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A pair of supergroups took the stage on this weekend’s Saturday Night Live, and while Them Crooked Vultures were the episode’s musical guest, it was Crisis of Conformity — fake reuniting for the first time in 25 years to play a wedding — that delivered the night’s most memorable performance. Featuring SNL’s Fred Armisen on vocals, Bill Hader on bass, Ashton Kutcher on guitar and the Vultures’ Dave Grohl on drums, the hardcore quartet turned the peaceful reception into a “TV Party” with a brutal rendition of “Fist Fight in the Parking Lot.” After the mellow but admittedly amusing Michael Bublé guested last week, a little hardcore was just the shot in the arm SNL needed. For Grohl, it was his second noteworthy appearance in a recent SNL sketch: When the Foo Fighters were the musical guest back in 2007, Grohl was one of Andy Samberg’s victims in the hilarious “People Getting Punched Just Before Eating” digital short.

Check out a history of supergroups in photos.

Them Crooked Vultures performed a pair of tracks from their self-titled debut album, and sadly their combined supergroup powers couldn’t overcome SNL’s infamous sound woes. Josh Homme’s vocals get lost in the mix on “New Fang,” and the 30 Rock version of “Mind Eraser” doesn’t really do the band’s extraordinary live shows justice. Watch both performances below:

“New Fang”

“Mind Eraser”

2010. Twenty-10. Two-thousand-ten. Two-thousand-and-ten. No matter how you say – or write it – to those of us who have been around a while, it seems a bit unreal. Maybe it’s just me, but it sure seemed to get here a bit too quickly.
Entering a new decade reminds me that some of our favorite classic [...]

Source: Real Rock News

Led Zeppelin Speculation Continues Into New Year

Photo: Mazur/WireImage

Playing with Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones in the new supergroup Them Crooked Vultures is a dream come true for Foo Fighters’ frontman Dave Grohl, the singer/dummer tells Rolling Stone in an exclusive Q&A in our next issue.

Check out photos of more supergroups, from Cream to Audioslave.

Grohl’s Zeppelin worship goes all the way back to his teenage years, when he got the first of three Zep-inspired tattoos — he’s got John Bonham’s three-circle Led Zeppelin IV logo tattooed in three places. “I did the first one myself when I was 16,” he says. “I tried to get different colored ink to make it seem pro, but now it looks like someone put a cigarette out on my fucking arm.”

The second was slightly more professional: he got it done in an illegal squat in Amsterdam. “It was done by an Italian guy named Andrea whose tattoo gun was made out of a doorbell machine,” he says. “When my mother saw it, she was like, “David!” I was like, “Mom, I’ve done a lot worse shit than this, believe me. Look at my other arm.”

And the last one Grohl paid for with his first check — that would be $400 — from being in Nirvana. “Kurt and I were living with each other in Olympia. The place was so depressing,” he says. “I took the $400 and bought a Nintendo, a BB gun — mind you, I was 21, not 12 — and got that tattoo. One of my fondest memories of living in that rat-shit-hole apartment was buying a dozen eggs at the A&P, bringing them to Kurt’s backyard, and me and Kurt and Buzz [Osbourne] from the Melvins shooting at the eggs. Those were the days.”

Look back at the rise of Nirvana and more grunge legends, in photos.

Learn more about Grohl’s two bands, and why playing with Them Crooked Vultures is like “being in the most incredible luxury car, driving on the Autobahn, flying by the seat of my pants” in the next issue of Rolling Stone. For now, find out how you can hear the band’s debut album — and read our review of the self-titled disc — right away.

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Them Crooked Vultures’ self-titled debut album won’t be released until next Tuesday, November 17th, but you can listen to it right now. The supergroup of Josh Homme, Dave Grohl and John Paul Jones are streaming the hard-rocking, Zeppelin-inspired album in its entirety now over at TCV’s official site. This gift comes just a week after the Vultures offered up their song “Mind Eraser, No Chaser” to fans as a free download.

Inspired by the Vultures’ generosity, for your reading pleasure we’re posting our review for Them Crooked Vultures now before it hits stands in our next issue. In his three-and-a-half star Rolling Stone review of TCV, Rob Sheffield writes, “The album sticks to the sort of low-end guitar boogie that Homme and Grohl were blasting in their Camaros when they bummed their first cigarettes.” With Jones in tow, the supergroup sticks to their Zep roots, as the track “Elephants” “basically crunches every riff on Led Zeppelin II into seven dizzy minutes.”

Check out rock’s most famous supergroups, from Cream to Audioslave.

“Sometimes the music sounds exactly like Zeppelin, as on ‘Reptiles,’ a sly update of ‘South Bound Suarez,’” Sheffield writes. “Other times it sounds like Queens of the Stone Age with a hot new bassist. But it’s not desperately ambitious — the album sounds like the good-natured quickie it probably was.”

As an added incentive to preorder Them Crooked Vultures on iTunes, the album will include live renditions of “No One Loves Me & Neither Do I” and “Gunman.” Until next week when you can enjoy TCV on your iPod or home stereo, hit up the full stream at the band’s official site now.

Related Stories:
• Them Crooked Vultures Give Away “Mind Eraser, No Chaser”
• Them Crooked Vultures Unleash First Single “New Fang,” Add Dates
• Them Crooked Vultures’ Self-Titled Album Out November 17th

They may not be the first group to put their entire new album on YouTube, but it’s still not something you see every day. New “supergroup” Them Crooked Vultures has confidently made their self-titled new album available free for anyone to listen to on the wildly popular video sharing site YouTube.
This may be an interesting [...]

Source: Real Rock News

Them Crooked Vultures Let It All Hang Out on YouTube