Let's talk, Week Three: Foo Fighters

[The Curmudgeon]

I know I missed a week, what with celebrity deaths, surprise birthday parties (you know that thing on TV where people hide behind the couch and then shout "surprise!" I finally got to do that last week), but let's get back up to speed.

So, the Foo Fighters. It was only when I shared that actually pretty good free EP of theirs on here that I realised that the Foo Fighters were never really a band that got much attention in here.

It would have been easy to dismiss The Drummer From Nirvana's Foo Fighters to be a one-off side project, a future curio for Nirvana fans to have in their collection. That would turn out to be "Sweet 75" by Krist Novaselic. Yeah, I don't have it either, but my Nirvana obsessed friend does.

Now onto their 21st year and eighth studio album, it's fair to say Foo Fighters are one of the few remaining mainstream stadium rock bands who actually release new material. Who would have thought a band formed from another band would have that sort of longevity?

I really did think Foo Fighters would have been one of "my" bands; that is to say a band I collected everything of. Albums, singles, the whole lot. And for a while that was the case, and it was an easy case as well. The albums were great, the B-sides were just as good.

I don't know when I started to fall away from the band, but they just didn't interest me anymore. The debut album, written and performed entirely by Grohl himself, really is the only album I still go back to. It's got that lo-fi, alternative feel that I really dig when it comes to rock music, that the big stadium sounds of their later albums just don't have.

So what's your take on the Foo's?

[trashcanman]

Great band. The last true rock band with any kind of modern mainstream appeal, really. I remember I laughed at the idea that the fucking drummer from Nirvana was going to try to cash in on his own, but obviously that was stupid. He recorded that stuff alone while he was in Nirvana and didn't really think to start is own band until he fond himself sans one singer. I own a few of their albums, I'd love to see them live, and I seldom hear a song by them that I don't like, but they aren't really a band I follow closely. I like them, I respect them, I'm glad they're around, but twenty plus years later I can't say they really excite me any more. They're the closest we have to a "rock establishment". You always know what to expect from them, and I'm a guy who really values the unexpected.