Foo Fighters "Sonic Highway" documentary series on HBO

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.

I'll never understand why they let Taylor Hawkins sing on that dennis wilson reissue

That was the first time I saw his name and I assumed he was like some old r&b singer that was friends w dennis or something lol

I think he begged them to be part of it. Their was an interview in Mojo with one of the producers when the POB reissue happened and they said Hawkins was a huge Dennis fan and they liked that his voice had similar qualities.

Kevin McCarthy 6 months ago

One of my favorite concert stories. Guy sitting in front of me wearing a RUSH shirt goes to get a beer grumbling something about "this drum solo sucks". He gets back after Geddy and Alex left the stage and the girl he is with has this look on her face like she's speechless. He just looks at her and shouts "What did I miss?"

tbh, i dunno how a rock star as big as Grohl could carry him/herself any better than he does. does he do some things that are offputting to some people? probably. but generally speaking, he seems nice/normal enough, gives good interviews, seems to care about the history of music and does more than his share of providing exposure to quality old musicians/producers/studios/whatever. to hate on the guy ... i mean, you can do it, but how many better targets are there out there? like, all of them. all the targets.

and i should note i'm not some ff superfan. i thought the first two albums were really good, that last one was pretty good, and i never really bothered w/ anything in between. 'wasting light' isn't perfect, but i don't see how you could describe it as milquetoast. parts of it slay pretty fuckin' hard for the seventh album by the world's fourth biggest rock band or w/e

I can co-sign on that, there are some straight-up jams on that record, and the three-guitar sound works.

Gonna try out the first ep of the show sometime this weekend.

I am 28 minutes through the 1st episode…

mucho mucho cliches…Foo dudes walking in slo mo, moodily…Grohl's earnest platitudes about sense of place in music…very very successful millionaire musicians talking about 80s hardcore in tones reminiscent of Paul kantner or David Crosby talking about the 60s (maaann). a lot of time spent on Albini so far…am reminded of this 20 years of tortoise thing I read where one of those guys was talking to Albini about remixes and house music, and the former being indignant or bewildered or a combination thereof…does the guy have any appreciation for anything that isn't G/B/D or anything not immersed in notions of "authenticity?"

although I note that those far Kanye is shown as a representative of great chicago music and that the DC one will talk about go go, this program reinforces Grohl's key thing: it's like the oppositional stance Albini and Mackaye had towards bigtime rock distributed by multinational corporations never existed. the only thing left is "rock music is played with these authentic tools. if it doesn't use those tools, it's false, joe walsh = naked raygun, and kids are being denied immutable truth and beauty if they don't do what WE did." never mind that that's what every 40-60 year olds has said about younger people since the beginning of time, and I really wish that there was (or I was aware of) more of a "fuck you old assholes" rebuke from musicians and fans in their teens-20s. Or maybe they don't care cuz they're too busy partying?

i dunno i can't fault someone for Believing that Rock Can Change The World when he was in the last rock band that changed the world

Joe walsh = naked raygun

I'm down w both of these tbh

While the web has flattened these things out some, I think anytime Chuck Brown, Bad Brains or Ian MacKaye gets on mainstream TV is a good thing. I don't have HBO and really won't look for this show, but I thought the Sound City documentary was pretty entertaining.

i dunno i can't fault someone for Believing that Rock Can Change The World when he was in the last rock band that changed the world

Wait, Dave Grohl was in Public Enemy? Huh.

He was Professor Grohl

Ha!
_______________

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.

― earlnash, Saturday, October 18, 2014 10:29 AM (12 hours ago)

^^^this

ugh I hate music documentaries that spend all their time extolling how "important" certain music/musicians were or how "nothing was the same after ____", just all this empty rote hyperbole. Show me the performances, give me an interesting story, reveal odd details but don't make me listen to people rhapsodizing about how amazing going to a show was, or how incredible it was to hear x song, I really really don't care. That being said yeah it's nice to see Albini or Rick Nielsen or whoever, but the tone of this is so off-putting.

very very successful millionaire musicians talking about 80s hardcore in tones reminiscent of Paul kantner or David Crosby talking about the 60s (maaann).

the tone/sentiments expressed are very similar - the weird thing to me is that if you go to any major town these days, there is guaranteed to be a hardcore scene of teenagers/young folks doing pretty much exactly the same things that 80s hardcore did. But this was never the case with the music/scene of Kantner/Crosby, even in the 80s, that model/aesthetic just didn't transfer to new generations on the same scale.

But this was never the case with the music/scene of Kantner/Crosby, even in the 80s, that model/aesthetic just didn't transfer to new generations on the same scale.

― Οὖτις, Monday, October 20, 2014 3:41 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hardcore is a more easy to approach template, musicianship-wise

I'm sure that's part of it but there's also something that seems to be eternally appealing about it to a subset of kids, beyond the "anyone can do it" factor

Think its something to with it being the highest energy music you can do with guitar bass and drums that doesnt require more advanced chops found more in speed metal etc

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