'Sonic Highways' lead Foo Fighters home to D.C.
WASHINGTON — Think of the venue where the Foo Fighters would normally play in your city. Now, picture the next club down. Then go down a few more steps — we're talking sub-1,000 capacity here.
That was the scene at the Black Cat Cafe Friday night, where the band premiered the D.C. episode of Sonic Highways, its HBO series documenting the group's cross-country tour of iconic American recording studios, and treated fans to a three-hour show that stretched until 2 a.m.
Sorry, scalpers: Some 700 tickets, made available Tuesday, were gone in minutes. Anyone lucky enough to nab a ticket had their name printed on the stub and had to show matching ID to get in. So scalpers and these creative CraigsList beggars were out of luck.
Foo favorites: The band opened with Something From Nothing, the first single from Highways, before moving on to a crowd-pleasing hit parade that included Learn to Fly, All My Life, The Pretender, I'll Stick Around, Up in Arms, There Goes My Hero, New Way Home, Walk and Monkey Wrench.
'Feast' on this: The Washington crowd was the first live audience to hear Highways' second single, The Feast and the Famine, which made its debut at the end of Friday's Sonic Highways episode. It's only fitting: Hometown hero Dave Grohl's lyrics refer to "down on the corner of 14th and U." That's the location of the Black Cat and the site of the April 1968 "Chocolate City riots" that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The song was recorded at Inner Ear Studios in Arlington, Va., where legendary local punk acts Fugazi and Minor Threat once laid down tracks.
Communicable disease fighters: Grohl loves his fans, but not enough to don their sweaty T-shirts. He regaled (and grossed out) the crowd with the cautionary tale of a singer from a supporting act who put on a T-shirt thrown onstage by a fan. "He got ringworm! With all the communicable diseases out there, I'm not getting ringworm from your Primus T-shirt. Sorry."
Arlandria is a place but not a planet: Throughout his career, Grohl has said that "when I'd feel lost, I'd go back to Virginia." For a time, he lived in the Alexandria enclave of Del Ray, which lies near the border of Arlington. Sometimes referred to as Arlandria, it inspired a song off the Foos' 2011 album, Wasting Light. Now that track is a set-list staple whenever the band comes back to town. "This is the only place that understands this song," Grohl told the audience. "Everywhere else, they think it's a planet. Or maybe my mom, whose name is Virginia." The night before, "a guy brought me a piece of wood to sign." Turns out it was a piece of Grohl's old house. "It's a nice house, but beware — if you buy it, this guy will come rip stuff off of it."
Sweatin' to the oldies: Here's how Foo shows tend to play out: "After about an hour, we feel warmed up. And then (expletive) gets weird." With that warning, the band launched into a string of '70s and '80s rock staples, including Tom Petty's Breakdown, the Rolling Stones' Miss You and the Queen/David Bowie classic Under Pressure. Grohl related the latter to the litanies of being a dad. "Every day, I get in my minivan and take my kids to school, with the lunches I packed at 5:45 a.m. The kids complain that I'm playing the wrong DVD and that I put oranges in their sack and they wanted apples. Then the teacher yells at me because I used Ziploc bags instead of Tupperware. I like to think Freddie Mercury and David Bowie were going through the same thing, because we all know what it's like to be under pressure."
The Taylor Hawkins Show: When you're a drummer who likes to sing, it's beneficial to have your lead singer be the former drummer of an iconic band. Grohl, who was enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Nirvana earlier this year, is always happy to step back and let his own drummer come forward. Hawkins took over the mic for the band's Cold Day in the Sun and a pair of covers, Cheap Trick's Stiff Competition and Van Halen's Ain't Talkin' About Love. But Grohl wasn't willing to listen to him complain about having a sore elbow and "feeling 42." He countered, "I'm feeling 45 and I feel good!" He meant it, too. At that point, it was 12:30 a.m., and he kept going for another 90 minutes. That's pretty hardcore for a minivan-driving dad.