Contributor Dave Dierksen reviews the Foo Fighters set at Austin360 Amphitheater.
By Dave Dierksen
[rating=5]
Heading into Wednesday night’s Foo Fighters Austin show, the first show of the second leg of their Concrete and Gold tour, I wasn’t even sure if I was going to write a review of the show. In some ways, I already had most of it written in my head beforehand, based on the following assumptions:
- They would play close to three hours.
- They would play a handful of fun covers in the middle as part of the band introductions.
- Drummer Taylor Hawkins would sing at least one song.
- “Best of You” would be in the encore with “Everlong” played last.
- I was confident of 13 other songs that would most likely make the set.
- There would be multiple extended jams.
- Dave Grohl would be hilarious and address the crowd as “motherfuckers” endearingly a time or ten.
All of these assumptions would end up proving accurate. Such is the life of a diehard Foo Fighters fan. This would be my 12th time to see them. Over the last 23 years, I’ve seen them play in pretty much every type of venue possible and under a wide array of circumstances.
SIDE NOTE: In 1998 I saw them play a festival actually called FOOestival, and not only did they not headline the festival named for them, that honor went to Creed. God bless you, San Antonio!
My favorite Foo shows were definitely in the early days, when they only had a few records under their belt and you were guaranteed to hear some deep cuts. The Foo Fighters have so many hits now, more than likely you’re going to have to settle for deep singles.
But I keep coming back because I love the Foo Fighters. They are my favorite band. I don’t consider them the best band I listen to nor would I rank any of their records in my Top 20 (save for maybe The Colour and the Shape). But I love them because they hit every one of my rock and roll sweet spots. At times heavy, at times tender, most times poppy, pulling from punk, metal, hard rock, power pop, and classic rock, you know what you’re going to get, but you know it’s consistently going to be done well. This level of dependability, while not fashionable, has been a therapeutic blanket for me during my worst of times, and I will forever be grateful for the band’s existence.
In a live setting, they bring it, and their shows ride almost exclusively on the music performance and of course the personality of Dave Grohl. Bands like Radiohead, Rush, Pink Floyd, and Metallica, while all great live, rely on heavy stage production for their shows. Foo Fighters’ light shows are fine but unremarkable, and on Wednesday, while Taylor Hawkins’ drum set rising to the rafters for one song was fun in a Spinal Tap/Motley Crue sort of way, the show wasn’t noticeably better for it.
And so keeping all of the above in mind, I was expecting a great time, but maybe not a surprising, gee-I-need-to-write-about-this-show kind of time.
And then literally three minutes before the band went on, I checked my social media feed to discover the news that Erin Popovich, the wife of San Antonio Spurs basketball coach Gregg Popovich, had died. Now I don’t know the Popovich family or any member of the Spurs organization personally, but keeping a really long story short, I can say that Spurs basketball has provided that same therapeutic blanket that the Foo Fighters have provided me for about as long as I’ve been listening to the Foo Fighters. For 23 years, the Foos and Spurs basketball, under the stewardship of Popovich, have gotten me through some dark times. And so just like that, at a moment that should have been euphoric, I found myself saddled with an almost inexplicable, incredible sadness.
Needless to say, the whole show was skewed in light of that news. I broke down crying during opener “Run”:
Before the time runs out / There’s somewhere to run / Wake up / Run for your life with me
And then during “Learn to Fly”:
I’m looking to the sky to save me / Looking for a sign of life / Looking for something help me burn out bright
And then “Rope”:
Give me some rope I’m coming loose / I’m pulling for you now
And then “These Days”:
One of these days, your heart will stop and play its final beat (talk about on the nose, Foo Fighters!)
I hoped no one was noticing, but I can only imagine the dude next to me thinking, “Damn I thought I loved this band…”
Suddenly a show I anticipated to be just another show took on a whole new meaning. I sang my guts out, and in between tears, I also laughed my ass off. Whether it was the audience member in Gene Simmons make-up who upstaged the whole band on guitar during “Monkey Wrench” or the five-minute story about a failed attempt to get into a Pantera-owned strip club – the show was suddenly intimate. Six dudes (and three awesome back-up singers) just fucking around for 2 hours and 45 minutes, almost like a house party show. And it came at the time I most needed it – the Foos for the umpteenth time providing me comfort via their earnest rock and roll and healthy dose of amiable goofiness.
Perhaps a different version of events might have had me lamenting that it took them a whole hour just to play seven songs (thanks to a 15-minute version of “Rope), or that in all that time, they only played 23 songs (although I ask you to contemplate the toll it would take on Dave Grohl’s voice to sing 30+ songs every night). No doubt someone somewhere was grousing about all the covers (but c’mon, Dave singing Van Halen’s “Jump” over the piano chords of John Lennon’s “Imagine” was worth the loss of a Foo original, right?).
After the show ended, as I was reflecting on the evening’s strange turn of events, I thought about the 7-year old kid on his dad’s shoulders, throwing up Slayer hands. I hoped this would be the best night of his young life so far. Or when Dave asked the crowd how many folks were seeing the Foos for the first time, and a healthy contingent screamed – what about those people? I’ll never forget seeing John Fogerty for the first time five years ago as he blasted through Creedence hits for an hour. I cried at that show too, and it sure as hell wasn’t because he didn’t play the “deep cuts.” I hope this Foo Fighters show, chock full of hits, affected some folks just as hard.
I guess this is my long-winded way of saying that concert reviews – and to some extent, any critical analysis – are at least partly bullshit. Because art doesn’t exist in a vacuum, context matters, blah blah blah. To anyone reading, I thought it was a good fucking show, and if you were there, I hope you enjoyed it.
Setlist:
Run
All My Life
Learn to Fly
The Pretender
The Sky Is a Neighborhood
Rope
(drum solo)
Sunday Rain
My Hero (Dave solo into full band)
These Days
Walk
Breakout
Under My Wheels (Alice Cooper cover)
Jump/Imagine (Van Halen/John Lennon mash-up)
Blitzkrieg Bop (Ramones cover)
Under Pressure (Queen/David Bowie cover) (Taylor Hawkins on vocals)
Monkey Wrench (with KISS Guy on guitar)
Times Like These (Dave solo into full band)
Generator
Big Me
Best of You
Dirty Water
This Is a Call
Everlong