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Foo Fighters

Hello? HELLO!!

Sorry, my ears are still ringing. Fuck me, that band are loud. They are also quiet when needed, funny, engaging, and very energetic. And that’s just the front man. More to come, but first….

Ranty bit
Rock Steady security. What a jumped up bunch of oiks they are. In the queue at the cloakroom on the way out they admonished one guy for coming into the queue to join his mates. No-one else minded but they hauled two of them aside, talked at them for about ten minutes and then let them rejoin the queue where they’d come from… what the feck was the point of that?

P.S. You don’t need three people to tell us to ‘keep moving’ along the queue. The British public is very adept at queuing, it’s in-bred I think, but hey maybe without you guys there to keep us right we’d all just have stood there, wondering how on earth we were going to get our coats back… sheesh..

Disappointing bit
Dear large rock band (or dear S.E.C.C.) I’d much rather fork out an extra £10-15 and hear you in a stadium than put up with the dodgy sound in the big red shed. Suffice to say that R.E.M. sounded better at Loch Lomond, and I was about 500 metres away from them, last night I was no more than 60 or 70 metres yet still some of the songs sounded bad.

The good bits
Overall though this was an excellent set by a tight band that just kept cranking out the tunes. The opening four of five ripped past before the venerable Mr. Grohl paused to tell us that Glasgow was the place they always enjoyed coming to and was probably the best place to play a gig in the world. Every gig I’ve been to in Glasgow has the act saying the same thing, something I don’t recall hearing when I’ve been to see other acts in other places…

They plundered their back catalogue for some old favourites, including the not often played This Is A Call from their first album, and we got a lesson in showmanship with a nicely deconstructed version of Everlong which Dave held on his own for most of the song. What a feeling that must be, to have 10,000 people singing along to you and your guitar.

We even got to see Taylor (the drummer) singing one of the tracks from the ‘soft/acoustic’ disc of the new album, with Dave (the… umm… other drummer) taking a seat behind the skins and going at it in his usual quiet and restrained fashion (there was a certain sense of embarassment as, on the big video screens they had above the stage, the cameraman was focussing more on Dave playing the drums than Taylor who was singing the song! No doubt about who’s band we were seeing).

It’s been said before that Dave Grohl is the nicest guy in rock, and this comes across during the interaction between some of the songs when you genuinely get the feeling that he’s just dead chuffed you’ve turned up and that he’s having a good a time as you. He’s got that whole ‘self-effacing’ charm thing down pat, and you felt like he was talking to you rather than just obligingly filling the gaps between songs.

Highlight of the evening was both Learn to Fly (for personal reasons) and inevitably both Monkey Wrench and the closing All My Life. Not a bad gig for my first experience of the Foo Fighters live, it certainly won’t be the last.

As the lights came up and we all started the exodus, I experienced something new; the sound of the assembled crowd singing along to the background music. Maybe the fact that it was ACDC’s Highway to Hell had something to do with it, but I’d warrant that it wasn’t by accident. A great show, by a great showman, with a great band. What more can you ask?

Setlist (tbc)

    In Your Honour
    No Way Back
    My Hero
    Best of You
    Up in Arms
    Learn to Fly
    Times Like These
    The One
    Stacked Actors
    Big Me
    Generator
    Have it All
    Breakout
    Everlong
    Monkey Wrench
    ———-
    This is a Call
    Cold Day
    All My Life

Addendum
Foo Forum is already full of people bitching at the shortness of the set, but equally Dave Grohl is ill so I’m just glad they played. That might also explain the dodgy vocal mix on some of the tracks as he was obviously struggling.