is a literal desert. Kias start out playing generator parties, which is that thing where you drive out into the desert with some gas-powered generators and you plug in and you crank everything to 11 and you play exceptional hard rock music at incredible volume to an audience of fellow kids who are mostly all swilling beer and beating the crap out of each other. Talking to Billboard Magazine in 1994, Josh Hammy says that for Kias, playing in the desert, quote, "was the shaping factor." "There's no clubs here, so you can only play for free. If people don't like you, they'll tell you.

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  You can't suck," end quote. Way more recently, in 2024, Josh did an interview with the podcast and radio show Q with Tom Power. And Josh talked about being a kid and seeing the Southern California hardcore band, TSOL, for the first time. Quote, "The first time I saw TSOL, it was brutal and terrifying. It was at the Palm Springs Water Park, and it was the dichotomy of going to a place of joy by day. And at night, it was so unpredictable. I grew up playing that way. We would take a generator into the desert and play in order to get away from the police busting up house parties. You don't realize at first that when you are away from the police

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  and any adult authority as a teenager, what you're doing is lawless and out of control. And some nights, that's magical. Other nights, it's terrifying," end quote. But Kias don't sound terrifying to me.

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  They just sound like teenagers, and more specifically, they sound like teenagers plugged into generators out in the desert, under an open sky, stretching out forever in every direction. When I listen to Kias, I close my eyes and all I see are horizons. There's this monumental majestic emptiness to it, this sense of infinite physical space. That's a very stoned thought, but I'm just trying to get on their wavelength. But yeah, Kias don't strike me as a scary band, a threatening band, a violent band, a wallowing in misery band. Okay, so like you know the Metallica song "One", off "Justice for All" in 1988? The part halfway through "One",

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  where Metallica gets super fast and super tough and super scary? This part.

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  Here's a wild oversimplification for you, but I do believe this. When it comes to hard rock, heavy metal, heavy music, whatever your preferred term, there are two types of metal songs. There are songs where darkness is imprisoning you, and it's awful and tortuous and miserable. And there are songs where darkness is imprisoning you, and it's fucking awesome.

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  This song is called "The Law". It is also off the first Kias album, "Ratchet", released in 1990. Josh Homme is often playing his guitar through both a guitar amp and a bass amp, which provides both extra bass and extra awesomeness. What's a Mitch Hedberg joke that pairs well with the Kias song "The Law"? We need a palpable heaviness. We need a sense of awesome imprisoning darkness. We need a powerful fragrance. I wish they made fajita cologne, because that still smells good.

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  We need Fajita Cologne. That's Mitch Hedberg on Conan. Mitch Hedberg was huge in the early 2000s, back when stand-up comics were still a huge part of the late-night show ecosystem. Conan, Letterman, Leno, et cetera. Mitch has got three classic comedy CDs, back when that was still a thing. Strategic Grill Locations in 1999, Mitch All Together in 2003, and Do You Believe in Gosh in 2008. That one was posthumous, but I don't want to talk about that yet. Mitch's delivery is faster, wirier, more delightfully explosive and chaotic. But I do think Mitch Hedberg and Steven Wright occupy a similar headspace,

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  even beyond their perfect one-liners. The randomness, the spaciness. And often, oddly, the wholesomeness, almost the cuddliness. These guys are not insult comics. They are not edgelords. Though Mitch Hedberg does have a few slightly bluer jokes. His first CD, Strategic Grill Locations, peaks at the end with a few of his more famous jokes. "If you are flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit." That's a famous Mitch Hedberg joke. But I had forgotten about this one.

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  Some songs have a special meaning for a man in regards to a special woman. But this can backfire, because maybe the song had deeper meaning to begin with, but now it's been cheapened.

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  It is quite rare, actually, for a Mitch Hedberg joke to require a setup that's even this long. But you can feel it coming, right? The punchline, the detonation, the mushroom cloud of awesomeness. Kaya songs work like this, too. You can sense that a Kaya song is about to get ridiculously great, like 10 seconds before it happens. Here, like this.

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  That's a Kaya song called "50 Million Year Trip Downside Up." It's about to get ridiculously great, but Mitch has got to finish his joke first.

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  "We are the world, we are the children, we are the ones who make a better life, so let's keep on giving. Remember that song, baby? The night I fucked you in the pet cemetery?"

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  I audibly gasped very recently at the whimsical pornographic audacity of this particular Mitch Hedberg joke. Just as I audibly gasped at the ridiculous great part of the Kaya song "50 Million Year Trip Downside Up", though of course I was playing this song way too loud for my audible gasp to be remotely audible.

• 24:32Speaker 03

  Oh my god, the Mitch Hedberg joke about fucking you in the pet cemetery while "We Are the World" is playing is like the Kaya song "50 Million Year Trip" parentheses "Downside Up", from the 1992 Kaya's album "Blues for the Red Sun." With both the joke and the song, the bottom just drops out, right? The trapdoor opens beneath you and you are suddenly plummeting into a bottomless pit of imprisoning darkness and uncouth radness. This Mitch Hedberg joke doesn't even have that long a setup, but I get a similar vibe.

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  So my friend said to me, "I think the weather's trippy." And I said, "No, man, it's not the weather that's trippy. Perhaps it is the way that we perceive it that is indeed trippy." Then I thought, "Man, I should have just said, 'Yeah.'"

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  As it happens, the first Kaya song I ever heard is one of the great "Man, I Should Have Just Said Yeah" anthems in the Stonerock canon.

• 25:43Speaker 03

  This song is called Demon Cleaner. I love that song title. I don't know why, but I do. From the 1994 Kias album, Welcome to Sky Valley. I keep using this phrase, stoner rock. And I ought to mention that Kias guitarist Josh Homme does not care for that term. Sometimes in interviews, Josh says he hates being called stoner rock. And sometimes he is slightly more magnanimous. Talking to Rockpile Magazine in 2000, Josh says, quote, "There's a whole list of things it takes to make music. And drugs are certainly one of the things on that list. But they're not the most important thing on that list." And the only thing I think is kind of weak about stoner rock

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  is it touts the one thing on the list and goes, "Look, that almost seems like dumbing it down a little bit." End quote. Okay. Stoner rock as a genre description is reductive and a little dumb. Okay. I feel like drugs making it anywhere on the list of things it takes to make music is a pretty big win for drugs. But okay. And this inevitably brings me to my all time favorite Mitch Hedberg joke, which is also my favorite all time standup comedy joke by anyone ever. Steven Wright's Funeral Clown Car held the title when I was a teenager. Yes. But you want to hear my all time favorite joke as an adult?

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  I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to too.

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  The melodiousness of this joke. The internal rhyme scheme. "I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to too." Even the pronunciation. "I used to too." That's "yooostah," spelled Y-O-O-S-T-A. "Yooostah." This is a perfect joke. This is a perfect joke about drug use and verb conjugation. And listen, I love Kias, a great American rock band, a great American 90s rock band. But when Kias break up in 1995, they do not have a song worthy of this joke. But Kias guitarist Josh Homme regroups and he starts a new great American rock band where

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  he's the front man this time. He's the guitarist and the singer and the conceptual mastermind. Now he is flying the UFO out into the desert. Now he is driving the clown funeral car. Now he is a grown man playing Little League now.

