Them Crooked Vultures, that arena rock hydra/supergroup of sometimes frightening proportions, is now streaming their debut album in its entirety. The trio of Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters,) Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age) and John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin, will be releasing the album digitally and physically next Tuesday. Until then, enjoy the jams below.

If you live in or will be traveling to England anytime after January 7 of 2010, you might be able to purchase your favorite classic (or new wave for that matter) album in stamp format. So there’s a cheap souvenir! Albums that look to be a part of the collection at this point include The Clash’s London Calling‘, Led Zeppelin IV, Power, Corruption & Lies by New Order, Primal Scream’s Screamadelica, Let It Bleed by The Rolling Stones and yes, A Rush of Blood To The Head by Coldplay. Good thing it wasn’t Viva La Vida, or Joe Satriani’s face would have been legally obliged one tenth of the stamp. We kid. (Via: NME)

Rumors have been floating around the internets for a while now about a collaboration between Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme, Foo Fighters‘ Dave Grohl, and Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones. Now, a confirmation of sorts has come in the form of a last-minute announcement of a Lollapalooza aftershow to be held August 9th at the Metro, with the three bands’ logos on the flier. Apparently the three musicians call themselves Them Crooked Vultures, and have been working on a studio album for three years. So far nothing has been officially confirmed, but the cryptic post isn’t too hard to decode. (via Consequence of Sound)

In other signs of a possible economic turnaround, an anonymous bidder paid $64,000 for John Bonham’s (drummer for Led Zeppelin) gong. Although the purchase price was significantly lower than the anticipated $120,000 auction price, it’s both comforting and disorienting to know that someone has enough cash to shell out that much money for someone’s gong. I wonder where they’ll display their purchase.

It. Looks. Awesome.

IMGT opens in select theaters on August 14th.

Being a long jaded follower of many musical genres, it’s hard for me to be leveled by a new live band; rare is the evil smile on my face or the slow climb of a shiver up my crooked spinal column. Since I’ve become a “professional” music critic as opposed to just another wiseass amateur arguing about music with anyone within earshot, few acts have issued a response in my mind higher than “they’re ok.”

Within the first seconds of The Factory Workers opening slot for two bands that are now erased from my memory, the long absent grin glued itself to my face and the warm electric shock of a supercharged amp rattling across the concrete floor straight through the top of my skull…. Holy Skipping Moses! “Yes Virginia, rock ‘n’ roll does exist!”

The Factory Workers (Al Amador and Justin Brooks) were something explosive. Prior to our interview an hour before the show at Lawrence, Kansas’ The Replay Lounge, I honestly knew very little to nothing about them; just the home recorded songs on their MySpace page and a shared appreciation on the blues. Even in those songs I could hear the lingering beast, a wicked two headed monster ready to fry amplifiers and devour drum kits. During the course of their all too short thirty minute vaporizing set, I became thoroughly convinced that I, along with a decent size Friday night crowd at The Replay Lounge, had just witnessed a giant step forward in Blues Evolutionary Theory.

But the blues rock duo from Kansas City, Missouri are more than just a blues band; they incorporate the sounds of The Black Keys, Son House, the punk rock brutality of Mudhoney and sprinkle in the laid back slyness of Lightnin’ Hopkins. On top of that they add in moments of electric blues like those made famous by 1960’s groups Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Blue Cheer to create a rattle both wholly familiar and entirely their own. It is a music in lock step with their working class name. “I would drive by this factory everyday on my way to work or class and think, I bet those people are working really hard,” lead singer and guitarist Alheim “Al” Amador told me. “I want to work as hard at my music as those people in the factory are working at their job. I wanted to be respected like I respect them.”

The blues have been a part of American music culture for generations. Long before Robert Johnson had hellhounds on his trail, before Willie Dixon was your “Backdoor Man”, years before Leadbelly was singing of murder in the pines, hell, even before there was an America there was the blues. The blues are a human reaction to the hardships of life not a exclusively American reaction. The Factory Workers prove that.

What makes the band’s cohesiveness and blistering live set even more astonishing is the fact that they’ve only been playing for two years and this was to be their first show ever in a proper venue. As Amador tells it, “We started playing in the garage and the basement just having fun. We thought it sounded pretty solid for a two-piece, so we decided to play some shows just to try it out,” A exchange student from Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, Amador came to the states at 17. Justin Brooks, the group’s drummer is squarely Midwestern. “I was born in Springfield, Missouri, moved to St. Joseph, Missouri, graduated high school there, went to Kansas City for college, met Al and there you have The Factory Workers.”

