Queens of the Stone Age – ‘Rated Rx’ Album Review

Christ this makes me feel old.

I remember the summer of 2000.

I remember hearing ‘Feel Good Hit of the Summer’ unannounced on the radio 1 rock show.

I can remember thinking ‘This HAS to be Queens’.

I remember watching them play in the Camden underworld. That’s the night I knew something was happening with this band – I was stood next to Orange Goblin’s Ben Ward, and Dave Wyndorf was watching from the wings – looking like Satan’s own ace fighter pilot.

I remember seeing Queens announced as headliners for the tiny Carling Premier tent at Reading in 2000.

I remember thinking there would be carnage if they played somewhere that small, and on hearing they were being moved to the Radio 1 stage, feeling only a small pang of regret. (Don’t believe Wikipedia. That last sentence is the truth)

I remember the day they played. I remember having boiling water poured over my feet as part of a noodle based camping accident. I remember taking everything I could as a painkiller just so I could hobble into the arena to watch QOTSA. I remember it all kicked in at once. I don’t remember much after that.

After that show, Queens went stellar, and ceased to be ‘my’ band. Everyone I knew loved them: from the Stoner’s who like Sabbath, to the Rachel Stamp Loving Punkettes, to the Autechre worshipping Science graduates, to the House and Drum’n’Bass-heads I had a very strange, year-long house-share with. In fact, the only person I ever met who didn’t adore them was a miserable Kyuss fan, who was waiting for the reunion that never came.

And will never come.

I saw QOTSA again that November: it was still chaos, but it wasn’t the Reading show.

I should wind this in a bit – this IS supposed to be a review.

But it’s really hard writing a review for ‘Rated R’: an album that’s 10 years old, and is one of the greatest sophomore albums ever recorded. I’d love this to be hyperbole, but it really isn’t.

But, let’s face it – it’s been out for a decade. You either like it, and you own a copy, or you don’t, and, well, you don’t.

It’s like ‘Nevermind’ or ‘Master of Puppets’ – You’ve had your chance.

This however, isn’t about ‘Rated R’.

This is about ‘Rated Rx’.

Yeah, it’s a special edition.

BUT

This is actually pretty good.

‘Rated R’ is one of those albums that’s hard to describe since it’s both so ‘of its time’, and utterly ‘out of time’, that you don’t remember where you were when you first heard it, you just can’t imagine a time without it.

‘Feel Good Hit of the Summer’ is the er….. specialist shopping list you remember it being, and its partner in crime ‘Lost Art Of Keeping a Secret’ continues the theme of  odes to the highs and lows of bad living.

And there’s ‘In the Fade’.

Let’s face it, if someone wanted to capture regret on tape, they’d go to Mark Lanegan. Sure they’d try other people first, but it would invariably sound fake and insincere, so they’d go to Mark. The sound whiskey and despair makes when it spends smokes too much. I’ll die happy if he ever sings ‘House of the Rising Sun’.

I love Josh Homme’s voice – equal parts sneer, croon and snarl, I love his guitar work – both lazy and intricate all at once, I love Nick’s Bass work – so messy and dangerous that at times it threatens to crawl out of your speakers and molest your cat. I love Nick’s vocals – when he sings, he melts your heart, when he screams, you nervously look around, making sure he’s not destroying anything you own remotely.

But, you probably know all of this: you’ve had 10 years to join the party. This is about ‘Rated Rx’.

This means ‘Rated R’, ‘Rated U’, some b-sides, and the set from Reading 2000.

‘Rated R’ you already know. ‘Rated R’ you should already own.

The other bits are why you should or shouldn’t buy this release.

So: ‘Rated U’: otherwise known as the b-sides to ‘Feel Good Hit of the Summer’.

Basically, a few covers, all kinda cool, all kinda obscure-ish: Romeo Void’s ‘Never Say Never’ still sounds like Sonic Youth taking on 80’s pop, while the Kinks ‘Who’ll be the Next in Line’ is Josh’n’Nick lyric trading at it’s best. ‘You’re so Vague’, is a self-confessed companion piece to ‘You’re so Vain’, but somehow nastier, so much more vicious.

A couple of b-sides, ‘Ode to Clarissa’ is fifties greaseball punk which brings to mind the Supersuckers, and a new(ish) version of ‘Born to Hula’ –  the sound of Area 51- part rolling-bass line desert monster, part Roswell sci-fi excursion – listen to it and try NOT to think of Doctor Who – I DARE YOU…..

And on to the live stuff – ‘Monsters in the Parasol – live In Seattle’, originally a b-side to ‘The Lost Art….’. It’s not bad, but it was never my favourite song anyway.

And… Reading 2000

This is the Josh’n’Nick show at it’s finest – ‘Feel Good Hit of the Summer’ is more vibrant and less stripped down than it would end up becoming, ‘Regular John’ – a lesson in six parts on How to be Heavy. Josh’s e-bow solo toward the end of the song would become longer and more elaborate, but this is the moment when you realised it had potential to go somewhere, and when it ends and the song snaps back, you nearly weep over what might have been.

It ends with an extended ‘You Can’t Quit Me, Baby” – pretty much 10 minutes of exactly why Queens mattered then, and their impact matters still. Oh, and ‘Millionaire’ – a song that at the time seemed throwaway, but which, in just two years, would be reworked and distorted so it became one of the brighter lights in the incandescent ‘Songs for the Deaf’. Here, it’s not finished, but it could have gone any one of a dozen ways from the version we were treated to here.

This was a show from a cult band about a week from being on everyone’s lips. Here, in “Rx”, it’s been bolted on to the album that put them there.

With the benefit of hindsight ‘Rated R’ is as important as the hype made it out to be, if not more. “Rated Rx” is a snapshot of a band who have just gelled, made their first masterpiece, and know it. ‘Songs for the Deaf’ may be 2 years into the future for them, but Queens of the Stone Age wouldn’t have cared. It was always about the moment.

One of the best ones is captured here.