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  Josh Homme's new band is called Queens of the Stone Age. Their second album called Rated R comes out in the year 2000. The first song is called Feel Good Hit of the Summer. It is lyrically a list of drugs. It is a song about darkness imprisoning you. It is objectively fucking awesome. And I think Mitch Hedberg himself would agree that it is worthy.

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  One thing you learn as the leader of a great American rock band is how one well-placed "oh" can transform, can radically improve, can electrify a song. That one "oh" makes Feel Good Hit of the Summer 400% better. That's not math. That is sorcery. Feel Good Hit of the Summer is a list of seven drugs. Thus far, we have listed six of them. The seventh drug has seven syllables.

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  The seventh drug is c- c- c- c- cocaine. The best jokes have a darkness to them, right? The best jokes are dangerous. The best jokes can hurt. The best jokes can break your heart. Mitch Hedberg died on March 30th, 2005. He was 37. He was already one of the greats. He should have been one of the greats for decades. He should be one of the greats now. Part of me knows that Mitch Hedberg would have been transcendent in podcast form, and part of me is genuinely relieved that he never appeared on a podcast. Does that make any sense? Mitch Hedberg died of a drug overdose. That fact, that devastating tragedy, does not drain the transcendent verb tense-based

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  humor, or drain the vibrance, or drain the all-time greatness out of "I used to do drugs, I still do, but I used to too." But it does make those words burn in my throat. For all their talk about hating the idea of stoner rock, Queens of the Stone Age do sing about drugs and alcohol quite a bit, and there are regrets. There are dark nights of the soul that appear to last for years. There are consequences. There is tragedy. There is devastation. Not on this song, though. No. Feelgood Hit of the Summer is an entirely triumphant list of seven drugs, plus the words "oh" and "woo." Here comes the "woo."

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  That's a fantastic "woo." Quite possibly my favorite part of this song. That "woo." And then, as a crowning glory, the coolest ever guy named Josh uncorks a bonkers guitar solo that sounds, to me, like the word cocaine with seven syllables.

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  I do believe that's Josh's old Kias bandmate and new Queens of the Stone Age bandmate, Nick Oliveri, there whispering, "Wake up." It is the year 2000, and Queens of the Stone Age, on only their second album, have written a song worthy of "I used to do drugs, I still do, but I used to too." Queens of the Stone Age have, perhaps single-handedly, soothed those of us who'd been a little concerned that great American rock and roll would not, in fact, survive the end of the 20th century. Indeed, in 2002, Queens of the Stone Age released the best rock and roll album of the 21st century thus far.

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  It is called Songs for the Deaf, and the big hit single off Songs for the Deaf is... How should I put this? This album's big hit single is worthy of this Mitch Hedberg joke.

• 33:15Speaker 05

  I think Bigfoot is blurry. That's the problem.

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  It's not the photographer's fault.

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  I love this one. I love the precision of both the wording and the delivery here. Get a load of the sauce Mitch is about to put on the words "Bigfoot is blurry", and then on the words "extra scary", and then especially on the words "roaming the countryside."

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  Bigfoot is blurry, and that's extra scary to me, because there's a large out-of-focus monster roaming the countryside.

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  There are days when nothing on earth is funnier to me than the way Mitch Hedberg says, "roaming the countryside." Anyways, Queens of the Stone Age got a song worthy of this joke, too.

• 34:27Speaker 03

  My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 20th episode of 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, Cole and the 2000s. And this week, we are discussing "No One Knows" by Queens of the Stone Age, from their 2002 album Songs for the Death. The boom, berm, boom, berm, boom, berm bassline there, courtesy of our friend Nick Oliveri. That is the unmistakable sound of a large, out-of-focus monster roaming the countryside. Everyone around here loves it when it takes me this long to get to the ad break. I assure you.

• 35:05Speaker 02

  This episode is brought to you by NOS Energy. Introducing new NOS Energy Grand Prix Guava. For those that want to be fueled up and fired up with 100 mile an hour tropical tasting power. Ignite your taste, start your engine, shift your flavor to high gear with new NOS Energy Grand Prix Guava. Hit the street, grab a can, and get after it. This episode is brought to you by Viori. When it comes to clothes that score high in both comfort and style, Viori is my MVP. Sunday performance joggers, oh yeah. They have the perfect, I could watch a game and then go out to dinner vibe. And the Meta Pant, that's my number one, I need to look like I tried option. Get 20% off your first purchase at Viori.com/Simmons and

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• 35:56Speaker 03

  Did you think, just for a second, that by the time that ad was over, this show would have a new, improved, replacement host who arrived at the ad breaks more expeditiously? Are you at all surprised to still be hearing my voice? I, myself, am not surprised. Nobody else wants to do this. Here's one last Mitch Hedberg joke. This one's about another stoner rock band.

• 36:21Speaker 05

  I saw a band in New York City, it was a rock and roll outfit called Monster Magnet, and the singer got on the microphone. This is what he said. He said, "All right, how many people feel like human beings tonight?" And they say, "All right, how many people feel like animals?" And everybody cheered after the animals part. But the thing is, I cheered after the human beings part, because I did not know that there was a second part to the question.

• 36:44Speaker 03

  Ah, yes. Monster Magnet. The almighty Monster Magnet. Greatest ever rock band from New Jersey. With apologies to any other rock bands from New Jersey. I can't think of any at the moment. Bon Jovi. Okay, I thought of one. Monster Magnet are better than Bon Jovi. I am delighted and genuinely heartened by the thought of Mitch Hedberg at a Monster Magnet concert. Do you feel like human beings tonight? Yeah, I love it. The vibe in that room in my head is immaculate. Sometimes when Mitch tells that Monster Magnet joke, he adds, "They were heavy, boy." And I love the way he says that, but that version of the joke is way

• 37:25Speaker 03

  too long. To play for you. Monster Magnet are led by singer and guitarist and conceptual mastermind, Dave Windorf. I have way less of a problem calling Monster Magnet stoner rock, because in 1989, Monster Magnet put out a cassette demo tape called, "Forget About Life, I'm High on Dope." And then they put out a second cassette demo tape called, "We're Stoned, What Are You Going to Do About It?" According to Discogs, both those tapes were released by a label called Cool Beans.

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  I don't know why that's so funny to me, but it's extremely funny to me. Anyways, here's what Monster Magnet's up to in 1993.

• 38:28Speaker 03

  Cool Beans. That's a song called Elephant Bell, from Monster Magnet's second album, released in 1993 and called Super Judge. I did debate whether or not to play you that particular line from that particular song.

• 38:44Speaker 03

  It was a short debate. There's just something about the ultra teenage phrasing of "my dick just got a million times bigger." That's way too big. Sir, I don't know what you think you're gonna do after your dick gets a million times bigger, but what you're gonna do is go lie down quietly alone. That's like a 14-year-old boy's idea of a rad line in a rad rock and roll song. Yes, a 14-year-old comic book reading horn dog wastoid who's like super into science fiction, but it has to be Cinemax-type science fiction. Every Monster Magnet song sounds like they're trying to impress the three-breasted alien lady

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  from Total Recall. Anyways, here's what Monster Magnet's up to in 1995.

