What a night. Unfortunately due to traffic we missed QOTSA's josh Homme's side project; 'Eagles of Death metal' which sucks ASS. The futureheads though seemed to be a victim of poor sound checking as all that could be heard was the two guitars pelting out, the lyrics, bass and drums were not desernable and so they failed to get the crowd moving, even though 'Hounds of love' was still awesome. This got me worried. Would the foo's sound just as bad?..........
Turns out they didn't. The foos were on top form for their London Earles Court show which, thanks to my father, we were able to attend.
They kicked off with In Your Honour - the title track to their latest album which got the crowd moving straight away, a mosh pit was formed within seconds.
In dave ghrol's own words they played hit after hit after hit after hit for their 1hr 45 min set, with every song played to perfection.
Highlights of the show include grohl disappearing from stage only to pop up in the middle of the crowd to engage in a guitar-off with chris shiflet, and then fight his way back through the crowd getting nipple pinched (which he said he likes) and his ass slapped (which he likes even more).
Some song highlights (not set list) include (as ever) 'Everlong' - played by just ghrol himself for the most part. 'The One' - a fookin' kick ass song that does not appear on any foo album was great to hear, at that point I was officially chuffed. 'Monkey Wrench' was played so well and differently it seemed to make the crowd go week at the knees. 'all my life' closed the show, with the crowd shouting every single word back to ghrol louder than he could sing through his P.A.
All round the night was utterly fantastic, with the foo's surpassing my great expectations. ghrol has the crowd at his fingertips, joking often and giving back to the audience the respect that they show him, when he mentioned watching coldplay a few nights ago the crowd booed, something that put a huge smile on my face (Radiohead are without a doubt the most talented British band of the last 25 years, and are the band that coldpay wish they were)
When a crowd member got hurt he took the song down a notch to make sure they got help safely then kicked back in as soon as they we carried to the front.
Finally the best part of the night was the 'switcherOOo' which saw drum king Taylor play guitar and sing 'Cold Day in the sun' which made ghrol move behind the drums, and how awesome he was, adding elaborate fills when necessary, he really is at home behind the kit. (check queens of the stone age's 'Song's for the death' album for proof, as well as Tenacious D - electric guitars and drums, and he has session drummed with Nine Inch Nails, Killing Joke, Tommy Iommi etc... and lets not forget a little known band called nirvana, who are only responsible for shapeing modern rock music)
ghrol is without a doubt the most talented man in rock (don't forget 'foo fighters' was recorded entirely by ghrol, writing, singing, drumming, playing lead, rhythm and bass guitars!)
to sum up:
long live the foo's.
