foo

I think this will be a very hard post to write. Mainly because my writing style lacks the lyricall power to explain just how staggering, word-taking, mouth-drying, flesh-tingling, stunning and wondrous the foo fighters acoustic gig at Victoria Apollo really was. I still haven’t gotten over it. On the bus ride home, me and nuzz sat in euphoric silence, the only way which can trully express what the gig was like. So far from offending the gig with my juvenile inexperienced words, I will instead talk about my discoveries, that many will know, but that are rather shiny in their newness to me.

Chris Shiflett
The lead guitarist of Foo is Chris Shiflett. While Grohl was off moonlighting with the queens of the stone age, Chris released an album with his brother in their band Jackson sometime before the Foo’s One by One came out. Chris also played guitar in a favourite punk band from my youth - Me First and the Gimme Gimmes.

Taylor
The tazmanian devil of drummers. I do believe he always drums in shorts and a bare chest. When he sang, on Cold Day in the Sun, his voice secured his tazmanian devil origin.

Rami Jaffee
Then there was this dude who played the acordian and piano and cigarette (a constant part of his stage get up). A proper character he conjured up images for me of blackface and Al johnson

Pat Smear
And the rather characterly dressed bleached blong hair guitarist turned out to be Pat Smear, the guy who played with Nirvana in their last 6 months. A complete hybrid, Mr Smear has an african american/native american mother and German Jewish father. Supposedly this was a big deal he was touring with the Foo’s as he has been keeping a really low profile.

Mr Grohl
And then there was Dave. what a lovely person this guy seems. One who laughs with life and with a glowing ego that doesn’t rule the band. A true talent and like all trully talented individuals, a workaholic, he has this rolling almost mid-east accent so it wasn’t surprising when I found out he was born in Ohio, nextdoor to where my mom grew up, and now lives is Virgina.

One song they played that I’d never heard (apart from on the new album) was actually a really old song from Grohl’s pseudonym ‘late’ first solo album, pocketwatch. It was really lovely, and with lyrics like:

“He’s never been in love
But he knows just what love is
He says nevermind
And no one speaks”

makes you wonder if its about Kurt, and it probably is, but more based around the time when Grohl moved in with Kurt, who he didn’t know all that well, and the two spent a rather lonely depressing winter with Krist. This was before nirvana became big. It was the first acoustic song Grohl wrote.

And theres much more to write.. but words are falling now. So I suggest you take a pop over to nuzz’s blog for a much more indepth and educational account.