I spoke to the duo shortly after they finished setting up their gear. It was the perfect Lawrence spring night for a show; nice temperature, nicer looking college girls in shorts strolling by, a Lyle Lovett-fashion-obsessed street musician playing for money nearby and pizza furnished by one of the guys’ girlfriends… It was the calm before the proverbial storm.

People usually work their way up to the blues. What did you listen to on your way there?
Al: When I was younger I listened to a lot of Credence, stuff like that; my dad was a big fan of rock music.

Justin: For me, it was Nirvana.

A: Yeah, Nirvana definitely. As I got older I started playing guitar to Nirvana, but that was back home in Mexico. When I came to the States, I started digging into different stuff; Junior Kimborough, Robert Lee Burnside… You know, all the people that were doing the rawer, Memphis style stuff. I just picked it up from there. I just try to make a collage of everything.

What about you? You’re being awfully quiet.
J: Oh, sorry. [laughs] I’d say some of my big inspirations as a drummer are probably Buddy Mills from Band of Gypsys, I kinda started listening to him when I started playing music with Al and really got into it. I really like Abe Cuddingham of the deftones a lot and Dave Grohl.

Al, Who’s your all-time favor guitar player? Remember, I’m looking for a “right answer.”
J: Steve Vai!

A: Yeah, right! [laughs] I couldn’t really tell. I don’t focus on one player, ya know.

J: Al, I’d probably say Burnside.

A: Yeah, Burnside is pretty awesome. I guess I’d have to go with that.

So, how do you feel about your first record? Is it an EP?
A: Yeah, it’s pretty much an EP.

J: It was our first time working with real recording equipment and not just a laptop.

What was the studio experience like for you guys?
J: It was good. We got to play at the same time together instead of laying down our parts at different times, which was great. Since it’s blues and pretty raw we just laid it down together; it turned out really well, Josh (Thomas, of High Diving Ponies) recorded and mixed it.

What was it like working with Josh?
J: Oh, it was great man.

A: He’s very relaxed and will tell you like it is; he’s straight forward but cool about it, ya know? No BS, really an awesome guy to work with. Josh has been around the scene for a long time so he knows what’s going on.

What’s the scene in K.C. like for a band like The Factory Workers? Are they on board or do you not really give a shit?
A: I don’t really care, I just really like playing live, we haven’t been doing it for too long but it’s definitely a lot of fun.

How long have you been playing together? Do you know the exact date?
J: It was April 16, two years ago.

How did you discover each other as musicians? Did you know some of the same people?
A: I would see Justin hanging with the hipsters at school and I thought “Man, I just wanna punch that guy.”

J: It’s true, He really did hate me.

A: But then we meet through a common friend at a birthday party and we hit it off from there. I was like, “Hey, you play drums? You wanna hang out and play music?”

J: Once we started jamming it just clicked. I had never played drums before but he stuck it out for 6 months or a year for me to pick it up. Now I think we have something really solid. I don’t have any formal training but I’d like to get some someday.

Who is the main songwriter in the band or do you share the work?
J: No, he writes them all. I don’t write a single thing. [laughs]

A: The songs are old ones I’ve had for a long time and some come on the spot. But yeah, I do most of the songwriting. He just beats the shit out of it.

What’s the EP going to be called?
A: I think we’re just going with The Factory Workers.

When is the album going to be “officially” released?
J: We just finished the final edit so it’s out now.

A: With some more time and a few more songs maybe we can add to it and release a full album.

How long have you two been playing together?
A: A couple years; We started to get some momentum going, had shows booked than I fell and broke my collarbone and we had to sit for like three months so that slowed us way down. It’s hard to play guitar with a broken collarbone, ya know.

Last question, you both play in High Diving Ponies with Josh Thomas. What’s it like splitting time between HDP and The Factory Workers?
J: It’s cool but it’s two completely different style.

A: I play bass in HDP. It’s taught me a lot because I do bass a lot when I’m strumming cords with The Factory Workers.

J: I’d say we’ve seen a lot of improvement in each others playing since we started doing both. There’s a bit more aggression in Josh’s songs so it give me an excuse to go crazy on the drums.

A: I’m pretty mellow when I play the bass, I stick to one bass line. With The Factory Workers it’s more freestyle. The main part of the song always remains the same but there is room to dance up and down the song.

Discussing music with Al and Justin and witnessing their annihilating set at The Replay Lounge further cemented in me the feeling that the blues, and rock for that matter, are part of the same universal language. It is not English, Spanish, Arabic or Pig Latin. It is language with no barrier. It’s words and an alphabet that we all can understand.

With the closing notes still bouncing off of the pinball machines, I gladly gave the guys $5 to replenish their thirsty gas tank. As I headed out the door, the smile returned to my face and a thought popped into my ringing head:

“If they are this great live after just a few shows, then how killer are they going to be a year from now?”

