Concert: Foo Fighters
After my initial plans for this show fell through, I was almost ready to let my hard earned floor tickets to this show go to waste. Fortunately, new plans were made and I managed to get to the show around 9:15 – two hours after the start. There were two openers, so I figured that it might still be worth seeing.
Got there just as Foo Fighters went on. After a quick beer in the beer garden, we headed down to the floor.
First impression was: wow, there are a lot of people here. I don’t think it was a sell out, but the Rose Garden’s bowl was fairly full (and I do know that the floor tix were sold out). The sound was great – loud and full without being overpowering.
After a few songs, Taylor went into a drum solo, which was our cue to hit the bathrooms and the bar. Five minutes later and we got a nice surprise.
The bar setup on the floor of the Rose Garden is at the back of the arena. I’m not the kind of person who tries to wrangle their way to the front of the crowd, so this was fine by me. When we came back on to the floor, though – wow.
The whole band had moved to a small auxilliary stage at the back of the floor. We basically walked in and were in the third row! The songs they did there were a bit more mellow, more intimate. Then Dave introduced the band. It was at this moment, that he really connected with the audience. He has mastered the art of being the snarky front man of a huge rock band, all with a wink and a nod. After a handful of songs on the back stage, Dave went into an “acoustic” version of Everlong while the rest of the band disappeared. As they reassembled on the main stage, they transitioned into a full version of the song, and completely left the back stage.
The rest of the show was solid. Then they left and the inevitable wait for the encore began. And once again, they did something different. Someone was backstage with an IR camera filming the band rehydrating and taking a break. Through gestures, Dave intimated that he heard the crowd and basically said “ok, one more song”. After a minute or so of this, they move over to Taylor, who started upping the ante, going from one song to four, all playing off the crowd energy.
As they came back on stage, Dave talked to the crowd for awhile, reminiscing over the fact that their first ever live show was here in Portland (at the Satyricon). A couple of solid encore songs and the show was over. A good two + hour performance.
(update a few janky camphone pics)
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