Foo Fighters "Sonic Highway" documentary series on HBO

for all the blandness of his band's current sound grohl is sincere to a fault rather than a smug shitlord with a "realness of music" complex

it's true, he's a sincere shitlord with a "realness of music" complex

"Wait. Where's Green?"

Possibly working on a new book with Rudy Giuliani?

100% agreed.

(think "shitlord" is a bit harsh, but hey .. )

xpost.

if you cap a documentary about muddy waters, cheap trick and steve albini with your lyric video for "something out of nothing" i get to call you a shitlord

dave grohl's cousin was so cool in the chicago episode

― u2 removal machine (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, October 28, 2014 4:52 PM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, i want a documentary series about various rock stars' cool cousins who turned them onto good shit when they were young

the cousin stuff was awesome - a documentary that was more about dave's actual evolution, without the attempt to include all aspects of the american musical experience (so no rattle & hum shit about how buddy guy's journey reminded you of your journey and then you made a shitty song with a "superstition" break), would be a lot less insufferable

yeah it will probably get no better than the DC episode just because it had such big personal investment and there was so much firsthand Grohl stuff to pin it to.

so far my favorite mildly embarrassing editing decisions are putting Razorblade Suitcase in the montage of notable Albini productions and the segment about how influential Dischord has been that concluded with a long, lingering clip of the Pearl Jam "Evenflow" video soundtracked by Fugazi's "Break"

croupier i'll always take someone being sincere about their dumb "music realness" shit (grohl knows he's a giant loser), rather than trying to act like it's not completely lame and is something to aspire to - and having the music press & a lot of cultural cache-stockholders buy into it for, idk, like almost 14 fuckin years

like we are only just now admitting that jack white isn't that good in and of himself and maybe not all of those stripes albums were either after a while

jesus it's not like i'm grabbing a pitchfork i'm just making fun of his bs

which of us is truly living up to the spirit of real american music, those who crack wise about the vanity of millionaires or those who note they've seen worse millionaires

kind of an excessive-force preemptive strike, my b

i have irrational levels of hatred jack white

*hatred for, damnit

"Wait. Where's Green?"

Possibly working on a new book with Rudy Giuliani?

Ugh, don't remind me.

(but he wasn't exactly the driving force in that band)

I think the White Stripes were damn near perfect up through elephant. First 2 Too Fighters records are p good too.

The production (by Rick Rubin?) on One By One is pretty terrible.

Rubin's never done an FF record. One By One is a low point, though, and the only one that Grohl has openly dismissed as a singles-and-filler dud. i chalk that up to the songs, though -- the kind of muddy bleary production is probably the closest thing they've come to the sound of the debut since the debut.

THEY'RE JUST A MINOR THREAT
SCREAMIN INTO THE VOID
TROUBLE FUNKIN ROUND THE CORNER
EATIN BEEF ON THE FARAQUET

RARE ESSENCE
FOUND THAT ESSENCE RARE
RARE ESSENCE
FOUND THAT ESSENCE RARE
DUNNUH NUH

"Dave, these are awesome."

i would have liked the chicago ep to be entirely about hardcore and punk. hearing grohl's cousin talk about the time she took him out to a punk club for the first time, seeing at that awesome old footage of her pre-teen band, talking to albini and the naked raygun guys, the too-short wax trax section - that shit was real!!

don't get me wrong i love bonnie raitt and muddy waters but it was just helicoptered in so the "authenticity" would rub off imo

When I think Foo Fighters, I think Bonnie Raitt and Muddy Waters, there's like a straight throughline from them to Grohl. It's pretty obvious.

"Dave, these are awesome."

― Andy K, Thursday, October 30, 2014 1:56 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Haha, that's why Vig gets the big bucks!

I heard "Something From Nothing" (which breaking news, has recently won the 2014 Award For Most Metallica Sounding Song Title) on the radio the other day and while not a great song, it was certainly better than when it was shown on the show with the lyrics prominently displayed

Now if only there was a way to play it with the music hidden. too.

Well on the radio at the very least you are saved from having to see Taylor Hawkins's drumming face which has to be up there with one of the greatest afflictions facing humanity

I can still hear his face.

^^^Foo Fighters lyric

i think the Nashville track is much stronger than the first two

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

I really liked the DC episode
BTW American Hardcore is free on Crackle now

I knew director/author Blush back in the day, but still have not seen American Hardcore yet. Thanks.

I liked the Chicago and DC episodes, albeit it's just a Grohl eye view (and one can only cover so much in an hour). Haven't seen Nashville yet. Other than the lyrics, the Chicago and DC music portrayed didn't seem to influence the new FF songs for those locales. Grohl's gotten kinda formulaic and no one is pushing him

Nashville one was a lot of fun - Tony Joe White! Dolly! Steve Earle! - although with the usual forehead-slapping moments. Should've gotten Sturgill Simpson instead of Zac Brown for the token "contemporary country rebel guy we can get down with"

Fascinating
Watching this on BBC i Player. At the Bad Brains segment in the DC episode. Seen most of this footage before but cannot argue with McKaye regarding the Bad Brains
This series, so far is incredible. Just such a pity about the Foo's turgid output.
Albini was a star in the Chicago part.

