Avon
Mad Marco

“ Look, it was really a great concert! And then at the end they played five spectacular encores, picking two tracks from The Circus leave Town, the last chapter of Kyuss, and three from the debut of QOTSA. The telluric Hurricane above all! I couldn't have gone to bed happier than that!.. “

Yes, because good Alfredo Hernandez, drummer on Kyuss' last album and among the founders of QOTSA, where he plays on the first album, as well as founder of Yawning Man together with Mario Lalli (I remember that Catamaran played by Kyuss is a cover of theirs...) stirring behind the drums at various Generator parties that the young Homme and Garcia attended as spectators, with collaborations and parallel projects always respectable within that desert rock niche that has made so many followers, well, as I was saying, the good Fredo is still going strong and has recently released a new album with his new band, Avon (which coincidentally is the title of a QOTSA song..).

And Avon are playing right here, in the foggy Brianza, a step away from me. The only time I heard Alfredo behind the drums was at one of QOTSA's first concerts in Italy, at Cascina Monluè, a magnificent rural complex near Linate, with an adjoining delightful 13th-century church, marred by traffic from a nearby ring road.

A magical place, Cascina Monluè, for me.

.. It was June 16, 2001, and there were few of us under the stage: on stage Josh Homme still skinny, very young and in a white t-shirt, a very high Olivieri in a black t-shirt and a composed and never out-of-line Alfredo.

Around us sparse stalls offering Indian trinkets, Tibetan necklaces, and Peruvian pants. Well, you get the mood.

And in the background: the brick bell tower of the church of San Lorenzo with its simple, barn-like facade. I look at the bell tower, ponder the fantastic rock-medieval combo and think to myself.. “I'd like to visit it ” …. Who knows, maybe one day I'll return.

It's there, at the end of the concert that I bought my cult T-shirt, a shirt I still proudly wear to concerts, featuring a video game-style font: QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE – DESERT PALM, CALIFORNIA; a dry payoff without frills, just like the early musical cries of QOTSA whose debut album I still consider a cornerstone.

I remember well that first album of theirs I bought in Milan on Corso di Porta Ticinese from “Barba”.. I remember it like it was yesterday: I went to Supporti Fonografici before attending one of the last pre-thesis revisions. The B-movie cover tantalized my imagination during the bus trip heading to Bovisa, where they had newly started decentralizing some courses from the faculty of architecture. For a student from the old order like me, used to Città Studi, Bovisa was a torture, though it gifted very poetic post-industrial glimpses... Eventually, it became more welcoming.

And after 15 years the circle closes (Q) for a fanatic of the group like me from the start and their early raw sounds; because this “MAD MARCO” seems in some parts the natural continuation of QOTSA's debut, of those Queens who after becoming a stadium rock band no longer interest me much... Yes, because I much prefer bands that navigate the musical undergrowth, in a sort of dewy limbo that keeps them fresher and less bloated, far from divismo and various proselytism, passionate about music – far removed from showbiz – and that at fifty makes you tour Europe in a ragged maroon Ford Transit to make music in small provincial clubs...

Stone age rock then, and a sound that catapults me back to where I left off in a feedback of memories without nostalgia: the power trio delivers an energetic groove that moves within the canons of desert-rock with 90's scents with a vintage note, but not at all pretentious. Alfredo is an honest guy with himself and truly the frontman of the Californian combo: his drumming is precise, it marks the time like a metronome and is the engine of the group, the guitar riffs are sharp and intertwine and meld into the sound, James Child’s rock voice is sometimes scratchy, definitely very cool and well set, not to mention the bass that blends everything together.

Fallen, Smash and down [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HZAdd_6FTQ ] and Never again reek terribly of early QOTSA, Mad Marco [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6INYHJ4hN5o ] has a slightly different sound, perhaps their true stylistic hallmark, Yvonne the avon lady has a Nirvana-like flair!... and there are no lack of episodic acoustics like No one but you and others with a psychedelic taste.

A complete album well rooted in 2016 but with a foot in the nineties, eleven tracks to discover, for nostalgics and not. A masterpiece of the genre.

Support them live! [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGMgjSprrCY ]..

.. it will be a great listen.

I took a trip through time and memory;

I must leave now, I need to finish preparing my thesis.