Review: Foo Fighters at ScotiaBank Place

After my Great Philosophers midterm, I headed over to Krista’s where Eric, Mike and Joe had already gathered for a few beer.  After changing into some more comfortable clothes, we made our way to the Royal Oak pub, had some decent fish and chips and drove out to the ScotiaBank place to see Foo Fighters.

I hadn’t seen Foo Fighters since Summersault 2000 in Barrie (home of the final Smashing Pumpkins V1 performance I saw).  I can’t say I’ve really followed Foo Fighters other than the obligatory tunes over the radio.  In the past year I have since changed that error in my life and had picked up their two newest albums as well as their classic “The Colour and The Shape” album which is quite darn fantastic.  I was excited to see Foo Fighters in action tonight as I knew they were ramping up their show to play in Europe in the next few months.  Europe stadiums are no easy feat so you have to pull out all of the stops.

Upon entering and being frisked by security, I nabbed a beer (to my dismay, you were only allowed to purchase one beer at a time!  This hindered any good will to my friends in that I couldn’t buy them a beer unless they were there with me at the time) and we headed down to the floor.  It was quite packed but as soon as the opening band left the floor cleared out and we got a decent spot at stage left, right next to the catwalk.

Foo Fighters turned out to be an excellent show.  Dave Grohl is renowned for his camaraderie and funny stories and he didn’t let up during the show.  It was high octane for the first half…doling out hits from their new album, as well as the killer hits of yesteryear.  Dave made use of the giant catwalk which spanned the entire length of the ice rink (going all the way back to the sound booth) and was in full heavy rock garb…black to the bone.  They definitely added a lot of extended jams into their songs and showed off their guitar skills with Dave on one end of the catwalk and Chris Shiflett (rhythm) on the other end both trying to outdo each other.

Let’s be honest…any good rock show has a great drum solo and Taylor Hawkins performed superbly.  Sidenote: I heard Rush made an appearance at the Foo’s show in Toronto on Saturday and they played YYZ.  Awesome.  Endsidenote.  They were having fun on the stage at this point of the show and I swore they ended one particular song 10 times and the song lasted 20 minutes.  It just never ended which was hilarious.  I personally dig bands who get into the music and like to jam around and noodle…others…not so much.  They want their hits.

Clearly this was the case at the Scotiabank Place.  I gave the band two thumbs up and I have the crowd two thumbs down until after 2/3 of the show and then the crowd in front of us was quite riled up and I gave them one thumb up.  I felt very…disappointed in the crowd to be honest.  When the full out rock show is going on, you shouldn’t just stand there!  Wave an arm around at least!  Move your feet.  Tap to the beat.  Argh…Ottawa, thou hast forsaken me.

The show turned acoustic after the first third and the band all walked down the catwalk to the other end of the rink where an acoustic setup stage was descending from the rafters.  Neat!  We held our ground near the front stage and we could still see what was going on at the other end.  I thought this was a great idea as it let the band play closer to the people in the stands at the lonely end of the rink.  They played a few tracks acoustically (as well as But, Honestly, only my fave track from the new album) and Dave ended off by talking about the last time they came into town as the opening band for Bob Dylan and how Bob didn’t really socialize all that much but when they got to Ottawa someone told Dave that Bob wanted to talk to him.  Fearing the wrath of Bob, he met him in a dark hallway and Bob was dressed in black and he says “Dave, I really dig that one song you do that goes like this…” and then Dave starts playing Everlong for us.  It was great.  He ended off the song getting back to the main stage with the full band.

The encore was quite hilarious in that they had screens showing a night-vision camera going backstage and finding the band asleep and we had to cheer them back onto stage.  Dave had joked earlier about how their concert should last about 40 minutes…but then he upped it to 45, then 50, and finally up to 2 hours.  He did the same schtick behind stage asking how many songs we wanted to hear for the encore.  They finally came out where Dave told a story of how Taylor got sick off of tequila in his house one time.  The ended off well with some good hits like Big Me, Long Road to Ruin and One By One (which through the crowd into a frenzy.  I had forgotten about that song!).

Full out rock.  Highly entertaining.  Foo Fighters are up there in the stadium rockers.  They know how to put on a good show musically, as well as have some great stories to tell.  It’s too bad that crowd was quite the letdown.

Opening band:

Against Me

 

Setlist

Let It Die
The Pretender
Times Like These
Breakout
Learn to Fly
Cheer Up, Boys (Your Make Up Is Running)
This Is a Call
Stacked Actors

@Set[Acoustic]
Skin and Bones
Marigold [Nirvana]
My Hero
Cold Day in the Sun
But, Honestly

@Set[ ]
Everlong @Info[Solo into full band]
Monkey Wrench
All My Life

Big Me
Long Road to Ruin
Best of You

@Info[Soundcheck included “The Pretender”, “Disenchanted Lullaby”, and a new song]