Foo Fighters, Thu, 05 Jul 2007 15:19:01, Dingwalls, London, The Event on Last.fm.
From a Gig Review post:
Support: None
The last time I saw the Foos it was in a field which held 85,000 people(their biggest headline gig ever). They were amazing that day despite claims that Dave and the boys weren’t big fans of the day. So this time was to be a little different, Dingwalls is small almost 500 people capacity, but why? Well like last year when they played the Underworld the night before Hyde Park this was a warm up for their limited set at Wembley for Live Earth. Getting tickets was a little nerve racking to start with, announced at 9am on the Wednesday the went on sale at 4pm and you had to answer a question about the first place they ever played in London. With an itchy mouse finger and the answer I was praying to get one(unlike Ticketbastard the ticket agency for this gig don’t hold a ticket for you so even after typing in all your info etc you may not get one) and I got two :-D.
This posed a teeny problem though as Sarah was off to Sum41 and I was meant to go see the mighty Raging Speedhorn in Croydon. Easy enough to skip Speedhorn (they’ll be on a UK tour soon, fingers crossed) but Sarah wanted to see Sum41 and my flatmate was off to them with her. No one else I knew in London wanted a ticket for this (honestly stupidity abounds) so off to Scarlet Mist and I off loaded the ticket for face value to some lucky soul. This lucky soul Stan is pretty cool so I whung out with him and his mates, Ruth and Ian, for the gig nice people.
Anyway so what about the show then? As I mentioned above no support so we were just hanging around listening to old school punk (Stranglers, SLF, Undertones et al) waiting for the second coming, sorry I mean the Foo Fighters to grace our presence. And grace is they did, shambling on stage decked out (mostly) in beards and maybe with a few beers on them, they hit the stage after a little banter with Breakout. It continued in this vein, high powered rock tune after high powered rock tune. At one stage they were persuaded by a member of the audience to swap Learn To Fly for Wind Up a song they’d not played in 5 years. They made a good fist of it even if Taylor did finish a beat or two behind the rest and the guitars skipping the middle eight but Dave knew the lyrics. They also played one new track “Cheer Up Boys (Your Make Up Has Run)” which was a nice addition to the set.
As with any Foos gig the banter was mighty, with discussions on why the all had beards (cause Tylor suggested they not shave while making the new record), playing after The Pussycat Dolls on Saturday to observations on tea (they’re PG Tips men apparently) and cream and scones (what are you royalty? they quipped when this was suggested).
The highlight had to be the return of Dave’s little trip around the venue. I’ve not seen this since the Olympia in 2000. Dave during a song gets into the crowd and sort of gets crowd surfed/climbs along barriers with his guitar playing along. I can’t for the life of me remember what song they did this for in 2000 but this time it was Stacked Actors. It was great rare that you get this up close and personal with someone who is a rock god.
They blasted though the hits, no acoustic songs and only one track off the new and last albums. It was biased towards The Color & The Shape but that has just got its 10 year anniversary edition (oh god I bought that new) so I’ll forgive them also it is a cracking album. They also threw in a cover of Wings’ Band On The Run which is the title track off one of my favourite albums which was cool.
Although cameras were banned (only informed when we got to the venue) Stan and I got cameras in (mine was “hidden” in my hand under my passport) and I got some photos here.
All in all I have now seen the Foo’s largest ever headline slot and probably their smallest they’ll ever play again and it is a definite memory, roll on the album tour in November (Rich wants to do Cardiff or somewhere so I think you’ll see me in Dublin, London, Birmingham, Cardiff and Glasgow if it all pans out).
Setlist:
- Breakout
- My Hero
- Times Like These
- For All The Cows
- Cheer Up Boys (Your Make-up Has run)
- Wind Up
- Stacked Actors
- Everlong
- Monkey Wrench
- Hey! Johnny Park!
- Low
- Band On The Run (Wings cover)
- New Way Home
- Best Of You
- All My Life
ENCORE
Also Stan’s blog on the night can be found on his myspazz page (with more pictures) here.
Later Days,
Halo