• 39:46Speaker 03

  Did Dave Windorf, I love that name, by the way, the perfectly harmonized silliness and badassness of the name Dave Windorf, that's a god-tier rock star name somehow. Did Dave Windorf just sing the words "supersonic jerk-off"? What are you gonna do about it? That song is called Negasonic Teenage Warhead from the extra badass 1995 Monster Magnet album Dopes to Infinity. Incredible song. Negasonic Teenage Warhead, an air guitar classic. This song got on MTV a little bit. This song penetrated my personal little 90s

• 40:28Speaker 03

  teenage grunge bubble. Monster Magnet and Kias, and who else? Sleep, Electric Wizard, Fu Manchu, White Zombie, if you want the truth. These are all super-heavy bands you get into in the mid 90s because grunge and alternative rock ain't quite doing it for you. Not heavy enough, not swaggering enough, not, sorry, stoned enough, not low-key horny enough, not high-key horny enough, not enough songs about Mars and perhaps the hot alien chicks one might find on Mars, not enough songs called Space Lord.

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  Just the thought of Mitch Hedberg and a huge crowd of people pumping his fist and going "Space Lord, Mother, Mother..."

• 41:31Speaker 03

  Oh, this is the American dream to me. Yes, this song is called "Space Lord." Two words from Monster Magnet's 1998 album, "Power Trip." One word, "Space Lord, Mother, Mother" is an edited version of that chorus, obviously, but I personally have never heard the unedited version, and that's fine by me. Somehow, "Mother, Mother" is way cooler. This is the biggest Monster Magnet song, "Space Lord," because this is the Monster Magnet song with the video where it starts out all gloomy and shadowy and alternative. There's a weird old guy wandering around, presumably the same weird old guy who's wandering around every 90s alternative rock video.

• 42:12Speaker 03

  But then the chorus hits and a curtain falls, and suddenly it's basically a Hype Williams video. "Dave Windorf and his pals are rocking out in front of scantily clad backup dancers in neon-drenched Las Vegas." The "Space Lord" video is, in fact, an explicit parody of the video for Metallica's "Enter Sandman," that's the gloomy part, that suddenly turns into an explicit parody of the video for Mase's "Feel So Good," that's the glitzy Vegas part. That's Mase, M-A-S-E, the Puff Daddy-affiliated rapper for those of you way too into stoner rock to give a shit. Also, I have just learned, the internet is trying to convince me that Monster Magnet's

• 42:57Speaker 03

  "Space Lord" was the first video ever played on Total Request Live.

• 43:04Speaker 03

  That's TRL, the zeitgeist-defining MTV afternoon countdown show that premiered in 1998 and was hosted by Carson Daly and is generally synonymous with turn-of-the-century teen pop, boy bands, etc. I read that and I was like, "There is no way that Monster Magnet Space Lord was the first video ever played on TRL. This is somebody lying on the internet to amuse me specifically." Ladies and gentlemen, and I'm sorry, but this is necessary. Here now is the very first Top 10 Countdown from the first-ever episode of TRL, which aired on September 14, 1998.

• 43:46Speaker 03

  In descending order, number one, Backstreet Boys, "I'll Never Break Your Heart." Congratulations. Number two, NSYNC, "Tearing Up My Heart." Get 'em next time. Number three, Aaliyah, "Are You That Somebody?" Fantastic. Number four, Aerosmith, "I Don't Wanna Miss A Thing." Also fantastic. Number five, Will Smith, "Just The Two Of Us." Wow. Number six, Marilyn Manson, "The Dope Show." Pass. Number seven, Usher, "My Way." Tremendous. Number eight, Goo Goo Dolls, "Iris." Also tremendous. Number nine, Monica, "The First Night."

• 44:28Speaker 03

  Congratulations, Monica, on beating out number 10, Monster Magnet Space Lord. Now, obviously, the daily TRL video countdown played in ascending order, right? From number 10 to number one, to build suspense. Do you know what this means? It means that the very first lyrics ever sung on TRL were sung by Dave Windorf.

• 45:12Speaker 03

  Those are the first words ever sung by anybody on TRL, and I think that's beautiful. It would appear that there is an appetite here in 1998 for swaggering, drug-infused, typing "my dick just got a million times bigger" into WebMD-type rock and roll music. Grunge is dead. Alternative rock is basically dead. New metal is ascendant, but often quite disreputable, and not disreputable in the fun way. There is an appetite for horny, stoned badass rock and roll music that also radiates

• 45:49Speaker 03

  an intangible, paradoxical sophistication, an intangible cool, and somehow, an intangible chill.

• 46:10Speaker 03

  So, that song is called "If Only." Josh Homme is a teenage guitar hero from Palm Desert, California. He spends the first half of the 90s in the great American rock band, Kias. His guitar makes various, incomprehensibly rad noises, ranging from

• 46:36Speaker 03

  Kias breakup in 1995. Josh spends a brief interval as a touring guitarist for Screaming Trees, the great 90s Seattle band Screaming Trees. And in his spare time, Josh reads such books as Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, the bonkers violent 1985 Cormac McCarthy Western Blood Meridian. I read that once in Rolling Stone that Josh toured with the Screaming Trees and read Blood Meridian, and that image just stuck with me forever. Apparently. And in 1997, Josh formally debuts his new band, Queens of the Stone Age. That song "If Only" appears on the 1997 self-titled split EP from Kias and Queens of the Stone Age.

• 47:19Speaker 03

  Three songs apiece in which the torch of swaggering badassness formally passes from Josh Homme's old band to Josh Homme's new band. I have a likewise weirdly vivid memory of seeing the Kias Queens of the Stone Age CD for sale, right above the counter in my college record store. Shout out school kids at Ohio University. And I was intrigued by that CD, but I didn't have enough money, so I didn't buy it and I'll regret it forever. Queens of the Stone Age are Josh Homme's band, then and now. He is the front man, the singer, the guitarist, the conceptual mastermind. At this point, Josh is playing most of the instruments, in fact, with his old Kias

• 48:00Speaker 03

  bandmate Alfredo Hernandez on drums. But especially if you know him from Kias, it is Josh's singing voice that is most striking here. The high, crooning, tremendously alluring, space lordly vibe he exudes.

• 48:26Speaker 03

  That is the crisper, cleaner, shinier version of "If Only", the lead single off the first full-length from Queens of the Stone Age, released in 1998 and called Queens of the Stone Age. I own this album on vinyl and due to its semi-pornographic album cover, I have to physically hide it from my children midway through my 30-year high school reunion, at roughly the 90-minute mark. I will return from Denny's with my pointy Ibanez guitar and my amp and my Big Muff pedal, that's what that pedal is called, get over it, and I will crank everything back up to 11 and regale all the ladies with this shit.

• 49:24Speaker 03

  And then I will bounce again. That song is called How to Handle a Rope, parentheses, a lesson in the lariat, close parentheses. And can you imagine being the human being generating this guitar riff? Can you imagine how eternally cool you would feel?

• 49:47Speaker 03

  But elsewhere, there is a strikingly different vibe. There is another new, just as deadly weapon in Josh Homme's arsenal on this first Queens of the Stone Age record. And it's this infernally steady, propulsive, robotic, vaguely German, almost, here it comes, hypnotic beat. It's a good rock critic word.

