Foo Fighters "Sonic Highway" documentary series on HBO

Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock

Life Is A Sonic Highway In America Keep On Rockin'

"8 Ways to Rock"

I'm having trouble with this link, can you help? I'm trying to post it on facebook.

Thanks.

sonic highways 2

1. The Dirtiest Water (with Steven Tyler & Joe Perry)
2. Pumped (with Uncle Luke)
3. Always Dreaming (with Peter Buck & Kate Pierson)
4. Going (with Darryl Hall & Questlove)
5. Way Down Home (with Aretha Franklin & The Black Keys)
6. Candles (with Bob Seger)
7. Working On It (with The Original 7ven)
8. There For All Time/Combine (with Billie Joe Armstrong, E-40 & Bob Weir)

imagine if they'd gone to philadelphia - questlove would totally get involved and then either angrily castigate himself for it or self-righteously defend it in the liner notes of the next roots album

Foo Fighters Over America and then he could have squeezed in appearance by his close personal friend Paul McCartney

Foo Fighters are the number one band for people who tuck in their t-shirts

gotta save paul for sonic eurail

Foo Fighters are the number one band for people who tuck in their t-shirts

― chr1sb3singer, Thursday, October 16, 2014 12:13 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Rush fans aren't gonna give up that easily pal

lmao

Foos have steadily eclipsed Rush in the past few yrs according to my research

Rush fans I think have moved into the mock-turtleneck phase

you can categorize many fans of both bands under the umbrella of "people who probably bought zunes"

"Sonic Highways" is being pushed to Zune users exclusively for free!

nah, ballmer gave all those up - used them on the low to pay for the clippers. chris paul is furious.

oh btw here's the first single, it's...pretty whatever IMO. not that bad, not that good, almost entirely uninteresting though the breakdown near the end is decent...

<iframe width="788" height="484" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Y3B0Vx_yQgo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

wow that didnt work

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3B0Vx_yQgo if you're curious

Has any rock band ever made a good record with different special guests on every song? Other than Santana, of course.

The 6ths, Wasps Nests - if you pretend its the magnetic fields with a different singer on each track

yeah that's a good album

wow, foo fighters really are unleashing some amazing new sounds into this vibrant rock and roll genre

this music http://i57.tinypic.com/x62ir.gif

SO DO FOO

Indiana Grohl and Sonic Highway of Doom

as someone who stanned for "Rope," "The Pretender," "Best of You," etc. this is definitely their most underwhelming lead single in a long time. the funky clavinet (?) at the halfway point is cool, though. this was the song done at Electric Audio, doesn't sound especially Albini-ish though, i'm guessing he was just interviewed for the show and not involved in the track.

track 5 of the album is gonna have Joe Walsh on it, so that will probably be the ILM pick hit

All my life I've been searching for something
Something never comes never leads to nothing

haven't bought a Foo album since first 3, but hate here is really piling on

also DG is a stud, and probly will be at 65, i suspect most of the boys here know it.

Has any rock band ever made a good record with different special guests on every song?

This reminds me I should play it again soon. It's been a while...

I was surprised at the degree to which the concept shaped the album -- all the guests, and Grohl using quotes from interviews for the basis of the lyrics etc. -- because I initially figured it would be just another set of Foo Fighters songs that were recorded in different studios. i thought Wasting Light was really good, but it's not like they have so much to say as a band that it would be a bad thing to pour their effort into a different kind of idea for once.

First two albums were really good but I honestly don't know what's meant to be interesting about watching an extended road doc about the Foo Fighters.

Don't get HBO, but would like to see this in order to watch:

In Chicago, he covers Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, Chess Records and “Soundstage,” and also spends time reminiscing with his cousin Tracey Bradford, a onetime punk-rock singer who took Mr. Grohl to his first live music show (Naked Raygun at the Cubby Bear).

The Washington segment is more scattered but more interesting, because the music it covers — the city’s hardcore punk-rock scene and go-go, the local offshoot of funk — from NY Times review

Plus I think Steve Albini might be interviewed in the Chicago part also

In other words, I want to see this for the guests, not for the Foo Fighters

Come for the guests, stay for the Foo

it's gonna be funny when dave grohl explores the rich diversity of music in these different towns, including local flavors ignored by the top 40, and then ends with a foo fighters song

http://www.theonion.com/articles/horrible-band-obviously-not-listening-to-its-influ,3073/

^^^^DING DING DING WE HAVE A WINNER

the DC Go Go stuff does look cool, and it deserves some attention.

don't get me wrong i will watch at least one episode of this for the music-history stuff involved. and dave grohl as a person has done too much cool side work and been too undeniable a part of rock history to be dismissed outright. but dear god, his music has been pure milquetoast for at least 12 years.

Good guy, bad band. He's like the bizarro world Mike Love.
The "bad guy" in the band: who are the other Mike Loves in music?

Show streaming live from the Cubby Bear fwiw:
https://www.facebook.com/HBO/posts/10152857867888933

I think one angle to look at such a project is that this probably will introduce some good music and musicians to some people for the first time. I know as a total dweeb preteen, the first time I saw James Brown, heard Elmore James, Cab Calloway and John Lee Hooker was watching the Blues Brothers movie.