It’s only been a few weeks since The Killers’ Brandon Flowers declared that Kurt Cobain ruined rock’n'roll, but he’s back at it again, and this time Nirvana isn’t the only band in his sights. He’d also like to take this opportunity to talk trash about Led Zeppelin. Because hey, if you can be a famous singer you can at least be a famous douche bag.

Flowers told NME.com that they’re planning on using their upcoming North American tour to amp up their American audience to be on par with their fans across the pond. But in order to do that, he said, the band will have to overcome some “prejudices” of the American listening public first.

“We’ve been embraced in Britain in a way that I’ll never understand, and it’s such a wonderful thing,” he declared. “But over here [in America], people are still so obsessed with Led Zeppelin and Nirvana, those sorts of bands, that nobody else is allowed [to grow].”

“It doesn’t matter how many great songs we write or how many great shows we play. But we’re slowly chipping away at it. With this last album ['Day And Age'], there’s been a noticeable shift but we’re still nowhere near where we are in Europe.”

There are plenty of amusing things about this, but we’ll stick with these: 1. Led Zeppelin are British, and 2. Since when did someone liking Nirvana or Led Zep keep them from liking new music? Well, if it’s good new music, that is.

Sonic Youth has had lots of interesting adventures lately, but this one might just take the cake: being trapped inside a huge, metallic, futuristic-looking fish bowl (with John Paul Jones, no less) while playing music for a dance show at Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Gilman Opera House.

As we told you back in December, Sonic Youth teamed up with the former Led Zeppelin bass player to perform the music for the Merce Cunningham number. The Village Voice said that the contraption from which the musicians (Sonic Youth, Jones and composer Takehisa Kosugi) played “designed by architect Benedetta Tagliabue, did an entertaining job of upstaging Cunningham’s dancers, despite their 1967-season Star Trek costumes.”

The dance show is Merce Cunningham’s “Nearly Ninety”, and if you don’t know Mr. Cunningham the scoop is that he’s actually 90 years old. So the title works like that. The New York Times gives a more through review of the performance, calling the bandstand “an ugly science fiction cross between various Marcel Duchamp works (”Nude Descending a Staircase,” “The Bride and the Bachelors”) and some “Star Wars” battleship.”

The whole thing probably would’ve been pretty weird all on its own, even without the possibility that the band could initiate lift-off sequences at any moment.

Metallica, the bay-area giants that legitimized “thrash metal” with albums like Kill ‘Em All, Master of Puppets, …And Justice For All and “The Black Album” were welcomed into the hallowed confines of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on April 4, 2009.

Their inclusion, though absolutely deserving in every conceivable way, poses a wider question to my ever curious mind: Will the inclusion of now two “metal” acts, (Black Sabbath being the other. Let’s face it, Led Zeppelin and The Who don’t count as metal.) clear the way for other metal and proto-metal acts?

The governing body of “The Hall” is still skittish when inductions are concerned. The Hall has inducted piano music lightweight Floyd Cramer, but has passed up The Stooges. They’ve welcomed jazz “rockers” Steely Dan and the doo-wop group The Moonglows, but took forever to induct The Ramones and The Talking Heads. So, what would make you think The Hall will get heavier anytime soon?

There are several bands that fall into the metal, punk, thrash and hardcore categories that are entirely deserving of the honor of induction. Here is a list of bands that are eligible and in my mind, should be included. Bare with me, it’s a short list.

Motorhead: Without Lemmy Kilmister and the boys, the genre of thrash (and Metallica) probably would never have existed. Their album, Ace of Spades, is a benchmark of lawn killing volume and speed.

Megadeth: Dave Mustaine, former member of Metallica, focused all his aggression and hatred into classic ear splitting albums such as Rust in Peace, Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying?, Countdown to Extinction and Killing is My Business and Business is Good. And as an added bonus, the band takes it’s name for the loss of lives from a nuclear detonation. Now that’s Metal.

MC5: The Detroit based house band for the Black panther Party was the first to “Kick Out The Jams”. Their explosive shows, incendiary guitar work of Fred “Sonic” Smith and Wayne Kramer and controversial political stances helped set the stage for both punk and metal.

The Stooges: Again, another band that helped in the invention of metal and punk. For god sake, listen to Raw Power and tell me Iggy Pop and his Ann Arbor, Michigan brethren don’t belong.

Black Flag: No they aren’t metal, but hardcore punk arose from the “forbidden beat” created by metal and more precisely, Motorhead. Black Flag gave birth to thousands of punk and thrash bands either by groups attempting to copy their sound or by guitarist Greg Ginn’s indie record label SST.