• 50:22Speaker 03

  This song is called Regular John. The lockstep precision of this song, the dare I say groove. Reading about Queens of the Stone Age in the early years, I stumbled across the phrase robot rock a lot, stoned robot rock. Talking to the magazine Under the Radar in 2011 about this song's inception, and really this whole band's inception, Josh Homme says, quote, "Well, I mean, I just remember thinking I hadn't played for about a year and I started writing songs. The first song I wrote was Regular John, which is the first song on the album. And I remember thinking, no one's playing this trance rock music that you can dance

• 51:05Speaker 03

  to. But that's primarily because I hadn't heard bands like Can." Can are German. "I thought I could try and do this thing that hadn't really been done. And then I found out it had kind of been done, but not very much. You just kind of try and carve your own space. I just wanted to start a band that within three seconds of listening, people knew what band it was." End quote. And there's a valuable lesson here, I think, for those of you in any sort of creative pursuit. Generally, you start out thinking you're going to do something totally new, but then it turns out it's been done before. But not very much. Talking to The Guardian also in 2011 about the first Queens of the Stone Age

• 51:50Speaker 03

  record, Josh says, quote, "The album is an exercise in repetition. It's trance music and the way it pushes your buttons. And I wanted to do something for girls. The way I thought about it was trance robot music for girls. I wasn't interested in the guys at all. I wanted to make something that girls could dance to, that really had a freedom that Kias didn't." End quote. Now, I'm not 100% sold on the notion that Kias are definitively for boys and Queens of the Stone Age are definitively for girls, but what I do know is that Josh Homme is an alarmingly entrancing lead singer, even when he is literally singing

• 52:35Speaker 03

  a phone number.

• 52:50Speaker 03

  That's just a phone number, presumably written on a bathroom stall with one extra digit added, so nobody actually calls it. The first Queens of the Stone Age record gets pretty weird, pretty experimental by the time it's all over. This record ends, in fact, with a song called "I Was a Teenage Hand Model," which ends with a super noisy answering machine message sound collage in which Nick Oliveri, Josh's old buddy and Kias's old bass player, Nick Oliveri, Nick accepts an offer to play bass now in Queens of the Stone Age.

• 53:38Speaker 03

  That was pretty loud. I apologize. I was driving with my 14-year-old son and this part of this song was blaring very loudly in our minivan. And my son just goes, "Dad, what are you listening to?" And I was just like, "Dude, I don't even know anymore." Nobody else wants to do this job. Nick Oliveri, veteran of a couple Kias albums, will now serve as bass player and occasionally lead singer, and invaluable comic foil on a couple Queens of the Stone Age albums. And this dynamic between Josh's unflappable crooning and Nick's unhinged snarling, this magnificent dynamic will provide me with countless hours of delight in the early 2000s.

• 54:22Speaker 03

  We have arrived at the second Queens album, released in 2000 and called Rated R. So here is Josh crooning unflappably on a song called "The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret."

• 54:46Speaker 03

  And that's a lovely song, "The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret", a lovely prospective hit single, the roaring crunchy, radio-friendly guitars, et cetera. That's the song on Rated R, right after the opening song. That's just a list of drugs. But what really makes this chorus pop on Rated R is the contrast between "stuff like that" and "stuff like this."

• 55:22Speaker 03

  Indeed, that is Nick Oliveri, snarling unhingedly on a song called "Tension Head." I went with my brother. We saw Queens of the Stone Age in Detroit, at St. Andrews Hall in Detroit in 2002. They were touring with a rad Austin rock band, and you will know us by the Trail of Dead. And dude, in all seriousness, it is quite possibly the best concert I've ever been to in my life. Trail of Dead broke all their shit. They trashed all their instruments at the end. I distinctly remember one cymbal arcing gracefully up toward the ceiling, like the giant bone in 2001, A Space Odyssey. Trail of Dead were incredible, but then Queen Queens of the Stone Age, man.

• 56:05Speaker 03

  The swagger and the chaos of Queens of the Stone Age. I've noticed on bootlegs, live videos, et cetera, that in concert, Josh Homme has a habit of repeating the same phrase in his stage banter after every few songs, but the phrase changes from city to city. When the band reissued Rated R with a bunch of live tracks from the Reading Festival, that's in England, at that show, Josh keeps saying, "This is a song for you," before each song. In Detroit that night, he kept saying, "We're from out of town." That's what I remember. This tall, suave, guitar-shredding, alluringly crooning man repeatedly going, "We're from out of town."

• 56:49Speaker 03

  And also, this guy showed up.

• 57:04Speaker 03

  Mark Lanigan, frontman for the great Seattle band Screaming Trees. An imposing bass-heavy voice, an imposing, towering, glowering, physical presence. Mark Lanigan's first memoir, released in 2020, and called Sing Backwards and Weep. That book gets my vote for the most harrowing, drug-related rock star anecdotes. And I realize that's an awfully crowded literary category, but Mark wins. Yikes. That's Mark Lanigan imposingly crooning a song from Rated R called "In the Fade." That's Mark Lanigan imposingly crooning the words, "Ain't gonna worry, just live till you die." Mark Lanigan died in 2022.

• 57:49Speaker 03

  He was 57. And those lyrics burn in my throat now as well. But the great thing about Mark Lanigan as the occasional third Queens of the Stone Age singer is that Mark can both croon and snarl.

• 58:15Speaker 03

  The third Queens of the Stone Age album comes out in 2002. It is called Songs for the Deaf. It is the best rock and roll album of the 21st century thus far. I love this record unreasonably. This song is called Song for the Dead, and it's the unreasonably rad guitar flourishes here, right? The little punctuation marks. Wow, wow, wow, wow. The first Mitch Hedberg comedy CD, Strategic Grill Locations. John Mulaney was on Hot Ones recently, and John Mulaney midway through housing some Hot Wings. Incredibly impressive Hot Ones performance. John was undaunted by these Hot Wings, perhaps because he used to do drugs. John Mulaney puts Strategic Grill Locations

• 59:00Speaker 03

  on his personal Mount Rushmore of comedy CDs. And specifically because at one point Mitch Hedberg just goes, "I always wanted to have a suitcase handcuffed to my wrist." All right, and everyone laughs. And Mitch goes, "That's not a full joke there. That's filler. That's John Mulaney's favorite joke on one of his favorite comedy albums ever. It's not a full joke, but it's still a fantastic joke, right? That's how I feel about the wow, wow guitar shit on this song. Those little flourishes are too short to be guitar solos. An actual guitar solo transpires eventually. And yet each wow, wow is a spectacular guitar solo. Inevitably, Song for the Dead comes on,

• 59:45Speaker 03

  and I start playing air guitar so hard that I don't even notice that Mark Lanigan is about to sing the words, "Life's the study of dying, how to do it right."

• 1:00:13Speaker 03

  What I remember about Songs for the Dead Live at that show in Detroit is that Mark Lanigan walked onstage in like, slow motion. He trudged, like he was Frankenstein's monster, like he was Iron Man. I was enthralled. This dude was not as tall as Mark Lanigan, but still managed to be pretty scary and enthralling as well.

