Tonight's Them Crooked Vultures show a one-off?

Various rumors have been circulating about Them Crooked Vultures on the Internet. Although the band has its own official Twitter, Myspace and Facebook pages (update: official YouTube channel too!) as well as its own official Web site, all these communication platforms have done so far is confirm a single performance.

Rumors about a forthcoming album and the supposed preview of a demo of one song have hit the Internet this week, although not through the official channels and therefore of dubious authenticity.

One especially interesting facet of this all, particularly in light of the concert taking place 12 hours from now, is something sources close to Them Crooked Vultures have apparently told at least one media outlet about John Paul Jones, Dave Grohl and Josh Homme. MTV UK reported on Thursday:

It is alleged that the musicians have been working together on and off for the past three years despite the new super-group being played down as: "a few friends talking".

Sources close to the three rock legends are insisting that the gig does not confirm reports that Them Crooked Vultures will continue to play live or whether the new venture will lead to an album.

The initially publicized hint of a Grohl-Homme-Jones collaboration, as posted June 20 on the blog Plastic Pizza Party!, said the three had been "been holed up in a Los Angeles recording studio working on a new record. The new band name and record release date are currently TBD … keep your ears peeled kiddos."

That wasn't the only statement to lead to an assumption the project would yield newly recorded material or a tour. Going back further, Jones said in April he hoped "to be everywhere this summer" with "a couple of other people" who've been "working [with him] on some other music, which is more rock based."

But he also said, "There are some exciting projects coming up, let's put it that way." Projects, plural! Maybe Them Crooked Vultures is one project, and it's not necessarily the one that's touring!

This is just way too much hype to be all aimed at only one show. Of course, I guess we thought that of Led Zeppelin's reunion concert in 2007 too, didn't we? The seminal moment came in late January 2008, when Jimmy Page told reporters in Tokyo, "I can assure you the amount of work that we put into the O2 [concert], for ourselves rehearsing and the staging of it, was probably what you put into a world tour." There was no payoff from this other than just that one show.

Unconfirmed rumors of a Vultures album title (Never Deserved the Future), release date (Oct. 23, unconventional in that it is not on the usual Tuesday for the United States), record label (Interscope Records, same as Homme's band Queens of the Stone Age), and the supposed leak of an instrumental demo called "Paved Death" are all believed to be fake.

One other rumor, however, comes from Nech on the For Badgeholders Only discussion group about Led Zeppelin, who has been famously correct on several Zeppelin-related events and elusive whenever prompted to reveal how he came to know things in advance. Nech says Them Crooked Vultures has at least one more gig this month: at the Reading Festival in the United Kingdom, which is to be held Aug. 28-30.