That one, I’m pretty happy about. The music scene in San Diego isn’t bad, but still, many of the bands that I used to catch in LA just never make that two-hour jaunt down the 5 freeway. So a high-profile place like this only stands to increase the number of bands who’ll play here locally.

Of course, much like when a Starbucks opens up across the street from a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, this HOB doesn’t stand to make many friends with the local clubs. The club where I just caught Moby, 4th and B, is barely a block away, and there’s no doubt that the HOB will pull some bands from there. But that’s for club owners to worry about—me, I’m just happy for the chance to see more live music here.

The club held its grand opening this past Friday (with a David Lee Roth show, sold out at $75 a ticket… what better way to announce a new, forward-thinking club than by featuring a balding dinosaur of a singer as your “grand opener”?) but it’d been open for about seven days. This past week, there were two shows I’d planned to check out (even though both were sold out for weeks)—AUDIOSLAVE and QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE. Since they were sold out, and tickets were going for some pretty outrageous prices ($200+ for AUDIOSLAVE), I figured I’d pick one. I’ve seen QOTSA before, and even though they’re the better band, I figured I should catch ‘SLAVE in a smallish venue. Until the show was cancelled the day of, as lead singer Chris Cornell, a guy who sounds like he could break boulders with his voice, cancelled due to loss of voice. Mm-hmm. The band was nevertheless still slated to play KIMMEL in LA the next night. San Diego… once again, disrespected cousin to Los Angeles.

The bonus here was that I now was locked in to go see QUEENS, with opener EAGLES OF DEATH METAL (a sort of QOTSA side project, one of many, and one where QUEENS lead singer/guitarist played drums on their debut disc). The sound at the Los Angeles House of Blues is very hit and miss—sometimes, it’s okay, sometimes it’s just terrible. And sometimes, like at a MOTORHEAD show, they’re just helpless and can’t even begin to handle the needs of a band like that.

So it was really pleasantly surprising to see (well, hear) that they got the audio right at this club. In fact, I have only one complaint that keeps this show from being atop my list of best shows I’ve seen in years. But before my quibble, all the good parts:

THE EAGLES OF DEATH METAL. The band seems a bit of a goof at first. The lead singer is Jesse “The Devil”Hughes, and between his Jack Black-like stage banter (“have you ever seen someone rock a moustache like this? Let’s hear it for the ladies!”) and tendency to go soprano (not to mention a band with the words “death metal” in their name, even though they’re nothing of the sort), you could be excused for at first thinking this was all a joke. But all I know is this—they rely heavily on a cowbell. How could you knock a rock band who is bringing back the cowbell? Right—you can’t.

The first tune on their full-length debut (Peace, Love and Death Metal) sounds a bit QUEENS-like, but the deeper you go the disc, the more they set themselves apart. The drumming on the disc is easily the weakest part, so as much as it would’ve been funny to see Josh Homme banging around back there before taking the front of the stage with QUEENS, it was nice to see a different, and female, drummer, Samantha Maloney. The band was a perfect opener—fun, with loose, rockin’ and bluesy grooves, and a good sense of how to work a crowd. And you don’t often see a lead singer rock a moustache that big any more, so that was also good. The band got the biggest response for their cover of STEALERS WHEEL’s “Stuck in the Middle with You,”(in other words, “that one song from RESERVOIR DOGS”) but the response was good throughout, which always bodes well for the headliner.

I’ve seen QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE a few times before, but not once since their bass player, Nick Oliveri, left the band. Nick and Josh functioned as a sort of “Gene and Paul” in the band (I think they’d both hate that I just compared them to KISS, even peripherally), both singing and bringing their own energy to the band. Josh is much more subdued, while Nick, bald and working a goatee that could give ANTHRAX’s Scott Ian some competition, would contribute not only screaming tunes, but also some nicely melodic songs like “Another Love Song” from their last disc, Songs for the Deaf. Nick’s absence in the band is pretty profound, as evidenced by their latest disc, which is good but misses his presence greatly. Either that or I'm just bitter because I think the band, with Nick and also sometimes-singer Mark Lanegan, too, is maybe the perfect band.

So the big question here would be whether or not Josh was up to the task of fronting the band himself and really delivering an engaging show.

