The Foo Fighters - Classic or Dud?

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.

I've only heard the one Scream track on the Dischord comp from a pre-Grohl record, so I don't really know what they sounded like. but he always struck me as a metal/classic rock kid who fell into punk/alternative rock, and the later Foos/Probot/QOTSA stuff he's done in the past few years probably reflects those roots as much as you could say for anyone whose career started as underground and ended up as mersh as his.

always? like when you were 12?

I'm sure he wasn't the only 15 year old punk drummer who dug Bonham but he might be the only one singing "It's a shame we have to die, my dear" in an arena today.

So really you just hate him for being successful.

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

-- jon /via/ chi 2.0, Tuesday, November 13, 2007 11:22 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

^^^^^^^^^^ (haha xpost)

I don't hate him now (too many Hagars out there who CAN'T write good hooks), and I didn't find him ridiculous until well after he was a millionaire.

if we're gonna harp on anything being a betrayal of his XHARDXCOREX roots it should probably be the goofy videos where he wears wigs and plays 'characters', not the self-serious dirges.

oh i won't harp on admirable ironies (Though "Everlong" is a way better video than "Learn To Fly").

Way upthread: Nirvana were terrible lyrically!

not in a "the more you live the more you give" way

Hagar would NEVER right "aqua seafoam shame"

write, ha

Rock star in "recovery lyrics" shocker. Just be glad we didn't have to hear Kurt's.

this is true

i'm digging Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace so far. He does his thing.

COlour and teh shape was pretty great. i say classic.

yeah this is good. Summer's End in particular, with tight blades of guitars dancing around a pretty boogified southern bedrock.

this still has me rolling though

Oh fuck you all, the world would've been a better place if it were dave grohl that courtney had shot. the foo fighters are the osound of stinking sneaker rock from the 70s with a bad moustache to boot. Now go on, be quiet and fuck off.

DUD: http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2000/02/foo.html

DOM: http://www.drownedinsound.com/articles/2441073

o i c

i didn't realise that music reviews required every sentence to include painfully unfunny one-liners

Posts to ILX don't, however.

Can someone tell me a better major label hard rock album that came out in 1997, because I just listened to The Colour And The Shape for the first time and is not very good.

I can't think of a better one. Doesn't mean Foo Fighters is any good, though.

http://www.riverofsound.com/Images/Products/IxnayOnTheHombreTheOffspring19978495f.jpg

http://www.tripstar.org/silverchair/covers/freakshow.jpg

http://cdn.last.fm/coverart/300x300/2268697-44219207.jpg

Serious answer: there ain't one.

Its the last foo fighters album i liked

Me too!

they were great on that tour. they sucked after pat left. I saw them support the prodigy after that with one of the stahls but it wasnt the same. Its quite sad how bad they've got now, even sadder they've got huge with it.

I honestly cant think of a better major label rock/metal album from 1997.
Lean times.

DUDDUDDUDDUDDUD

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.

-- latebloomer, Wednesday, August 1, 2007 1:43 AM (11 months ago) Bookmark Link

I'd be even harder pushed to think of good major label rock/metal albums from the last few years. Mastodon, Qotsa, anything else?

Actually this might make a good seperate thread

It would be a good thread. Good major label rock/metal acts have been rare this decade. You can have your My Chemical Romance and Panic! At The Disco and a bunch of other bands whose names bother me. Maybe American Idiot, if that's to be considered a good major label rock/metal album. What else is there?

Good major Label Rock/Metal albums from Late 90's-2008?

debut album was i think the fifth cd i ever bought. love this record, even if it sucks apart from the first three tracks.

I really like "Big Me" and "Everlong," but I absolutely despise "Fingernails are pretty. Fingernails are good." "Learn to Fly" was OK. Haven't heard anything else.

First album showed promise that never really materialized on later albums.

first album is great, love the whole thing. fun, garage-y. everything after is zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

2nd album >>> 1st album

no wai.

Altho the second album is not bad. Anything after that is just terrible. Playing Guitar Hero: Metallica and it has the song "Stacked actors" on it which I think is from the 3rd album. Absolute shite. Not as bad as "I've got another confession to maaaaaaaaake" song, which sounds like something from a 1980s beer commercial.

i actually preferred grohl's lyrics when they were just scratch, "fingernails are pretty" and all. when he started taking his writing and music a bit more seriously, his earnest-rocker meter went off the charts and i tuned out. i do agree with the notion that the first disc of in your honour is probably the closest they've come to matching the greatness of their first two albums.

The only album I actually like is the 1st one. The 2nd and 3rd have a few good songs. I would still listen to their stuff at least once when it came out, even though I didn't really like much of it, up til the point "Times Like These" came out - it was blaring out of the neighbour's window and I went to my gf "omg wtf this song is total shit, like embarrassingly awful, who is it?". That was the moment I went off Foo Fighters forever.

I like to picture some elaborate swearing off ceremony that included burnt pictures of Grohl and a cracked copy of the first album.

He changed, man.

Maybe a roast beef sandwich.

I don't know if this was posted here, but you know Grohl's story about seeing a kid wearing a Cobain shirt in Ireland right after Cobain died, and how he took it as a sign to go back to music? He retold the story on Colbert, and I was curious if anyone ever found out who that kid was through the magic of social media.

Turns out two years ago, that kid came forward because he remembered that day and his family didn't believe him when he said he saw Grohl. (He even has vintage photos of himself in that shirt.)

So if you love/hate the Foo Fighters, you can thank/blame him.

(should be "kid" in quotation marks, obviously he's no longer a kid)