Yesterday K and I took the day off of work to travel to Chicago to see the Foo Fighters on their acoustic tour at the Auditorium Theatre. This trip was long-awaited and a welcome relief from work. I had a very stressful business trip from Monday to Thursday and in the worst moments, I would have to go to my mental happy place and just think “FRIDAY” to get me through.
The trip up to the venue was a bit dramatic but alas, we finally arrived at the beautiful Auditorium Theatre in time to hear Frank Black performing an acoustic set. Just to give you an idea of how far up we were, when looking at Frank Black on stage, I said to K, “He looks thinner than I expected”, and she replied, “Yeah, and he looks like he has hair”. Shit maybe it wasn’t even fuckin Frank Black but we were none the wiser without binoculars. We were stone cold sober at this point by the way. I throw in the “f” word to give you a feel for the onstage banter throughout the show.
Our seats were in the last stinking row of Balcony One, smack dab in the middle. This all sounded good on paper, but in actuality sucked. The house lights were on behind us the whole show, we had all of the noise from the open stairwell that led to the seating, and we had rude staff standing around us. It was really a shame. K and I came expecting a mellow experience. Yes, they still rocked out some of the songs, but it was a sit-down kind of concert.
Let's get to the show. Here's the setlist. The opening song was Razor, a song off the acoustic record of the double album In Your Honor, that is not one of my favorites, but the arrangement was amazing, with Dave on stage for most of the song alone with his acoustic guitar. By the end the entire band was out with a few additions: Pat Smear also playing guitar, a violinist/mandolin player, a percussionist, and a keyboardist. It was really beautiful.
The sound in the Auditorium Theatre was incredible. If anyone has seen the Foo, you know that Dave is a talker, which is always good fun. In this venue, you could hear every word.
There were a few songs I really missed hearing, which were Ain’t it the Life and Aurora, both off of There is Nothing Left to Lose. What was interesting was that some of my least favorite songs, Friend of a Friend, and Razor ended up being some of the best, either because of the arrangement or because of the stories Dave told to accompany them. For example, he told an insightful story about meeting Krist Novoselic and Kurt Cobain for the first time when they picked him up from the airport after he joined Nirvana. You see kids walking around these days in Kurt Cobain t-shirts like he’s their patron saint. People forget he was just a regular guy and the story illustrated this point.
Criticisms
I didn’t like the arrangements when there was heavy use of keyboards. Sometimes they were just ambient sounds but then other times they took the place of some of the guitar parts, and I didn’t like that at all.
Dave let the violinist sing Floaty. No Thanks!
K and I both agreed that we didn’t like the background screen behind the band with their logo from the In Your Honor album. The stage would have been fine with just the lighting and the curtains. I am attaching a pic of the background taken at the Philly show. This sounds sick but the shape of the emblem reminds of the scene in Silence of the Lambs when the cops bust into the hotel room expecting to find Hannibal in his cage, but instead they find the cop strung up by Hannibal Lector with his insides all open to the public.
Not the bands fault but I wish so badly we would have been sitting away from the house lights and rude staff and fans, so we could have just gotten totally immersed in the music. Instead we got a drunk girl in front of us who was trying to record the show on her cell phone who also got a bad case of hiccups and had to disrupt everyone to get up and then stand directly behind us bending over, drinking her beer out of the other side of her cup, trying to relieve said hiccups. I almost gave her my sister-in-law M’s signature, “Zip it!” Also, when K got up to get a beer, some guy jumped into the seat next to me and wanted to chat. There was also an almost fistfight that broke out very close by. Can these people not act like adults?
Favorite Moments
I actually enjoyed hearing the songs that they played off their other albums over the acoustic album the best. Songs like Walking After You and February Stars (which they played but isn’t on that set list) are never on their rock show set list. Due to the highly entertaining footos video, they never play Big Me at shows because Dave doesn’t want to get candy thrown at him. He played it here.
Dave did a rocking, but acoustic version of Best of You out on the stage alone and it was the most amazing moment of the night.
And of course, they finished the night with my all-time favorite Foo song, Everlong.
After the show, we got to watch Nate Mendel sign some autographs and get into a van to head to the airport. The rest of the band had hit the road as soon as the show was over so they could board a private plane back to L.A. While we stood outside on Michigan Avenue, enjoying the beautiful summer night weather and the people watching, we chatted with some other fans and also our favorite Roadie. He was telling us how if you are part of the crew and you are late to arrive when they have chartered a private plane, you get a financial penalty, so no one is ever late! I also overheard some of the other roadies talking and they said that the Auditorium Theatre staff was the most meticulous and biggest pain in the asses that they had ever worked with in all their years. One of them also expressed his unhappiness about the upcoming Foo Fighters/Bob Dylan tour dates. This person said that while it is being booked as a co-headlining tour on paper, the person who goes on last is the headliner and gets all the perks in staffing, space, etc. We also inquired with our favorite roadie on how my nephew, D, could get a job like he has and he made it sound like it was all chance. He did mention having to drive bands around when he first started, so D, if you are reading this, GET YOUR LICENSE!
This night gets an UNBELIEVABLE rating from me. --J
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