Foo Fighters "Sonic Highway" documentary series on HBO

^^^^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

God this is the worst fucking show ever. I vomited the entire way through and blood started shooting out my ass. Now I have a high grade fever I can't get rid of, seing these people talk about their " music" made me so angry I had to take a switch to my damn kids ass.

Terrible post

I actually think the form of this is kinda novel - looking at scenes and how they influence artists and the songwriting process etc. - but there are about 500 bands I'd rather see try their hand at it than the Foos. But then Grohl is the best-connected guy in rock, so...it's a chatch-22 of sorts.

no way in hell would i watch this show after seeing that sound city doc. boomer wannabes talking about how fucking magical their precious shit stained recording gear was + the worlds shittiest jam session ft. 70 year old dude trying to seem hip and with it = i, too, had to take a switch to my damn kids ass

Terrible post

Yeah yer right. Nobody bats 1.000

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

Is it getting as bad as classic rock radio and the Lefsetz worshipful approach? Not in tv commercials yet, and no Big Chill movie with Henry Rollins in it yet...Maybe soon

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=oSFnotAmcoA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2jUOvxG7440

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=SoSQwV0orzU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FM7PcYMH67c

Watched the first half of the first ep, which was fine, but when they were tracking at Electrical Audio and someone says something along the lines of "usually it takes us weeks just to record the drums" I literally said "what a bunch of pussies" out loud to no one but our sleeping cat.

haha yeah I lol'd at there whole established process "first we do drums for three weeks, then we do the bass for two weeks, then we do all the guitars" etc. way to make everything sound unbelievably boring

Dusty Springfield usta record one syllable at a time on occasion.

iirc ian mackaye said one time when he was listening to an evens song something like "oh man that hook you just did once, we'd have to repeat it a bunch of times". for a torch-bearing rocker with a sense of roots dave grohl sure has a lot of bloated corporate shit he has to do.

that paraphrase is dave grohl talking about the evens, to be clear

actually i think ian didn't give the name of the big arena rocker who said that to him but i can't imagine there's a lot of other arena rockers hanging out with ian so

Ooh special Foo Fighters club gig Friday in DC (this is their version of a $5 Fugazi gig I guess)

Fri Oct 24::
FOO FIGHTERS
plus a special screening of
Sonic Highways
$20 Mainstage / Doors at 9:00

$20 per ticket. $3 service charge. Cash only. Maximum of 2 tickets per person. You must bring your ID. If you are buying a 2nd ticket you must provide the person's name as it is stated on their ID. Tickets are 100% non-transferable and non-refundable. On sale Tuesday October 21 at 6:00pm at the Black Cat. The Black Cat is located at 1811 14th Street NW Washington, DC.

$20 per ticket. $3 service charge. Cash only

haha service charge AND cash only

quality service