• 1:00:51Speaker 03

  Here we have Nick Oliveri barking random words for all I know or care on a song called, "You Think I Ain't Worth a Dollar, Comma, But I Feel Like a Millionaire." And it's the contrast within the song here, between the screaming and the beat, the infernally steady, propulsive, robotic, vaguely German, uh, here it comes, hypnotic beat.

• 1:01:16Speaker 03

  This song is basically how Songs for the Deaf starts. It is an outrageously great way to start a rock and roll record. Uh, now, I should mention Songs for the Deaf is Nick Oliveri's last album with Queens of the Stone Age. Uh, he will leave the band in 2004, under initially mysterious circumstances. And initially, I was heartbroken to lose this crucial Josh and Nick dynamic. And then a year later, in a 2005 Billboard interview, Josh Homme says that he'd heard a rumor that Nick had been physically abusive toward a girlfriend. And Josh says that he told Nick, quote, "If I ever find out that this is true, I can't know you, man, because music and my life are the same thing. There's no

• 1:02:00Speaker 03

  rules until something massive happens," end quote. That's about as specific as anyone gets. And so, in retrospect, aspects of this Songs for the Deaf record burned in the throat as well. Not all the darkness- This is cartoonish. There are consequences. I find that rock and roll songs about drugs and violence and death generally strike you a little different 20 years later, either because you've learned specific things about specific people, or because you've learned general things about general topics like drugs and violence and death. So Songs From the Deaf was top shelf escapism for me in 2002, and it's top shelf escapism for me

• 1:02:42Speaker 03

  now, but now I am escaping back to 2002, back when I knew a lot less and I barely thought about what little I knew at all. It's not so much a celebration of my youth as a celebration of my youthful ignorance, which may explain why the silliest parts of this record make me the happiest now. This single piano note, for example.

• 1:03:19Speaker 03

  That song is called Go With the Flow. Songs From the Deaf is a massive blowout arena rock record, but it also celebrates this band's idiosyncrasies, this band's multiple enthralling personalities, this band's devotion to both constant delightful surprise and delightfully grinding repetition. Shout out to whoever's banging on that one key on the keyboard the whole time, right there. I'd also forgotten about the Mad Max-style video for Go With the Flow, where Josh and the rest of the band are black silhouettes against a blood red sky as they drive a truck around the desert. And that's part of the greatness of Queens of the Stone Age as well, that this band retains the infinite horizon, open

• 1:04:02Speaker 03

  sky expansiveness of Kias, but adds so many new influences, so many new trance-like states of being, so many new voices, so many new delightfully terrifying combatants. Take the drums, for example. The drummer on Go With the Flow and You Think I Ain't Worth a Dollar, Comma, But I Feel Like a Millionaire, the drums on just those two songs are played by Gene Troutman, and Gene Troutman has an excellent feel for the more trance-like and robotic aspects of this band. But Gene is not the most famous, or the most bombastic, or the most prominent drummer on this record.

• 1:04:40Speaker 03

  Listen to this shit.

• 1:04:53Speaker 03

  This song is called "First It Giveth." Who is that kicking ass on the drums back there? This particular style of percussive ass kicking sounds super familiar to me somehow. Actually, let's go back to the song called "Song For The Dead" for a minute, the "Whee, whee, song." The best part of "Song For The Dead" is when it goes dead silent for several seconds, for the second time in the song, actually. And in the silence, the drummer's voice very briefly emerges.

• 1:05:35Speaker 03

  Dave Grohl. I would recognize that "whack" anywhere. Here in 2002, Nirvana has already been gone for eight years. And Dave's already put out four records with the Foo Fighters. He's a singing and screaming and mostly guitar-playing rock star frontman now. And so just enough time has passed that it might have slipped your mind that Dave Grohl is one of the best and most pulverizing rock drummers of his generation. And so here he is, playing drums on the vast majority of "Songs For The Dead" to remind you that he used to kick ass on the drums, etc. Dave won't be sticking around Queens of the Stone Age for long. Very few people do. But he's an inspired addition to the band All The Same,

• 1:06:19Speaker 03

  especially on the song about how Bigfoot is blurry.

• 1:06:43Speaker 03

  So I'm almost out of time. I got a little hung up on Mitch Hedberg back there. Sorry. Look, "No One Knows" is not my favorite song on Songs for the Deaf on this record. When I'm feeling especially salty, I might claim that "No One Knows" does not make my personal top five songs on this record. Every other song I played off this record so far is better, along with "Hanging Tree" and "God Is in the Radio." That's an absurd statement, I realize, and I realize the absurdity of that statement whenever I go back to "No One Knows" and I just focus on the drums. The ludicrous pulverizing maximalism of the drums. The drums make "No One Knows." And despite this song's presence on an album about how much the radio sucks, thanks to

• 1:07:28Speaker 03

  this one song's immense popularity on the radio, "No One Knows" makes the best argument here in 2002 for both popular rock music that sounds like the past and popular rock music that sounds like the future. Queens of the Stone Age excel at these sorts of binaries between crooning Josh and screaming Nick, between trance-like minimalism and ass-kicking maximalism. And right now, we're kicking ass.

• 1:08:10Speaker 03

  I could have played you the part where Josh sings about getting pills to swallow, but the desert keeps calling to me. Given the choice, Queens of the Stone Age would much rather be called desert rock than stoner rock. The desert is arguably the closest you can get on Earth to feeling like you're on Mars. And that mastery of extremity, of multiple extremities, is what makes this band great. With Queens of the Stone Age, the minimalism feels more minimal and the maximalism feels more maximal. The crooning is more alluring and the screaming is more pleasantly alarming. As with the desert, this band runs both hotter and colder than you can possibly imagine.

• 1:09:09Speaker 03

  I have now written and spoken more than 10,000 words about this band just now. So I gotta leave you here with this endless repetitive blurry Bigfoot bassline and all the whimsy and darkness it implies. I hear this bassline now and I just picture myself roaming the desert, waiting for the spaceship to land, waiting for the one inch tall aliens to come out. Or maybe this bassline sends me all the way back to Little League, up to bat again with a chance to do it right this time. But you know, it's me now doing Little League now.

• 1:09:52Speaker 02

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• 1:10:26Speaker 03

  We are so delighted to be joined once again by Sean Fennessey, my colleague and friend and head of content here at The Ringer. He is the co-host of The Big Picture. He is coming to you live from the Criterion Closet where he lives now. Sean, hello. Thank you for being here. Hello. Thank you for having me. I am surrounded as always by items purchased from Home Goods in the studio at The Ringer. It's a delightful setup. It's very visually appealing. It's very symmetrical. It's just, it's soothing. It's a very soothing tableau. This is a very broad question and I apologize, but what do you primarily want in a rock band? Like, do you want them to

• 1:11:08Speaker 03

  look and sound cool? Do you want them to be heavy? Do you want them to say something lyrically like a Rage Against the Machine? Like, what do you want out of a rock band, especially now? Well, I reject the premise of that.

