I like going to concerts. I don’t remember the order, but I saw Kiss and Styx when I was about eight. I don’t remember Styx at all, but I have some memory of Kiss being on some sort of columns and in their makeup. Going to concerts just seemed like a pretty cool thing to do and I guess I never really got over that.
I’ve wanted to see the Foo Fighters for quite awhile and for the last few years I have checked to see where they were touring and this time it turns out they were going through Salt Lake. I couldn’t really believe it and it turns out I got free tickets (thanks again Caleb), so yeah, that beats flying to Duluth or wherever to see them.
Ever since a coworker told me the story of the first Foo Fighters album I’ve been a rather closeted David Grohl fanboy. Turns out Grohl was in a band before the Foo Fighters, but it didn’t end well. I don’t know Grohl, but I would have been devastated. Finally a band comes together, takes the world by storm but then it just ends overnight. The story goes that rather than fall into a drug-aided depression and death spiral Grohl wrote and recorded nearly all the parts for the Foo Fighter’s self-titled album himself. Wikipedia tells me that Nirvana (spoilers) ended about April and the new album was recorded in October. Guess I don’t know what happened in the interim but at least Grohl lived through it. Totally inspirational to me.
We got to the concert in time for some of Cage the Elephant to find Grohl as their drummer. I guess the regular drummer was in the hospital so Grohl got their album and learned some of their songs to help out. Nothing like one of the biggest rock stars in the world picking up your cd, learning a couple songs and then playing with you before he plays for a good couple hours for his own band. And yeah, totally into the whole drumming thing it seemed to me.
Eventually, the Foo Fighters started to play. They just rocked. Grohl seemed determined to help the entire crowd enjoy the show. Generally he’d hang out in the center of the main stage, but he’d also run to the right and left sides, flick his hair around and play his guitar a bit. He’d also run out into the crowd to the other end and do something similar.
My favorite band in the world is Radiohead. I’ve seen them in concert three times. Most recently I flew to Washington largely to see them. They didn’t play Paranoid Android, which I have blogged about before. Needless to say, I was pretty disappointed. I can imagine that playing a song for like fifteen years would get a little old. The Foo Fighters seem just fine playing their hits, like Everlong, which appears to be slightly older than Paranoid Android 🙂