I'm hoping that the Nashville episode features Today is The Day and Lambchop

occurs to me that Ratliff, who nails it below, is seldom cited on ILM. If Pareles wrote about this show, doubtless his tone would be much much more approving, seeing as he often decries bling/conspicuous consumption, autotune, EDM and so forth…

didn't know Grohl compared "single ladies" to the jeffersons theme…

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/09/arts/music/sonic-highways-dave-grohls-musical-travelogue.html?ref=arts&_r=0

Dave Grohl, the great drummer, inspirational songwriter, former member of Nirvana and current leader of the Foo Fighters, recently discovered the extent to which he is an American musician.

Fave backhands:

But on the album, beyond the agitated first two songs — “Something From Nothing” and “The Feast and the Famine” — he’s doing roughly the opposite: burrowing deeper than ever into starchy, expensive-sounding, multipartite stadium rock, FM radio sounds of the late 1970s and ’80s. The music transmits a desire to belong to outmoded centers of power.

On television, Mr. Grohl plays a fan and an accidental historian. He doesn’t want to seem an expert — like, say, Jack White. He cops to his limitations, and, I hope, exaggerates them.

The Foo Fighters might have more to do with modern country than any other current popular music: guitars, power chords, virtuosity, nostalgia, a shared influence of Southern and West Coast rock of the ’70s.

Mr. Grohl has always been a good scavenger, but here and there on the new album, his reliance on Olympian sources becomes grating. “Something From Nothing” borrows a riff from Dio’s “Holy Diver”; “What Did I Do?/God Is My Witness” adapts a melodic line from the Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love.” Strange that he’d pick such well-known sources. Stranger that these songs are yielded by the Chicago and Austin episodes. (Dio was an American band, but not emblematically so; the Beatles were the Beatles.)

Good piece, actually. Nails the end:

“I worry about cities like Austin,” Mr. Grohl says in a voice-over during episode four, discussing the endangerment of live music in that city, “because it’s only a matter of time before that candle blows out, man.” A possible response: That’s what candles do. But you tell him that, if you have the heart.

Yeah that was good
Still enjoying the show despite it's obvious shortcomings

didn't know Grohl compared "single ladies" to the jeffersons theme…

Ha wut

28 minutes in the Austin episode, and a claim appears to be made that the 13th Floor elevators moved from Austin to San Francisco and transformed the coffeehouse dwelling folkies into acid rockers…this is a claim that I have never encountered before…anyone else heard this? I gotta call bullshit, otherwise…

while illustrating this point, they sloppily show John densmore and Robbie Krieger talking about the environment in pre-Dead, pre-Airplane SF, but…those guys were not SF.

i've heard they were influential on the scene and were doing serious acid dropping & playing in the mid 60s, def ahead of the curve...but that said i doubt you can say any one person was responsible for the SF psych/acid scene...surely some must've come up from those LA doctors who were prescribing it to Hollywood folks

the Ken Kesey 'Acid Test' events in 65/6 were a big influence on popularizing all that stuff, Grateful Dead played their first gigs at them etc.

Yeah, the Elevators were there at the right time, but to say they alone transformed SF's sound is a bit generous. It was a community effort.

I really liked the part in the Austin ep about digging out the old piano from behind the bleachers, but then wished they hadn't when the new song debuted at the end of the episode. Worst of the batch yet.

The Foos are ripe for a St Sanders' production.

Esp. Uncle Dave and that gurning drummer

My initial enthusiasm for the series has been tempered, although it remains watchable. Austin was fairly complete with nods to Big Boys, Scratch Acid and Buttholes. But where the hell was the massive segment on Spoon?

from steven hyden's grantland review of the album:

Every Foo Fighters record is the same. As in, exactly the same. Sure, some Foo Fighters records (like One by One and Wasting Light) are a little louder, and some (like 2005’s In Your Honor) are a little quieter. But for the most part, you can expect a Foo Fighters song to sound like this: The rhythm guitar goes DUNGA-dung-DUNGA, the lead guitar goes weow-WHEEDLE-weow-WHEEDLE, and Grohl sings the verse softly and screams the chorus, which will typically be about heroes, living forever, or things that are the best.

SICK BURNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

we built these cities
we built these cities
on rock and roll

im listening to it right now b/c mockery requires due diligence, and its p. much exactly what i expected. def sounds more classic/dad-rocky than he ever has, shedding all vestiges of his 90s alt-origins, a few songs are legitimately ok but nothing that's not ultimately boring 4 tracks in

But where the hell was the massive segment on Spoon?

Spoon fans unaware the rest of the world doesn't give a shit.

I think Spoon is here now:

that stage where you think they aren't popular anymore but are actually way more popular than they were when they had "buzz"

Mark Anderson on TV. That excuses just about anything in my opinion.

Finally got around to the DC episode (I'm in no hurry to stay current with this) and it was really good! Still, I had no idea they were toting Butch Vig around to all these studios with them. Doesn't that miss the point? I would rather see them bring in a dozen different name producers and have them take turns recording in the same room than one producer recording in different rooms. I mean, there's a reason all this Foo Fighters shit sounds the same!

watched the Austin one and fatigue w this series is starting to set in - I like seeing the guests/interviews and some of the clips involved but p much everything else is annoying

half-decent doc footage, but the spectre of their next lyric video hangs over it all.