• 1:11:21Speaker 06

  The question, I don't really enter into a relationship with a rock band wanting anything in particular, other than I suppose songs that I like, good songs. I, you know, I think if you said, what do you want from a heavy rock band? Maybe that would, I would be able to answer it a little bit more specifically and Queens of the Stone Age are very heavy. And so there's a way to think about them in that context. But what do Slayer and the Beatles and the Bangles have in common? I mean, they use melody and instruments, but yeah, that's three very different flavors of rock band, right?

• 1:11:58Speaker 03

  That's true. That's absolutely true. Okay. What do you want out of a heavy rock band? And what is it that Queens of the Stone Age do for you as the quintessential heavy rock band?

• 1:12:10Speaker 06

  Well, I think the thing that's great about them is that they can crush, right? They can do the thing that heavy rock bands do. They can hit you with a power chord and they can go riff crazy and they can bang the shit out of a drum and they've got a really cool and almost untouchably elevated lead singer. But the thing about them in particular, Queens of the Stone Age that I like, that is different from other heavy bands is that they can really swing, that they are really, really interested in groove and a certain kind of feel that very few bands that are doing what they do are even able to accomplish. And if you listen to like every Queens record,

• 1:12:53Speaker 06

  there's always three or four borderline dance songs. You know, they're not, they're not using synthesizers, but the, the 44 beat that they're using is very dance coded, which is just really cool, you know?

• 1:13:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's a swagger to them. And I think by design, like, I think Josh Homme has talked from the beginning, like, he called it robot rock, you know, he called it like trance dancing music, like, sort of like can, you know, but not really, you know, but so that he, this is what he's been trying to do. And I think he would be relieved to know he is succeeding.

• 1:13:26Speaker 06

  Yeah, they, he's frequently basically called a-

• 1:13:29Speaker 01

  A continuation, a cousin of Krautrock, which is very strange when you think about the image of the band, which is like surly leather jacket, desert stoner, you know? Like, it's a very unusual iconography that they have that has nothing to do with Kraftwerk, but they have a lot in common.

• 1:13:47Speaker 03

  It's very funny to me that you and I have talked on this show, if I remember correctly, about Pantera, Rage Against the Machine, and now these guys. So I guess, is there anybody from the 90s or from, you know, the 2000s or from now similar to this? You know, do the Queens sort of stand alone in that combination of heaviness and swing? Or is there sort of a precedence, you know, or a continuation now that you hear?

• 1:14:13Speaker 01

  Not really, you know?

• 1:14:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:14:16Speaker 01

  I really feel like they are quite singular in a lot of ways. And I think that their roots and Josh Homme's interests and the way that they have evolved and yet stayed the same feels very unusual. I mean, you know, you've, you've written, thought and podcasted about the death or lack thereof of rock and roll, I'm sure dozens of times, maybe hundreds of times. And yet this band is doing the exact same thing it was doing 25 years ago and doing it in some cases just as well. They don't really have peers. They certainly have other bands that have been active during that same run of time, but none of them sound like Queens.

• 1:14:56Speaker 01

  But Queens don't sound like some impossibly dynamic revolutionary machine. They're using old tools. They're using familiar sounds, modes, textures, but something's just a little different, you know? Their essence is just a little different.

• 1:15:13Speaker 03

  Were you a Kias guy?

• 1:15:15Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:15:15Speaker 03

  You know, were you following? Okay, yeah, I sort of came, I knew a little of them, but I came to them in retrospect, right? Like, I never really appreciated them fully until after Queens, when I went back to Source. And I think that's probably a different vibe, you know?

• 1:15:29Speaker 01

  I had never heard the word Kias. Yeah, I had never heard the word Kias until I heard Queens of the Stone Age.

• 1:15:36Speaker 03

  I still think that Josh, you know, I think a lot, of course, about rock stars of the 90s, you know, the brooding, you know, tortured Kurt Cobain, Eddie Vedder, et cetera, et cetera, mode. And I think part of the appeal of this band's Queens from the very beginning, even in the late 90s, was how different, how elevated, how swaggering, you know, how free Josh Homme seems in comparison. Like, does he seem like a different kind of rock star, you know, a 21st century sort of continuation? You know, do you see him as having roots, you know, in the 90s or even farther back? Or is he his own thing just as a frontman? He strikes me as very much his own thing. I mean, I think at times he feels like

• 1:16:18Speaker 03

  a rockabilly guitar hero. I think at times he feels like a kind of Sabbath and Zeppelin style guitar god. I think his relationship with Mark Lanigan and Screaming Trees obviously indicates that he is part of a lineage of sad grunge musicians, but being a desert kid just puts a completely different spin on that. And he's also, he's like a tall, handsome ginger, you know, like, there's just not, it's just a kind of an odd archetype. He doesn't, he's not Kurt Cobain, you know what I mean? There's something a little bit more like, I drink whiskey at noon about him. 9:00 AM, yeah, yeah.

• 1:16:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, but not, but not 9:00 AM, though. 9:00 AM is like, you've got a problem. That's a different, yeah, noon is cool. Yeah. Yeah, 9:00, okay. Yeah, you know, 9:00 is like, you gotta get your kids to school. Noon is like, my kids are in school, it's fine. My kids are, that's right. It's lunchtime for them. It's lunchtime for me. You know what I'm saying? I'm a rock star. I know, I, yes, I know exactly what you're saying. It's 4:30 where I am right now, and I know exactly what you're saying. That's all I'll say. What was your, what was the first song or the first album that did it for you Queens-wise? Do you sort of start with No One Knows? Do you start with Rated R? Like, where do you, where do you get into this band? I started with Rated R. Our, our mutual friend, Ryan Dombal, and I, we went to

• 1:17:40Speaker 03

  high school, and he got Rated R the day it came out. And I think maybe we had heard Feel Good Hit of the Summer on K-Rock. Yeah. And we, I sat in his- Mom's living room and we listened to it for like four hours.

• 1:17:54Speaker 03

  And we were like, this is the best album I've heard in like three years. We were super hooked. I didn't know about the self titled record before that. Did his mom come out with like snacks, like, like fruit roll ups, you know, or pizza rolls? Or anything of this sort? I'd really like to add that to this scene if I might. Yeah. Yeah, it was a big tray of Totino's and then it was another tray of Nilla wafers and a tall glass of skim milk. Yeah, I'm, I'm into it. That's wonderful. No better introduction to this band than that. I think that was the song for me, too. I think Feel Good Hit of the Summer and Rated R broadly was where I really came on board. And I always thought from the very beginning, like, that's the quintessential example, but there's a lot of songs about drugs.

• 1:18:39Speaker 03

  You know, in this band's history, and I've often wondered if like, I'm hearing them differently or experiencing them differently because I am myself sober. I might even be listening to them wrong. You know, do you, do you personally worry, you know, that we're getting a completely different experience? Because we ourselves are not necessarily on drugs when we listen to this. Not really. As you know, I'm not much of a drug user myself and never really have been. I, when I listen to Kias, I feel like I'm not getting this because I'm not stoned. Yeah. You know what I mean? Right. And I can feel the disconnect in the intent and the vibe that they're going for with those records.

• 1:19:21Speaker 03

  Whereas with the Queen's records, I'm like, this is swinging dick seventies rock and roll, you know, like, it's just not that complicated. There are certainly other elements that are mixed into it. And there's like this almost kind of tropical feel across certain aspects of the, of Rated R. You know, there's some like doom metal that you can really find in, in Songs for the Deaf.

