Fight the Fight

Who: Foo Fighters
Where: Conseco Fieldhouse, Indianapolis
When: July 23, 2008

I’m not one to make any deal out of my birthday, but it’s always a treat when a concert I want to see happens to fall on my birthday as it did in ’08.  My wonderful wife got some pretty good tix that included access to the VIP area and a parking pass (thanks honey).

This was the second time I’ve seen the Foo Fighters.  The first time was in the summer of 2000 in Portland Maine at the Cumberland Arena while they were touring with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. That was a great show.

Since then, the Foo Fighters have released a number of albums.  I only own one of them, but I’ve not bought many albums in the past many years compared to my previous music purchasing.  Regardless, I jumped at the chance to see them again because Dave Grohl a legend and they’re good in concert.

This concert was good, but it was a little different from my expectations.

Cool parts of the concert. The long walkway from the main stage to a smaller stage at the other end of the arena floor… It was a good way to spread the love for better seats at any one time during the concert. They played most of the songs I wanted to hear. Dave is a very funny man, and it comes through in his interaction with the audience.

Not so cool parts of the concert. I’ve never been a huge fan of the Acoustic version of “My Hero” and he played a different version of “Everlong” that didn’t really do much for me. There were 4 screens behind the stage that moved on a vertical mechanism – but the live video that it played from cameramen was always about 1/4 a second behind live (pretty annoying). The worst parts of the show was that there was more of the stereotypical older rock show things like a drum solo and a few instances of dueling guitar.  This very may have been part of Dave’s sense of humor, but I felt that these things detracted from the experience. They are all great musicians, far beyond the skill of most – but none of them are as good as you’d expect to see in the soloist type concerts (i.e. Van Halen).  Their strong suit has always been the combination of phenomenal songwriting, showmanship, and sense of humor.

As a whole, the concert was very good. Harder than I remember during most parts, but that was brought down with the acoustic elements of the show. Sometimes the band was 4 members, but on certain songs that swelled to 7 (even including founding member Pat Smear from time to time).  I’m not sure that many other musicians was necessary – especially the violin / cello.

But if you’re a fan of the Foo, I recommending seeing them.  I’m not sure how you’d be disapointed. It was a standard fare, good ‘ol rock ‘n roll show that was a good one to see given the lack of concerts over the past few years.