Best concerts of all time part three

Queens of the Stone Age, Thebarton Theatre, 2004

I used to love these guys. For maybe a year or two they were my favourite band. I'm not really sure what happened, I guess I don't listen to as much heavy music as I used to. And their albums got progressively worse after "Songs for the Deaf", I think I've only listened to their newest one a few times, and wasn't really impressed. Of course this decline in the quality of their music correlates with Josh kicking Nick out of the band, and I think that's probably a big part of it. They were never ultra-diverse, but within the confines of a heavy rock band they did manage to include some variety, thanks mainly to a revolving trio of vocalists - Josh, Nick and Mark Lanegan. Take away Nick and you lose all of the heavy, fast punk songs. Mark has kind of pulled back in recent years too, to concentrate on his solo career and being a drug addict, so they don't do as many of the slower, lower-key songs either.

They were all here at this concert in 2004 though, and it was an amazing show. I'd seen them about a year earlier at the Big Day Out, and they were pretty good there. Unfortunately, Nick had decided that would be one of the shows he would play without clothes, and that put a bit of a dampener on the experience for me. I took Narelle to their Thebby show, and think I may have actually prayed on the way there that Nick would wear pants this time. I'm pleased to report that he did.

They were really tight, even though they spent a lot of the evening performing extended jams. The highlights were the appearances of Mark, every now and then he'd saunter out from backstage, stand in front of a mic for a few songs, and belt out one of his trademark gravelly vocals, looking and sounding like he was going to collapse at any moment.

The support act The Distillers were really good, probably the best support act I've ever seen. Their singer sounded exactly like Courtney Love, and her band basically sounded like a more distorted "Live Through This" era Hole.