• 1:19:44Speaker 03

  So they're, you know, they're always intermixing a lot of different kinds of things, but it's like, I don't know. Do you like T Rex? Like, there's just tons of T Rex in there. You know what I mean? Like, and if you like that kind of stuff, that collision. The the sort of the early 70s Bowie records, there's plenty of that in there. I mentioned Sabbath already, like, there's just a lot of forebears, but there's not a lot of inheritors of the of that style of music. So like, I've never taken a Valium in my life. I don't, that's never impeded me digging on Feel Good Hit of the Summer. I love that song as much as I did when I was 17 years old. Yeah, future podcast idea there is just you take a Valium and then just to see, to see what happens. Is Valium still in circulation? Is that like one of the leading antidepressants still?

• 1:20:29Speaker 03

  Probably. I mean, we probably know a guy collectively. So, yeah, we can, we can make that happen.

• 1:20:34Speaker 03

  Who's selling it or who uses it? What did you mean by that?

• 1:20:39Speaker 03

  Either of those, really, probably both. But yeah, just let's.

• 1:20:46Speaker 03

  I won't make you rank them or anything, but I was thinking like, I think Songs for the Deaf and Rated R are sort of my top tier of their records, but I love Like Clockwork so much. You know, I love Lullabies to paradise, to paralyze, like Little Sister, you know, like the cowbell, you know, I, I love Era Vulgaris, like, I love all these different records, you know, for different reasons in different eras. And I wonder if you have a personal hierarchy or like a surprising favorite or anything of the sort. Rated R will always be my favorite, but my trilogy is the same as yours. I think Like Clockwork was them kind of like reclaiming The Mantle. And that's also a little bit more of a mournful, middle aged record,

• 1:21:30Speaker 03

  which I really liked, like a little bit of evolution from them. That's like a much more desperate album to me in some ways. And Songs for the Deaf, I think, is like, obviously, the big breakthrough. And there are a lot of reasons for that. I think it's a much more accessible in some ways than Rated R, which feels a bit chaotic and like hopscotching stylistically, whereas like Songs for the Deaf. Is this like driving forward machine of heavy rock?

• 1:21:56Speaker 03

  But the other thing is that I was just playing a lot of Guitar Hero at this time in my life. And As were we all, or as was I. And this is, this is one of the signature contemporary Guitar Hero bands, you know, like they really had multiple songs on multiple editions of the game. And, you know, I remember when Era Vulgaris came out, I was a little disappointed by it. And then I went to go visit my brother when he was going to Albany, college in Albany. And I stayed with him and his degenerates friends for a weekend. And, you know, they drank all night, nicotine, Valium, Vicodin, marijuana, ecstasy and alcohol.

• 1:22:36Speaker 03

  And then they wake up in the morning and then they just listen to Neil Young records or play Guitar Hero. I love these guys, they're great guys. And, and threes and sevens. Senators. Yes. And, and threes and sevens from, from Era Vulgaris was on Guitar Hero III, I want to say. And I mastered playing that shit on that video game, like a lord in 2007. You 100%ed that shit? Sure, sure. And I think I revived my, my love of that band, even though threes and sevens, you know, it has, it has like three big records, 666, Make It With You and threes and sevens. But then it kind of got me back into them and I really haven't quit since. So I can listen to any of their albums and be happy. What a beautiful image that is, you 100%ing threes and sevens.

• 1:23:21Speaker 03

  I smoked it. In a, in a, in a, in a dire off-campus house in Albany. That's it, man. With Heart of Golds playing softly in the background. It's great. That's a wonderful. Some kid crushing up Valium in the other room. His girlfriend mournfully looking on, you know? That's right. Oh, they'll never grow up. I can fix them.

• 1:23:47Speaker 03

  There's, there's a lot of Dave Grohl crossover with Songs for the Deaf. Specifically, he's the drummer on the vast majority of it, of course. But, you know, when people think of like, what's the active, you know, alternative type rock band still doing it now? The Foo Fighters, you know, are the ones who are always up for Grammys or whatever, I guess. Do you see the Foo Fighters and Queens of the Stonies? Do you see Dave Grohl as a rock frontman? And, and Josh Homme is a rock frontman. Like, are they in conversation with each other? Are they sort of opposite ends of a spectrum? How do those two bands and those two guys harmonize or not in your head?

• 1:24:22Speaker 07

  Well, I don't, I don't really care for the Foo Fighters. I have nothing against them. I just, I've literally not since the first record have I been able to get really much interested in whatever it is that they do as a band. And I do quite like Dave Grohl as the avatar for mainstream rock and roll in America in the 21st century. I think he's done a nice job of being this like ambassadorial role. The thing is, when you see him play with this band or the spinoff band Them Crooked Vultures, I'm like, that's,

• 1:24:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:24:52Speaker 07

  that is Dave Grohl's mission, his calling. This is what he was born to do. It's not be the frontman of Foo Fighters. It is be the guy beating the living shit out of the drums behind Josh Homme and Troy in this band as they make like the most angry desert rock sound in the world. And I, I don't know that they're in conversation. I think it's cool that those guys are friends. They both share a kind of like, I think a sense of mischief around rock and roll that they're not like, um, they don't, they don't seem depressed. You know what I mean? Their, their, their music is not defined by their sadness. They, they might be angry sometimes. They might want to break some shit sometimes, but mostly what they want to do is, um,

• 1:25:37Speaker 07

  is, is rock hard. And, and I like, I really like them playing together. I would much rather listen to Queens.

• 1:25:42Speaker 01

  Than than the Fuz though.

• 1:25:44Speaker 03

  Sure. I think I saw Them Crooked Vultures at Roseland. I want to is John Paul Jones.

• 1:25:50Speaker 01

  It is.

• 1:25:51Speaker 03

  Wasn't.

• 1:25:51Speaker 01

  He's the bassist.

• 1:25:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, I I I I saw them at Roseland and that was rad. I was like, I seeing that is Dave Grohl's true calling. I think that's a it's a useful way of framing.

• 1:26:03Speaker 01

  I saw them live too.

• 1:26:04Speaker 03

  It's cool, the other stuff he does. Yeah.

• 1:26:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, he he's a madman with Them Crooked Vultures. He and you could tell how fired up he was playing with John Paul Jones.

• 1:26:11Speaker 03

  Right, yeah, the joy that he brings. And I think it makes a lot of sense what you're saying also, that they're just not sad. I think when I think about how opposed Josh Homme seems to any 90s rock star that I worshipped, you know, Chris Cornell, Kurt Cobain, whoever, that's the difference. He he's enjoying himself, which was just not the vibe I got from anybody else in real time in the 90s.

• 1:26:35Speaker 01

  It's and it's not that I don't think that Homme is necessarily lacking vulnerability in the way that he writes or sings. I think he can be pretty vulnerable, but he feels impenetrable. Like, there's a kind of statuesque quality to him. That like Chris Cornell is just, if you looked into his eyes, you'd be like, I can see that man's entire soul and the way it is dissolving into molecules in real time. And with Josh Homme, I'm like, is that guy mad at me? Like, I don't really know what.