If only it worked that way. God knows, Cheap Trick has been introduced and reintroduced so many times over the past few decades, from festivals and special gigs to guest spots and whatnot, but damned if most folks know, at best, anything more than "I Want You To Want Me," or if they're, you know, hip, man, the source of the sample that starts "Check Your Head." The idea of Foo Fighters introducing kids to the world of Chess Records is as nuts as Weezer introducing kids to the Cars, and that throughline is more clear.

Yeah, I guess FF played here last night. My buddy posted some "big star at cubby bear" and I was so bummed it wasn't Big Star and just some big star. Who I don't mind, as a drummer and professional big star, but the Foo Fighters are like the musical equivalent of training wheels. The one time I (had to) see them live, it was like a parody of an arena show, almost like a winking Kiss, but I'm not sure whose expense the yucks came at. The people there? The music industry these guys more or less exemplify and cozy up to? It's a big mystery to me, though they do emphasize my kneejerk observation that in the end consistent mediocrity is worse than bad. Though again, Grohl seems like a pretty OK dude, as far as this world goes.

I watched half the Cubby Bear show live streamed by HBO. Grohl was having fun, and they were a good bar band. Huge downside was their drummer who also sang vocals on a bunch of songs, including a "Miss You" cover. That guy's SoCal incarnate.

I haven't much ref for Foos as an arena band... i only saw them do a NY show at Tramps a few months before the first (essentially solo) album came out. Pretty chill, Smear and i guess the newly hired band were the players.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1Ramu397UQ

http://www.timeout.com/chicago/music/foo-fighters-debut-sonic-highways-at-cubby-bear

Taylor Hawkins is awful

Someone was clearly on the clock when they churned out that review.

"sure, taylor got to jizz his pants at an eagle for one minute, but is the occasional doofy grin all he's had to contribute since 1997?"

"Why, on the LA episode, is there a lengthy interlude about the desert outside the city because Queens of the Stone Age once recorded there, but can't even make a gesture towards Chris Shiflett, the band's guitarist since 1999, who was raised in Santa Barbara?"

I started laughing really hard when the Seattle episode transitioned from grunge to Macklemore. It did a really great job of making the city look like a LA's farm team. Getting so sick of Subpop's "We're losers...really!" schtick.

Austin episode was the highlight of the season for me. Hope season 2 explores the scenes in completely innocuous cities. Maybe send Dave Grohl to Newbridge.

dave-grohls-sonic-highways-systematically-erases-calvin-johnson

i was going to at least check out the seattle episode of the final three but ever since news of macklemore floated out i haven't been able to force myself

I thought the Austin one was terrible. Too much spillover from Nashville, and the rest was overwhelmingly Austin City Limits centric.

I'm sure the NYC one will make me froth at the mouth. Nate got about three nanoseconds in the Seattle episode.

seconds away from watching the final one, and I have every expectation that it will please AlexinNYC very much. Given the deeply conservative worldview presented by Grphl so far, the only thing I can think of that would annoy AiNYC is if the show declined to make a case for Killing Joke as a huge influence on every right thinking act in town, or as a signature achievement in human history.

I have no doubt that Grohl will walk around town and lament clubs that are no longer there, which would be in line with the program thus far. surely there will be a lengthy CBGBs segment.

I hope he just interviews Bono, Sting, Madonna, Taylor Swift and other musicians rich enough to live in New York. Then he can lament how the death of CBGBs means no more bands like Interpol or the Strokes.

Was really praying for a sax-playing bill clinton to walk in and interrupt the obama interview segment.

oddly this was easily the worst episode (ugh a fucking kiss hagiography and no mention of the velvets), resulting in the best foo fighters song of the series. Which was still pretty blah.

Close your laptops and hire a string section and world-class arranger, kids.

I still think Taylor Hawkins is just filling in between Alanis Morissette tours

It bums me out because this band could be good if Dave just gave in and went back on drums and got someone to help write not so structured songs.

this band could be good if Dave just gave in and went back on drums and got Kurt Cobain to help write the songs

This band would be great if different people were in it and they traded their guitars for synths and changed their name to kraftwerk

I kinda got the sense that Grohl just wanted to geek out on Kyuss but felt like it had to be sold as an LA episode

Pat Smear eating a sandwich in the New Orleans episode was great

Dave Grohl's new band ... Oujia Board Kobain ... I'd buy that ...

" .... N ..... O .... "

Taylor Hawkins bums me out, but I bet it's kind of a bummer to be Taylor Hawkins.

Can't really think of another example of such a famous band whose drummer is not the best drummer in the band, besides maybe that one time Sheila E was one of Ringo's all-stars

― sheesh, Tuesday, December 2, 2014 4:54 AM (6 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Dinosaur Jr. imo

wouldn't say Hawkins is as good as Grohl all-around but i've never really been able to pick up on any substantial gap in technical proficiency, he's pretty damn good

He smiles too much.

NY episode was so terrible

Can't really think of another example of such a famous band whose drummer is not the best drummer in the band, besides maybe that one time Sheila E was one of Ringo's all-stars

― sheesh, Tuesday, December 2, 2014 4:54 AM (6 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Also when she was in the Revolution

http://i.onionstatic.com/avclub/5308/35/16x9/640.jpg

Oh yeah, and as much as I like Meg White, Jack White is probably a better drummer

Oh no, Lefsetz has just discovered the show and is raving about every aspect of it.

Whatever it takes to teach kids today that real music can be made with guitars.

We built these cities
We built these cities on rock and roll