Vale, Youdopia. John Paul Jones’  new band is totally awesome. I don’t like them, but they kick nine different varieties of ass. And… when you see the footage, and hear the harmonies, bass, keyboards, etc… you cannot find the senior citizen in the group. Them Crooked Vultures is a great band. A real band. A tight band. And, the kids are all worked up. Mainly they’re excited to have Josh Homme from QOTSA and Dave Grohl together (again), but they’re all astonished at how badass Jonesy is. That’s because he has always been badass. He wrote the Black Dog riff. He plays the mandolin on Going to California… he is amazing. He’s just got the star quality of …. a bass player. He scored the orchestration to Kashmir…. and for Donovan’s Mellow Yellow as well. He’s been on as many sessions as Jimmy, but he was never in the Firm, or Coverdale/Page.

When Zeppelin broke up he taught Electronic Composition at college. Jimmy well… did this. I love Jimmy, I do. He is still my hero. Jonesy is just.. who I would rather be in a band with. Here’s a little pro shot video snippet of Them Crooked Vultures:

And here is a live song they played at the same festival as Faith No More, last week (8/09) It sounds kind of like Cream, but their other songs don’t, and they did no covers. No Nirvana, no Zep, no QOTSA, no Foo for you. Listen to the Grohl/Jones harmonies. It’s a really tight band.

This is one of the cooler things I’ve seen lately, Youdopia. Being a child of the 90′s (and 80′s, and 70′s) I like … some… of Faith No More’s songs. Mike Patton is definitely eclectic, and I’m really not. I like some Mr. Bungle, I respect John Zorn, and have given many of Patton’s projects a listen, but I am a musical luddite… which is why I’m just now given Syd Barrett a chance.

Faith No More reunited recently, and I wanted to see some footage of them, so I went to the the YouTube, on the interwebs. I found a nice audience video of them at Pukkelpop (where Them Crooked Vultures just played as well) performing Midlife Crisis.

Imagine my surprise when at 2:40, a dude stagedives about ten feet to faceplant on the ground. Ouch. The band stops playing and Mike Patton drops into the crowd to check on the guy. That’s a nice, cool, rockstar thing to do. When he gets back up, he says some stuff to the crowd about how fucked up that was, and how he’s not in a good place.

Then band kicks into the intrumental “Popcorn” for a bit, and then BOOM! They drop back into Midlife Crisis like the whole thing never happened. Many reunions are done for money, or to get another taste of the spotlight. This band is fucking tight. Nice nice nice. Enjoy it. If you just want the incident, start at 2:40.

Coolest shit ever?
Yep.