IT was a Sunday evening...or was it a Saturday night?

Queens of the Stone Age were at Manchester Arena and, although I knew I had work the next day, the whole thing became a little unclear with frontman Josh Homme insisting that the weekend was just getting started.

More and more rockers are giving up the heavy drinking and hard partying in favour of rehab and cleaner living these days.

But Homme sticks fervently to the old guard philosophy that you should have a good time all of the time.

So to him, the band and to 21,000 revellers it was 'Saturday night'.

The venue was heaving and the way fans bounced, cheered and went wild it might as well have been.

Smoking, flicking cigarettes with abandon and readily admitting he was drunk, Homme and his band nevertheless put on a staggeringly good show.

Not so much the Lost Art of Keeping a Secret but the lost art of being a drunken rock star while holding thousands of people in the palm of your hand.

Homme had swagger and attitude in spades and the audience lapped it up as he effortlessly turned anecdotes into a play on words to introduce many of the songs.

With the noticeable omission of the band's breakout hits, Feel Good Hit of the Summer and The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret, the set was a good cross section of almost 20 years of material.

There was a frantic, buzz-riff version of Monsters in the Parasol which somehow clicked with My God Is The Sun despite the tracks being recorded 13 years apart.

But the gig really got into a groove with Feet Don't Fail Me Now thanks to its slow build up before the funky big riffs.

The real crowd pleasers were the heavy rock tracks from Songs For The Deaf like No One Knows, Go With The Flow and the intense finale Song For The Dead as well as Little Sister from their fourth album, Lullabies To Paralyse.

New song Villains of Circumstance also sounded incredibly atmospheric played in the vast arena which vibrated with urgent energy.

Homme later dedicated fast pop rock song Head Like a Haunted House to Manchester calling it the home of good music.

You might not want to take Queens of the Stone Age home to meet your mother but these desert rockers know how to put on a hell of a show. They don't make rock and roll stars like they used to.