He answered this in the affirmative with their first song, “Regular John” from their debut disc. If you’ve never seen Josh Homme, he looks like the unholy offspring of Craig Kilborn and BEETLEJUICE-era Anthony Michael Hall. He’s way too big and tall (easily 6’5”) and, well, ordinary-looking to be a convincing frontman. Which is why he’s all the more impressive as such. His guitar-playing style is… well, it’s like he can’t hit the strings fast enough or hard enough in an effort to snap each one. With his size, a guitar in his hands is thrown around pretty easily, and he hammers at the strings so frantically, you’d never believe that it was plugged in and sounding as good as it did. He’s actually an amazing guitarist, and while past shows, he’s been content to mostly stand in place and sing, this time he was energized and swinging as much as I’ve ever seen (don’t get me wrong—this still wasn’t too much, and he’s a tall white guy, so it’s not like he was dancing rhythmically as much as he was just moving about. Still, he showed that he can take over a stage without Nick, and he kept the pace of the show rocking. The band broke into more mid-song solos and random riffs than I’d ever seen before, too, changing time and taking songs in new and interesting directions.

They also played for a solid two hours (around 12:00 AM or so, with me having done the midnight EPISODE III show the night before and only sleeping for just under three hours, I was starting to fade, I’ll admit), playing a solid array of new tunes and old.

The drummer, Joey Castillo, was someone I’d never quite given credit to before—Dave Grohl’s fill-in drumming on their Songs for the Deaf disc made me think everyone would be inferior to him. But Joey came out pounding away with all four arms (at least, it sounded like that) and never let up—as good as Josh’s guitar was, the drumming was what really kept the music pounding. Nick’s absence on bass was certainly felt (his replacement was capable enough, but not really given room to solo, and his stage presence was nigh-invisible), but not as much as one other guy. The one complaint I mentioned I had before was in the absence of the band’s sometime-singer, Mark Lanegan (formerly of SCREAMING TREES). Now, it was Lanegan’s presence as rotating member in the band that originally drew me to QOTSA in the first place, and it’s his appearances on stage with them that really complete the show for me. Lanegan, he of the WAITS-ian voice and distaste for the spotlight, nevertheless is always one of the brightest spots of a QUEENS show. Lights usually dimmed, Mark will slink out onstage, smoke in hand, sing a couple songs without ever looking at the audience and then slink off.

So when the band started playing one of his songs, “Songs for the Dead,” and the lighting on the stage went blood-red, I was anxious to see Lanegan. When Josh handled the vocals himself, I was a bit bummed, since that was the moment I was most looking forward to, but he nevertheless sounded fine. I know that he was reported to have left the band last year, but he sang in the new CD and his Web site mentions he’s out on tour with the band, so… ah, well. I caught him down here recently (with Nick Oliveri doing a solo acoustic gig as opener) and was even more hopefully to catch him back with the band, but not this night, anyway.

I’m not one of those guys who wants to deal with writing down songs played during sets, but it was a good array of songs old and new: “Avon,” “Monsters,” “Leg of Lamb,” “Burn the Witch,” “Broken Box,” “Tangled Up in Plaid,” “Lost Art of Keeping a Secret,” “Medication,” In My Head,” “First it Giveth,” “Everyone Knows You’re Insane,” “Feel Good Hit of the Summer,” “I Never Came,” “Long Slow Goodbye,” “Little Sister,” “Go With the Flow,” “No One Knows,” “In the Fade” (I think), “God is in the Radio,” and the closer, “Someone's in the Wolf” (which is the only spot I’d had enough… sleep-deprived as I was, the last five-plus minutes of feedback and noise they ended with got a bit grating. But that more my fault than theirs). In all, I can’t remember the last time I’d seen a rock show this impressive from top to bottom. If I could suggest anything to House of Blues, they might want to consider making a show like this their “grand opener” rather than David Lee Roth—it’s always much better to see a show that’ll make you “Jump” rather than hearing a guy sing it even if he can no longer do it, y'ask me…

In Two Weeks: The AFI's Lifetime Achievement Award for George Lucas

Next Week: The Return of the my Fall '05 TV PILOT REVIEWS, with a look at Jason Lee's upcoming NBC sitcom, MY NAME IS EARL

/chris

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