• 1:27:03Speaker 03

  And he might be.

• 1:27:04Speaker 01

  And he might be.

• 1:27:04Speaker 03

  And that's cool.

• 1:27:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is cool.

• 1:27:07Speaker 03

  You mentioned to me the loose confederation of membership of Queens. Like, obviously, Nick Oliveri was a key component of Rated R and Songs for the Death. And then he leaves and I, you know, just the Wikipedia page of this band is just bonkers. You know, and it's clearly just Josh Homme and whoever he wants hanging around him. Like, do you see that as a feature or a bug? You know, that amidst this consistency that they have, like, the lineup, you know, and the sound being generated by that lineup can change completely from record to record.

• 1:27:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's obviously Josh's show. I think that Nick Oliveri was frankly more definitional of the band when they first hit the scene because of the way that he operated. He had this kind of like raging caveman quality.

• 1:27:51Speaker 03

  Barking.

• 1:27:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like the shouting and he had the like, the death metal growl that he would hit.

• 1:27:57Speaker 03

  On songs and he had the, you know, spiked goatee. The goatee is very important to the whole package. And, and he was often shirtless and often pantsless while performing with the bass strapped around his body. You know, he seems like a kind of a complicated guy and maybe not such a nice guy. So it's a little hard to look back too fondly on that time, but they made a, they made a big nasty sound together. And the kind of like the wild man and the cool front man is a tale as old as time, obviously, in terms of the dynamic. Fire and ice. Yes, yes. But they made plenty of great records without him. So I like that it is this rotating cast of guys who were up for it.

• 1:28:37Speaker 03

  It's always like some, some guy who played third guitar on A Perfect Circle is now the lead guitarist for Queens of the Stone Age. And I'm like, all right, sounds good. I'm sure he's good too, you know? You just imagine there's like somewhere between 27 and 84 guys who could just crush with this band if they meet Josh on the right day. And I'm fine with that. Sure. It's a, it's a money ball type situation, you know? He's, he's exploiting market inefficiencies to find bass players. And you know, Nick Oliveri looks like Kevin Euclid, the Greek god of walks, when you really think about it.

• 1:29:10Speaker 03

  I've never had that specific thought, but I'll take your word for it. And I, I think that fortifies exactly what we're saying. Just to wrap up here, I, am I correct in stating that you personally recently saw Josh Homme in person at a diner feeding pancakes to his children? Not to be too intrusive to him, but like, tell me about the experience of just seeing this person out in public. Yeah, I think it was pre-COVID. So I want to say it was 2019. But it was, it was, it was at the 101 Coffee Shop in Los Angeles, legendary Hollywood joint, recently revived. And yeah, he was there with his two kids. I think he has two kids or he's there with two kids.

• 1:29:52Speaker 03

  And each person had a giant plate of pancakes.

• 1:29:58Speaker 03

  And my honest reaction was that looks wonderful. Those pancakes look great. It seemed like a nice dad. Once again.

• 1:30:05Speaker 03

  I didn't have kids at the time. Now that I have a daughter, one of my favorite things to do is just go out and get breakfast with her at a diner. So I don't know. It seems like. Like a cool guy. He is like extremely tall and ginger. So. Right. He stuck out like a sore thumb at the 101. Just striking, just heads scraping the roof. But I, I, I didn't do the like, hey, I'm so sorry to interrupt, but I just love your work in threes and sevens. Changed my life in Albany or whatever. Like, I didn't do that. I could have done it. I could have said that to him. You have the Guitar Hero case that you would have him sign. Yeah. I've done this. I do this three times a day.

• 1:30:44Speaker 03

  I just hope he's in a good mood or he will throw you out the window of the Pancake establishment. And that'll be the greatest thing that ever happened to you. I do think he probably, he probably throws like a mean punch. Um, do you, you probably just recited like 10,000 words about Queens. But what do you, what do you think makes Queens different? Like, why do they? I, I, I think my contention is they're the, the only consistently good rock band for 25 straight years. Like, is that a crazy thing to say? I try and avoid crazy, hyperbolic things like that, but I agree with you at the same time. You know, there are plenty of sort of one offs. Like I think of, if I think of rock records from this century thus far that I like.

• 1:31:23Speaker 03

  I think of like Titus Andronicus, right? I think of the Monitor, but like they've made some other good records, but nothing on that scale. Right? You know, like I, I dug the Strokes, the White Stripes, et cetera, you know, as much as anybody. You know, I, I saw Queens tour with, and you will know us by the Trail of Dead in the very early 2000s. And I think that band had a really great run of several records for a little while. But I, I think you have to go to, you get a, you gotta get pretty weird, like Ween. Not necessarily on record, but as a live experience. I have seen Ween live several times in the last 20 years.

• 1:32:03Speaker 03

  And there's a consistency there and obviously a great variance in what they do and how they do it and who they're doing it with. Like I know that Josh Homme likes that band a lot. And I think that they're almost a greater point of comparison with Queens than even like the Foo Fighters or even any of the other big names, you know, like. I think I agree with you, as hyperbolic as it sounds, that I think Queens really stand alone, you know, as being both like a mainstream, but also an often really weird and unexpected, you know, prospect as a rock band to do both of, either of those things really well, let alone both at the same time. I think they stand alone. I think that's right. I think you nailed it. There is something, I mean this positively

• 1:32:47Speaker 03

  conventional about what they're doing and accessible. Right. But not cookie cutter. Yes. And not, you know, it is clearly from a real artist's point of view and comes from a sincere place. I saw them, the last time I saw them was 2014 at Coachella. I'd only been to Coachella one time. I went to go see OutKast and they played- That year. You remember that year, right? That was the same year that The Replacements played. So I went to see The Replacements and OutKast reunite and it was very, very important to me. I'm a huge Replacements fan, huge OutKast fan. Real collision of events. Scenes like Coachella, not really that important to me, but by far the best set I saw was Queens. Queens played the second night at the like 7:00 PM slot, just as the sun was going down. Sunset, I was gonna say.

• 1:33:32Speaker 03

  Yes. Yeah, they fucking annihilated. They were so good. And it was right in the aftermath of like Clockwork and they played all those, all those records. And then, you know, on the encore played half of Rated R. And they were just tip top, guys in their 40s, just destroying all the young kids at Coachella. And I will, I will not forget that. And I'm glad that they're still going. I'm glad that he's still doing his thing because he's rare. Uh, this has been wonderful, Sean. We gotta get together sometime and play Guitar Hero III, or Rock Band. Let's get together, let's form a rock band, band with Ryan Dombel and whoever you want. Yeah, let's get some Totinos out there. Yeah, no doubt.

• 1:34:16Speaker 03

  I haven't had a pizza roll in nigh on 20 years and that's an experience I'd like to have with my good friends. Uh, thank you so much, Sean. Thanks, Rob.

• 1:34:32Speaker 03

  Thanks to our guest this week, Sean Fennessey. Thanks to our producers, Justin Sayles, Bobby Wagner, and Jonathan Kerma. Thanks to Olivia Creary for additional production help and thanks very much to you for listening. And now let's all go listen to "No One Knows" by Queens of the Stone Age. See you next week.