The Melvins: Masters of sludge and drone, no Melvins equals no Nirvana. No Nirvana equals none of the good bands and some of the bad (I’m talking to you, Bush and Candlebox) that appeared in the 1990’s wake of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”.

Judas Priest: Rob Halford is the King of the 1980’s wave of British Metal. British Steel is an album for the ages.

And there is just a taste of the metal, thrash, hardcore and punk bands that have shaped the musical landscape over the past 30+ years that are up for induction. They have all, either directly or indirectly, changed the public’s perception of what is great, what is groundbreaking, what is acceptable and what is not. And in the process have warped my brain for the better.

I must extend my congratulations to Metallica. They truly are one of the greats of this or any other time. Who knows, maybe next year someone from my list will be asked into The Hall, but my bet is that the voters will probably go with The Carpenters instead. Man, could they wail!

Lots of musical memorabilia is hitting the auction block next week as part of a benefit for Detroit music icon Jim Shaw, including one of Meg White’s drum kits. We just hope she has a little more luck than woulda-coulda Led Zeppelin-ite Terry Reid.

The drum kit was the one used in The White Stripes’ video “The Hardest Button to Button,” and it’s being auctioned alongside tons of other rock paraphernalia to help Shaw and his family following a very serious cancer diagnosis. The auction and a benefit concert take place on February 7 in Detroit.

It is indeed our hope that they pull in (surely on Meg’s drum kit alone) more than the whopping $595.18 price tag that Terry Reid’s original contract to be a part of Led Zeppelin sold for on eBay. It’s a sad tale, really, sort of like being one number shy of winning the lotto jackpot.

Reid gave the facts to The Daily Mail in an interview last year:

“These guys are my friends. There was no Led Zeppelin at the time when Jimmy Page was trying to put the group together, and if I had have joined, they might not have been the band they are today.”

“I phoned up Jimmy. and he asked me, ‘What does this singer look like?’ I said, ‘What do you mean, what does he look like? He looks like a Greek god, but that doesn’t matter. I’m talking about the way he sings, and the drummer is awesome.’

Just in case you’d battened down the hatches for the musical apocalypse, you can breathe a sigh of relief — Led Zeppelin will not reunite without Robert Plant, now or ever. At least that’s what Jimmy Page’s manager Peter Mensch is saying this time.

In an interview with MusicRadar yesterday, Mensch made his feelings on the matter pretty clear.

Led Zeppelin are over! If you didn’t see them in 2007 [when they played a one-off reunion at London's O2 Arena], you missed them. It’s done. I can’t be any clearer than that. They tried out a few singers, but no one worked out. That was it. The whole thing is completely over now. There are absolutely no plans for them to continue. Zero. Frankly, I wish everybody would stop talking about it.

Well excuse us, Mr. Mensch. He did confirm that last fall when Plant said he had no intentions of returning to Led Zeppelin that the remaining members of the band did audition replacement vocalists. Our thanks to everything holy that none of them worked out.

MusicRadar also asked if Page has any plans on the table for the coming year, to which Mensch replied, “Fuck if I know. I’m waiting to hear.”

Ugh.

Taking a page from the Journey handbook, apparently Jimmy Page is itching to get back in the studio with his old band mates, even if they’re not really into it.

In an interview with 6 Music, Jimmy Page’s manager confirmed that Led Zeppelin are planning to tour and record a new album with a replacement singer for Robert Plant.

It’s not really a surprise as Plant — who in December told NME that he wasn’t interested in doing a Led Zeppelin reunion — remains the only member of the legendary band still making commercially viable music. In October, Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones hinted that the band were willing to continue with or without Plant, who affirms that he still remains on good terms with his former band mates.

Speaking to 6 Music about Led Zeppelin’s future plans, Page’s manager Peter Mensch confirmed that the band would indeed carry on if they can find the right singer.

“Jimmy Page has been playing guitar professionally since he was 16 years old. Jimmy Page likes being a musician. That’s what he does! He doesn’t want to be a race car driver or a solicitor,” Mensch said.

“So they [Page, Jones and drummer Jason Bonham] did the show [at London's O2 Arena in 2007] with Robert Plant; they had a really good time rehearsing, the three of them, before Robert showed up. And they decided that if they could find a singer that they thought would fit their bill — whatever their bill was at this stage in their career — that they’d make a record and go on tour.”

While the idea is still in its infancy, rumors of who Plant’s replacement will be have started to swirl, with Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell and Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler being brought up as potential options and NME also hinted that the band was rehearsing with American singer Myles Kennedy. Though Mensch remained tight-lipped on the Subject.

“It’s gonna be a long and difficult process,” he said. “And we’re not soliciting people! So don’t call me about it!”