We here at OneRiot love the idea of a good ‘collaboration’, and there’s no better incarnation of the c-word than a supergroup. Today, it came to our attention that there was such a group a-brewin’ when we noticed the massive realtime response to the term ‘New Fang‘. So we did what we do, and aimed our massive, cannon-like OneRiot trend-detector at this little bit of text and found that Them Crooked Vultures were in our midst, with Queens of the Stone Age and Led Zeppelin fans alike chattering over their new single.
There are supergroups of all sounds and sizes, and it doesn’t take long to notice that it’s really a small pool of supermusicians who are frequenting the revolving door world super-collaboration. For example, Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker are a regular couple of supergroup whores…(no offense to any groupies out there). But the fact remains that within the conventional world of supergroups, a few names keep popping up. Les Claypool’s distinct bass playing has been done so many times over, browning any translucent concoction of supertalent with that low, farty tone. Even horrible bands like Blink 182 find their members working with legends like Tim Armstrong. And let’s not forget West Side Connection.
From this, we learn that a group of famous guys jamming out is totally different from regular musicians jamming out. It’s assumed that good + good = supergenius, and that can lead to some disappointing first listens. Just ask a Rage Against the Machine fan (a real one) about Audioslave. Listen to ‘New Fang’ with that in mind and you might be pleasantly surprised. While you’ve heard pretty much everything Dave Grohl and Josh Homme are independently capable of, the addition of John Paul Jones is not simply for novelty appeal.
(Editor’s Note: While we’re always intrigued to hear new musical collaborations, we were really hoping that “New Fang” was going to be a Weird Al “Twilight” Parody of the Shins’ “New Slang.“ Sigh*)
