The Foo Fighters - Classic or Dud?

I didn't mind the first record in the light of grunge, but from then on I've been nothing but bored senseless. Not even convinced by Sreynold's claim - 'most dynamic rock single' with that new one. YAWN!

Please convince me otherwise tho...

NO SAXOPHONES??

they are really very poor indeed.
i'm listening to 'the colour and the shape' that i just burned on my i-tunes and i'm already considering deleting it because it's sullying the good name of everything else in my library.

classic: the line "sometimes i feel i'm getting stuck between the handshake and the fuck" from 'my poor brain', and that one riff from 'hey, johnny park!'

dud: everything else, including the stuff i haven't bothered to listen to

"Fingernails is pretty.."

Such a bland, mediocre band. V. heartening to see an almost unanimous dud vote.

I hate their albums, but the singles are mostly great rock.

They seem to get progressively worse with each album.

I think Kenny's original post just about nailed it by calling them his favorite band in high school. They weren't mine, but they seem like a band perfect for that role - so that everything they put out after you got out of high school, whenever that was, was bad. So I LOVE LOVE LOVE the first album, <i>Colour and the Shape</i> still holds up pretty good, I would cherry-pick from <i>There Is Nothing Left To Lose</i>, then I graduated high school and everything since then I've heard the single and found it tuneless and grating. I don't know if they actually changed their sound or anything, but their hold on me was completely lost.

Search: All of <i>Foo Fighters</i>, especially the singles plus "Alone & Easy Target" and "Wattershed"... off TCATS, the singles again ("Everlong" and "My Hero" for pete's sake!) and "New Way Home"... off TINLTL, "Stacked Actors," "Live-In Skin."

There's a bunch of other good stuff on those albums but that's the indispensible stuff for me. Definitely the best post-grunge mainstream rock band on the US charts, IMO.

someday, someday, I will stop doing that

i love the first album and the first album only. it's so different from the others, basically because it's a glorified demo tape.

"THIS IS A CALL" 4EVER + 4TW

Dud.

Now, when I was in high school, a lad of just 15, having freshly sold my Howard Jones cassingles, I remember their self-titled debut album.

I was too much of a newb to know most of the material Foo drew their work from on their first album, but I really enjoyed (and still do) the clever pop tunes on the album. Even saw them on tour at a small local venue that year and got Dave's autograph on my flannel shirt (fuck you, it was a fad!) and ticket.

But even as a kid with bad taste, I never really got into The Colour and the Shape. It seemed to me that on that particular album, they became more generic and overproduced, and since then I haven't been a fan.

Their material is better than some of the other mainstream stuff out there, but give me their s/t anyday over what they're making now.

as a kid with bad taste, I never really got into The Colour and the Shape

Makes sense.

Left out two key words in that quote.

"indie fuck"

rofl. If you're going to pigeonhole someone you might want to be in the vicinity. I'm as much an indie fuck as Ally McBeal was a pornographic television show.

"as a kid", bro! chillax.

I wasn't aware that my neurons were firing any faster :)

Hesitantly classic. One great album (Colour), one good album (debut), a string of pretty decent mainstream rock singles (with a few duds tossed in), and a good live show means they can't be a complete dud in my book.

Otm, though I'd go one farther and dub everything after Colour/Shape a stinkpatch.

I'd say disc 1 of In Your Honor comes fairly close to being as good as the first two albums. Disc 2 really sinks the album's overall batting average, though.

Dud to the fucking max. I have a lot of hate for the Foo Fighters if only for their being a shining example of radio rock.

o noez!

I hope it's not too late for Pat Smear's pixie dust to help now that he's back.

I am a one way motorway
I'm the one that drives away
Then follows you back home
I am a street light shining
I'm a wild light blinding bright
Burning off alone

It's times like these you learn to live again
It's times like these you give and give again
It's times like these you learn to love again
It's times like these time and time again

I am a new day rising
I'm a brand new sky
To hang the stars upon tonight
I am a little divided
Do I stay or run away
And leave it all behind?

It's times like these you learn to live again
It's times like these you give and give again
It's times like these you learn to love again
It's times like these time and time again

This was written by a former member of Nirvana.

Not sure what point you're trying to make there, but okay.

so, Nirvana sucked. Foo Fighters sucked too. what's yr point?

yeah plenty of Nirvana songs have lyrics as lame as that. and none of them have cool 7/8 riffs like that song has.

it is my belief that There Is Nothing Left To Lose is a very fine power-pop record (cf 'Generator', 'Learning To Fly', 'Aurora')

Too inconsistent to be classic, too many good songs to be dud.

like the first album but not enough to listen to it, extremely puzzled by their continued existence and (apparent) vitality

Thematically they shifted from "alternative" jibberish to "DAMN, woman, why can't you stop me from cheating on you" hard rock just as rock stations did, without getting so blatantly macho as to turn off the old fans who can still listen to rock stations.

plus Grohl can still write a hook

whether or not you like nirvana, its pretty funny what a Hagar Grohl has become when you look back at his roots.

