Think BIG!

The Big Day Out 2003, which hits Ericsson Stadium on Friday, has the makings of a classic, with the best line-up of must-see acts in years. RUSSELL BAILLIE reports.

Meet the Big Day Out's greatest salesman: Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age. He may be on a tour bus somewhere in California but, boy, he can still pitch.

"The Big Day Out is the most bad-ass tour in the [expletive] world. It's everything that you wish a rock'n'roll tour would be - eclectic line-up, bands fraternising, lots of days off so you can play your own shows and see the country you're in.

"It's going to be awesome. Foo Fighters, PJ Harvey, Kraftwerk - I love all that stuff. Lucky me. Ha! You will not hear me complain. I'll wake up every morning giggling."

No, Homme and his Californian band have not played an Auckland BDO before. They did the Australian leg of the tour a couple of years ago.

This time they come here as one of the headliners. They are now, after all, officially popular with their acclaimed 2002 album Songs for the Deaf - a top 20 affair here and in many other parts of the world.

If QOTSA have finally surfaced from the underground, it's not because they knocked any edges off their approach - or finally settled on one sound, one singer or one line-up.

This band of fluid membership, centred around Homme and bassist Nick Oliveri, has kept on taking turns at the microphone with former Screaming Trees singer Mark Lanegan as the third voice. "We all do what the other guy can't do, so together we are like one giant person and he would be one ugly [expletive]."

They've also maintained a high hyphen-demand when it comes to describe their particularly askew line in rock'n'roll.

Homme says the social-club line-up approach - which saw Foo Fighter Dave Grohl returning to the drum stool on Songs for the Deaf - has its only drawback when it comes to touring "when someone has to learn 40 songs in a matter of days".

"But we've also had the luxury of getting to play with some really great people who are able to do it. For making records, it's like having a chemistry set with all the coolest chemicals."

That all-embracing approach, with a guitar sound quite like no other, stems from before QOTSA, says Homme, from his days in his previous hard-rock outfit Kyuss, in fact.

"Early on when I was playing in Kyuss, when we were like 15, there were a bunch of people who said we sounded like a few other bands.

"At the time you don't take it as, 'If you like this, you might like this', you take it as, 'You sound exactly like this'.

"From that moment on, we just said, 'Never again will you be able to use one band as a comparison - you'll have to use five'.

"That's definitely something that has stuck with me."

The other word that comes up frequently in discussions of QOTSA is "desert". Homme sprang from Southern California's arid inner and says it's long influenced his music and his thinking.

"I think it has a lot to do with it. If you are in the forest you can't see that far. If you are in the desert and someone's coming, 30 minutes later you're like, 'Yep, still coming'.

"So it has a way of being a great hideout and everything in the desert is tough that survives. People think it's dead, but it's not and even the bunnies will kick your ass.

"It has a knack for making you feel small and wanting to try to enlarge yourself to fill a big giant gap. It's a place that has an intensity and a hum to it."

Which is also a good description of where QOTSA find themselves at the beginning of 2003. Though the wider attention seems to bemuse Homme.

"I sort of feel we've been throwing a party for years and if you guys want to show up, the keg is on the right, the bathroom is on the left, just don't go into the back bedroom, you know what I mean?"

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