Foo Fighters "Sonic Highway" documentary series on HBO

"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.

it's like the candyman. someone says a phrase three times in the interviews and you know dave will yell that phrase at the end

WELL THE SAINTS ARE LIVING REBIRTH GUMBO RAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

is the reason they're not going to haight asbury is that starship got there first

the spectre of their next lyric video hangs over it all

Yeah, that time comes around and I remember this is all just one big commercial for an album that, based on what I've heard so far, is the worst one they've ever made.

someone says a phrase three times in the interviews and you know dave will yell that phrase at the end

haha yeah this is so annoying

seattle one is either going to be the most affecting or the most infuriating, maybe both. great opportunity for soul-searching or going full david crosby.

"can't believe this is the *actual* shotgun Kurt used to blow his head off. Lotta ghosts, man, lotta ghosts."

guessing there will be some great interviews with some great people, then dave steps to the mic and goes ABERDEEN SURVIVOR TEARS CORPORATE MAGAZINES STILL SUCK BUT ROCK STILL LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVES

Yep. Grohl seems like a truly inquisitive and interested and motivationally pure guy, but has a difficult time channeling what he's learned into his own songs/writings/interviews.

he does appear to have a bottomless well of self-help platitudes

keep hoping someone other than dave in the band is going to get to express an emotion other than "i dunno much about this shit, but this place was pretty cool"

remembered while watching the nashville one some spin article years ago where the rest of the band admitted they didn't know the words to "monkeywrench"

On the plus side: Pat's one line per ep.
On the negative side: Taylor's two-lines and slo-mo soul-search walk per ep.

Foo Fighters should collectively move to a new city each year and record one song after 12 months of residency. Then release their next album in 12 years. I give them permission to film themselves as a "Real World" styled show in each town as long as they stick to the schedule.