There goes my hero, watch him as he busts

Ah, man

Now we know why he was so eager to get back on the road...

not surprising tbh

first interesting thing he's done in like 20 years

..and they all grew up to be documentary talking heads.

Still has some Foo in his Fighter, I see.

his history is kinda littered w/cheating iirc

He spreads love, it's his brand, we all know this

Celebrity cheating is a dog bites man situation but I can’t believe how many are out raw dogging.

Well, not necessarily.

Heard that condoms are on the FF rider and are called Goo Fighters.

Wrap yr Monkey Wrench, lads.

Statement reads like it should be in the voice of Darrell-Hammond-as-Bill-Clinton

pretty big of him to talk about it ngl

He’ll fully own it in a couple weeks for the SNL 50th Season cold open.

xpost i wonder why he is, tho ... this isn't just something you spill for fun. gotta wonder what pushed him to do it. the mother making a big deal of it to tabloids or something?

yeah it has a “getting ahead of the story” vibe

I think David Letterman is pretty much the model for what to do with infidelity (or in Grohl's case, a baby too), which is you come clean and make a statement before anyone else does so at least whatever version of the story you want to put out there becomes the focus and you have some control over how the story's processed (if not complete control).

Letterman and Grohl are kind of tight - wouldn't surprise me if he thought of Letterman as an example for what to do.

Grohl's said more retrospectively about his infidelity and new child, things which are frankly none of our fucking business, than his past AIDS denialism, something which should be our business

fuck him

Was completely unaware of that, but here's a Mother Jones article that came up in a search.

explains why he was fearless about going out unprotected

well I had not heard about that!

Look up Christine Maggiore. She was an AIDS denialist who, along with her three year old daughter who she never had tested let along treated for HIV, died of (surprise surprise) aids. FF donated to her organization and I think played benefit shows for them in the early 2000s. Honestly that is so much more egregious than any secret babby because it's so stupidly dangerous and had a much wider reach.

Ah they talk about CM in the article of course but anyway her daughter died in the mid 00s and followed by her a couple years later.

https://medium.com/the-monthly/the-foo-fighters-aids-denialism-should-be-on-the-record-6e33666fdc3c

this was the one i read a few years ago and i was shocked at how i had never heard this despite being a teenaged ff fan around that time

Had no idea about the aids denialism.

https://web.archive.org/web/20020810172556/http://www.foofighters.com/aliveandwell/index.shtml

Interesting to read this and see how much of it has been recycled by covid denialists

not defending any of it, that always struck me as Mendel being a complete idiot and Grohl and co. being ambivalent/ignorant about it. He kinda reminds me of a modern day Jerry Garcia where responsibility isn’t his strong suit.

I have in on good authority that, upon hearing the news, Grohl was heard to utter Awwww, man. Bummer! I wonder if the "heart in a blender" guy ever has to deal with this kind of stuff?

Do they (or I guess Mendel) still believe in any of this, or is it a personal embarrassment they're hoping people forget?

It's crazy how most of the time when a band/artist claims they're apolitical and "want the music to speak for itself" shares a cause it's something like PETA, human rights, or free speech (remember everybody putting the 1st Amendment on their main pages during the W administration?), but when these guys speak up it's "EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT AIDS IS WRONG".

They apparently booted Josh Freese with no warning. He posted (graciously!) about it on instagram, which is worth a gander for all the comments of support from other name drummers that love Josh:

https://www.instagram.com/p/DJuQb14u09w/?hl=en

And other commenters, too:

timheidecker 19h
Upside is you won’t have to hear any of those horrible songs ever again!

Haha. Grohl was probably bitter that they missed out on their chance to do a drummer audition YouTube series.

Grohl is the Ellen DeGeneres of rock.

he was sacked two days after they announced they're going to play at the Singapore GP (F1) in October - other people playing there over 3 days: Elton John, Smashing Pumpkins, Crowded House, Babymetal, etc - https://singaporegp.sg/en/entertainment/

It'll be Taylor's boy

If so you'd think it would be understandable to say "yeah, we're going with the kid"

Which Taylor's boy? Roger Taylor's son Rufus (from The Darkness)? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lg8tidETEHQ

Zak "Taylor" Starkey

Travis Kelce goin' stupid on the tom-toms.

And other commenters, too:

timheidecker 19h
Upside is you won’t have to hear any of those horrible songs ever again!

― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, May 17, 2025 9:30 AM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Foo Fighters have more good songs than Tim Heidecker has good jokes

Only one is *trying* to be funny, I'll give you that.

I think surely Heidecker has at least four good jokes

First three Foos albums are solid start-to-finish, gems scattered across the albums that followed

Also, Grohl takes drums so seriously he rerecorded most of William Goldsmith's drum parts for Colour + Shape before booting him from the band. Taylor seemed his dream drummer, so can imagine even a player as talented and experienced as Josh, if he isn't absolutely and totally the perfect guy for the job, might get the push.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lgy4a0tXz7M

safe stance!