> Reviews > Reviews 2008 > Foo Fighters

Review by Rob.

Song, Solo, Song, Solo, Song, Solo....

June means its stadium gig time in Manchester. I calculated that I have been at this ritual now for at least the last six years, so to keep the run going I strode majestically across the Pennines once more and descended on the City of Manchester Stadium on a muggy evening to see three bands in various stages of their careers. Early on its quiet save for quite a lot of the now commonplace lager throwing down the front. Given the amount that was selling and the price of the foul brew it is clear that the credit crunch hasn't really taken a foothold in gig going society yet. I look forward to it taking effect and a bout of water throwing to replace it (though to be fair this commodity was almost as expensive as the beer). A decent crowd is in nonetheless to welcome our first drop of entertainment for the evening.

Sunderland doesn't throw up many rock bands. That is an indisputable fact. So it is with a great deal of regional pride that The Futureheads announce where they are from almost as soon as they get on stage. (Note to bands from Leeds: Its probably better to stray away from this tactic in Manchester). Early signs are not good, they launch into one of their best songs as set opener and its clear that most folk around me have not really heard 'Decent days and Nights'. The quality of the sound is excellent though and they sound really tight and focused on entertaining. Following this up with a couple of new songs that are pretty good, especially 'Girl with the radio Heart', gets most of the audience nodding approvingly, and as the show progresses it seems that more people are starting to like them. After a pretty ordinary second album, the new stuff has come out almost on the bands own label and they are hungry to play again, and thus include a decent chunk of it tonight. Set wise its a good mix from the other two albums as well, stand outs being second album single 'Skip to the End' and new single 'Beginning of the Twist' which everyone seems to know. They leave out a lot of the quirky stuff from the debut album, though a place is found for their hit cover of 'Hounds of Love'. Though its only a short set of about half an hour they go down very well and I never heard a bad word said about them, which all things told must count as a good night at the office. By the way their new album is most excellent and I thoroughly recommend it.

When you are an established act who have headlined stadiums in your own right you can demand a few extras like a longer set, backdrop and a full light show. Indeed its a credit to tonight's headliners that they have opted to give the main support slot to a band as well known as the Manic Street Preachers. When they burst on and fire up 'Motorcycle Emptiness' it seems like it is almost their show and they even gets most of the crowd at the back of the stadium up and moving. Tonight with nothing much to prove and no new material on the horizon they give out a superb greatest hits set with not a naff moment anywhere to be seen. Fans get versions of 'Masses against the Classes', 'Motown Junk' and a rarely played 'Australia'. The rest of the, ahem, masses get hit singles of the calibre of 'You stole the sun from my Heart', 'Your love Alone', 'Autumnsong', and 'Kevin Carter' complete with sax player. They also throw in a surprise and superb cover of Rihanna's 'Umbrella'. Throughout the gig they say little, Nicky Wire says nothing which must be a first for a gig, though James endears himself to the crowd by saying nice things about Manchester and their early gigs at the Boardwalk. A really strong hour's music ends with the twin whammy's of number one single 'If you tolerate this your children will be Next' and the sublime 'Design for Life', and its almost like 'What a good gig lets go to the pub', then followed by 'Oops forgot, the headliners haven't been on yet!'

One thing stood out for me more than anything during the Foo Fighters set. About halfway through Dave Grohl asked for a show of hands who hadn't seen the band before, and nearly half of the audience raised their fists to the air. For a band now over 13 years into their career to pick up this many potential new fans is some achievement. Especially given the already well established popularity of the band. Much of this new fanbase is surely due to them becoming the darlings of BBC Radio One, interviews and live sets have featured heavily in recent times. Perhaps another reason for this popularity is the ability of their music to appeal to all sorts, Indie kids, metallers, old Nirvana fans, the aforementioned radio pop fans, and even these people's parents. Indeed on listening to their records it is hard to label them specifically, 'rock' is about the best you could come up with and as we all know rock is a many different headed beast. So tonight they are not totally playing to the converted but this doesn't really affect Dave Grohl. Within a few minutes of coming on to a huge ovation he is off down the long walkway that spilts the crowd in two and does a lap round the mixing desk, pausing only to kiss a baby in the crowd politician style. Musically they start off with a few new songs, 'The Pretender' and 'Long road to ruin' split by old favourite 'Times like these'. It must be said that a lot of the later album stuff is quite formulaic and a tad predictable but is ultimately saved by Dave's ear for a good tune and catchy chorus. Thus it is an absolute pleasure to hear debut single 'This is a Call' blasted out with such vigor, even if a lot of the audience didn't recognise it.

However one of the problems with this show was that the above tracks were nearly all padded out with a bit too much posturing, soloing (especially 'Stacked Actors' which was otherwise superb), and chat mainly coming from Mr Grohl, who to be fair makes commendable use of my favourite word, 'Motherfuckers'. Things like a poll of how long they should play for ('till we can't fucking play no more' wins predictably), are quite funny at first but simply go on for too long. The same could be said about the band member intros, mainly because there are so many of them on stage now with percussion, strings, and extra guitars, and everyone got the opportunity to perform yet more solos. At one point I thought about checking the local council health and safety policy on stadium shows (there must be one) to see if it stipulated that a band must take an extended solo break after playing more than two songs in a row. (By the way if you are reading this and work in H & S for a council this was a joke alright?) Special mention however goes to the percussionist who played a solo on the triangle and was actually pretty damn good. Hell I didn't even know you could play it in an Eddie Van Halen stylee. An even bigger special mention to punk legend Pat Smear on guitar who point blank refused to do a solo. Respect is due. When the band stopped mucking about the show was pretty good, nothing better that the middle acoustic section which featured quite a lot of the stuff from 'Skin and Bones' - 'Marigold', the title track, and a mass singalong through 'My Hero'. Taylor Hawkins gets to lead the band through 'Cold day in the sun' and then the big tracks are brought out to bring the main set to a close, 'Everlone' not played last this time, 'Monkey Wrench' and 'All my Life'.

Of course we can't go home before the inevitable encores, and to their credit, rather than play all their biggest songs at the end they treat us to a couple of rarer outings. First up the love song from the debut album, 'Big me' is performed semi acoustically, and as a duet with the female strings player Petre Hayden. Not withstanding the fact its my favourite Foos song, its magnificent, the best song of the night. They follow with fan's favourite 'DOA' and the seldom played album track from There is nothing left to lose, 'Generator'. I was chuffed they played quite a bit from this album as I consider it their best and certainly the point where they left the harder edged stuff behind and embraced the more commercial path, but still found time to experiment with stuff like 'Stacked Actors'. Anyway back to the review and there is just time to fit in a pretty anonymous version of 'Best of You' to close the show with a bit of a whimper to be honest - it's far from my favourite track anyway, and no fireworks after the show either. So overall? Well it was a good gig but not a great one. A nice varied setlist, but a little to much padding with the posturing, chatting and solos, though I accept some of these are necessary in a long set. Perhaps it's not always the length that is important but the satisfaction you give to your people. No doubt the newer fans in the audience would disagree but I thought they were much better a couple of years ago at Old Trafford, but with so many City fans attending the gig, I was hardly going to voice this opinion.

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