In Your Honour

I’ve had a pretty damn busy week, so much so that I can’t even remember everything I did….Monday and Tuesday seem ages ago. Wednesday I went to see the Foo Fighters at The Astoria with my brother, it was class!

We arrived at the venue at about 6pm and there were two queues, the usual MASSIVE one stretching down the side of the Astoria and beyond, which was people who’d collected their tickets earlier in the day and were waiting to get in. For some reason this gig was ticket collection only, so you had to collect them from the venue on the day of the gig….which is a daft idea in my opinion. As I said, we got there at around 6pm and joined the second, smaller queue which we established was for people still needing to collect tickets (us), after about 25-30 minutes they opened the doors and started letting the big queue in, this cause much moaning from people in our queue as it looked like they were going to let however many hundred people in before us. And it was raining. But 5 mins later they started letting our queue in and within 10 mins we were in the venue – ages before the majority of people who’d been queuing for whoever knows how long outside! I quickly made my way to the spot I always try and blag at Astoria gigs – front-centre of the balcony. It’s the best view in the venue, because the balcony comes really far forward over the standing section below and because you’re above everyone the view is great. I’ve stood there several times before and it’s always a great view, so I was chuffed to get there again. All the other people queuing early had gone straight to the barrier in the standing downstairs, so we had the balcony to ourselves for a while.

Death From Above 1979 supported and they were pretty cool. A very crazy Canadian duo consisting of a Drummer who sings and a bass/keyboard player. They play a mix of speed metal, disco, punk. Sounded like a cross between QOTSA, Metallica and Beck! I really enjoyed their set and will be purchasing their album soon.

The Foos strolled out and before playing a note Dave announced that they weren’t going to do their usual rock show set, but that they’d decided to play a bunch of songs they don’t normally play very often – music to my ears! They then started with ‘Hell’, which is probably my least favourite Foo Fighters song! But it actually worked much better live than on record, or so I thought anyway.

Having seen them so many times now, I knew what to expect….they are one of the best live bands around today, with no exceptions. Considering they’re more hard-edged than Coldplay or U2, I don’t think you’ll find a better live rock band on the planet. The set was brilliant, as was the performance – which was being filmed, which in turn prompted an amazing light show, which was cool in such a small venue. Personal highlight for me were ‘Hey, Johnny Park!’, ‘Cold Day In The Sun’ which saw Taylor Hawkins singing and playing guitar and Dave Grohl on drums, and ‘Aurora’ which they hardly ever play nowadays, but is breath-taking. It was a real goosebumps kind of gig, and such a special night. I love the Foo Fighters!