For those of you who don’t know, Queens of the Stone Age are currently on tour to promote their new CD, Lullabies to Paralyze. Last night I saw them at Saint Andrew’s in Detroit and it was great!!!
Saint Andrew’s is a fairly small music hall that holds around 1,000 people. It’s just a main room with a balcony that runs around the edge. No seats, just standing. I went with my brother and a couple friends and we were up in the balcony, about 50 feet from the stage! There really isn’t a backstage area so most of the equipment trunks are just placed off to the side of the main floor.
Eagles of Death Metal were supposed to open but I guess one of the guy’s couldn’t make it so Throw Rag opened instead. I’d never heard of these guys. One of them, who came acoss as a bit remedial, played a washboard with spoons. Of course, he was overweight and took his shirt off. Whatever. Then towards the end of their set he started scooping sweat off his body with the spoons and flinging it into the crowd! :td: That’s just plain disgusting! Thankfully we were above and out of range. Overall they weren’t bad but nothing memorable.
Queens of the Stone Age were great!!! They sounded amazing and didn’t miss a beat! They played all their “radio songs” and then moved onto the stuff from the new album.
One thing that made it a great concert was Josh Homme’s (lead singer/guitar) interaction with the crowd. During a song someone threw a lit cigarette on stage and he picked it up and smoked the rest of it.
A little later someone else from the balcony threw a cigarette on stage. Josh picked it up and stopped playing mid-song. So did the rest of the band. He looked at it and said to the guy who threw it, “Are you trying to be cool or be a d***? This cigarette is wet and laced with something.” The guy was in shock that the band had stopped. 
Josh said, “If you have a problem I’d like to see you try and make it down here and do something about it.” Security started to take the guy out and Josh said, “No. He can stay.” So they left him. Then he said, “This one’s for my new friend!” and played a quick solo and then the band picked right up and finished the song.
Also, someone was crowd surfing and they got him to the front and threw him onto the cement between the crowd and stage. Pretty funny to see this guy just disappear off the front and then pop up like nothing happened. :beam:
Overall this was definitely one of the best concerts I’ve ever been to!