Hey, it's Alan, and I just wanted to let you know that you can now listen to the ongoing

history of new music early and ad-free on Amazon music, included with Prime.

How old is rock and roll now? If we use, let's say, 1955 as some kind of arbitrary ground zero,

rock is now eligible for all kinds of seniors discounts.

It's a long time to be around.

And the older rock gets, the more difficult it becomes to stick out,

to find distinctive approaches,

and to be unique in an ocean of other acts and sounds.

How many bands of, let's say, the last 20 years, can you name that has a

sound so distinctive that you know exactly who they are within just the first couple of seconds?

I can name one, Queens of the Stone Age. There's something about what they do that sonically

sets them apart from just about everybody else.

But it's more than just guitar sounds and arrangements and lyrics. The elements required to

create this uniqueness are complex and varied, and I think worthy of study. In fact, you can't

separate the sounds of Queens of the Stone Age from their history, which is also

very, very complex. Let's see if we can untangle everything. These are some secrets of Queens

of the Stone Age, Part One. This is the ongoing history of new music podcast with Alan Cross.

Josh Ami and Queens at the Stone Age with The Way You Used to do, a single from their 2017 album, Villains. Hello again, I'm Ellen Cross, and on this episode, we're going to

dig into Queens of the Stone Age to see what makes them tick. Fascinating bunch. This is stuff

that even big fans might not know about. So we'll call this Secrets of Queens.

The only place to start with this band is at the beginning, which is in the high desert east of

Palm Springs, California. Josh Homi, who is the only continuous member of Queens of the Stone Age,

...