Oscar The Third: Dave Grohl

Monday, 11 July 2011

What if I say I will never surrender?

It was recently announced that the Foo Fighters will be back in New Zealand in December, along with support act Tenacious D, so I thought this would be a good chance to talk about the first time I got to see the Foo Fighters live. I am a relatively new FF fan, I have always known about but never really bad them a great amount of attention, however after the devastating Christchurch earthquakes, the Foo Fighters announced an impromptu concert in Auckland to raise money for charity. It was being held in a small venue, The Auckland Town Hall, and there was only a couple of thousand tickets on sale with all the proceeds going to Christchurch, so I thought it would be the perfect time to go see them live. It was a special and unique event, I am very lucky to say that I was a part of it and it was for such a good cause. So I got of Uni early and lined up super early in the day, the people in the line were extremely cool and hopefully I will get to hang out with them all again in December. We finally got let in and I claimed my territory on the barrier, front row centre. The 2 opening acts were local and really good, first was the Transistors and second was a band I have ranted about before, Cairo Knife Fight. Eventually, the Foo Fighters emerged and went straight into their new album, Wasting Light, which hadn't even been released yet. They played the entire album in order, which was a really amazing thing to hear because New Zealand doesn't often get to hear things before the rest of the world. After the finished the album with Walk, Dave exploded straight into All My Life and then it was just an array of their greatest hits. They played an amazing set list consisting of over 30 songs and they barely even paused the entire night. It was 3 hours of continuous hard rock and playful rambling from Dave. I can't wait to see them again at the end of the year, Wasting Light has quickly become my favourite FF album as a whole, it is the most complete record they have ever released. I was not able to take photos that night, but this is the set list from the show and stuck on it is Chris Shiflett's guitar pick.

Foo Fighters. 23/03/2011/ Auckland Town Hall, Auckland, New Zealand.

Aurora was played instead of Enough Space.

Wednesday, 27 April 2011

Elephants broken & screaming

It's going to be fucking hard for me to write about this, because I don't think I know enough adjectives for "fucking amazing" to keep this interesting. I have been a fan of Led Zeppelin ever since I was young, they were my gateway band into rock music and over the last few years I have been getting into Queens of the Stone Age and Foo Fighters. So when I found out that Dave, Josh and John were forming a new band, it blew my fucking mind. I had no idea what to expect from the band, but I bought tickets to their show in New Zealand even though the album wouldn't come out for another few months. I just had immense faith that whatever they did, it would be fucking amazing. And I was right, the album was released in December of '09 and my obsession exploded exactly 2 minutes and 44 seconds into the first song. Now my life had focused like a laser towards January 30th, when they would play at Vector Arena. It was the first (of many) concerts where I lined up all day and I managed to get front row. Cairo Knife Fight were a fucking awesome opening band and they really destroyed their set (literally), then it was time for TCV. Its safe to say that night changed my life forever and whatever I type about it just couldn't possible do it justice, so I'll just leave you with some photos from that night.

Them Crooked Vultures. 30/01/2010. Vector Arena, Auckland, New Zealand