Foos Rock Philly
Band plays epic 3-hour show in the Cradle of Liberty
It was 35 years ago on Aug. 13 that I attended my first rock after having just turned 18 years old five days prior.
It was the first Lollapalooza at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in Saratoga Springs, New York, an area incredibly near and dear to my heart as I spent my life going up there to visit family who lived in town. Needless to say, it was an amazing experience, hanging with my bros, seeing two of my favorite bands at the time on the same bill (Jane’s Addiction and Living Colour) along with my favorite rapper (Ice-T), while becoming a fan of Nine Inch Nails, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Butthole Surfers and Rollins Band explicitly based on their performances.
So it was pure serendipity to be surprised with a pair of press tickets to see the Foo Fighters at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the very same day 35 years later, and to bring my 13-year-old son, Benjamin, along for the ride for his first proper rock concert (granted, he saw Coldplay in 2024 at MetLife Stadium, but come on now).
After unfortunately missing both opening acts, Mannequin Pussy and my beloved Queens of the Stone Age (who we were able to hear while sitting in traffic next to the stadium), we made it to our seats just in time for the Foos to kick off their near-three-hour extravaganza chronicling 31 years of Foo Fighters music, as Dave Grohl pledged to surprise longtime fans with deep cuts interspersed among their literal arsenal of hits.
And for someone like me, who hasn’t seen the Foo Fighters since the 1998 Tibetan Freedom Concert, it was pretty astonishing to hear just how many hit songs these guys have accumulated in three decades when you hear them all in succession. It was wild.
The thing about me and the Foos is that I definitely like them, but not everything they released. The first two albums are canonical. Wasting Light, which marked guitarist Pat Smear’s return to the band from an extended break, is their best album with Taylor Hawkins. And this new LP, Your Favorite Toy, is the most satisfying thing they’ve done since Wasting Light. As for the rest of their catalog, it’s fairly mid in my opinion, though my buddy Charles here in town put me onto 2007’s Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, which I think is probably the best of the Smear-less albums.
But again, hearing all these songs in rapid succession: “All My Life.” “The Pretender.” “Times Like These.” “Stacked Actors.” “My Hero.” “Learn to Fly.” ”Walk.” “This Is A Call.” It was definitely a rush. And this locked-in lineup of the Foos — Grohl, guitarists Smear and Chris Shifflett of No Use For A Name, longtime bassist Nate Mendel (formerly of Sunny Day Real Estate), ex-Wallflowers keyboardist Rami Jaffe and their monster new drummer Ilan Rubin — played these songs to the max, never letting up even in the concert’s calmer moments.
As for the promised deep cuts, they did pull out some surprises, including a rare performance of their first big hit, “Big Me,” which Grohl joked they stopped playing for years because people were throwing Mentos mints at them while they were playing. During this small set portion of the show on the catwalk a la ZOO TV-era U2, the group also delivered the only song Nirvana recorded featuring Dave on lead vocals, “Marigold,” which was originally released Pocketwatch by the drummer’s 1991 solo project Late!. Dave also did a solo version of “Under You” from 2023’s But Here We Are that incorporated a snippet of Ween’s “Freedom of ‘76” as Dave professed his love for the New Hope, Pennsylvania kayfabe brothers. Another really fun portion of the show for deeper fans of the Foo Fighters’ expanded universe is when each member performed a cover of a song from their prior bands, including No Use For A Name’s “Invincible,” Sunny Day’s “Seven,” The Wallflowers’ “One Headlight” and the Ilan original “Tap Dancing On A Minefield,” which saw Rubin tear it up on the guitar while Dave moved back to the drum stool for at least one song.
They also did “Monkeywrench” with an extended Ilan drum solo that had seriously heavy Bonham vibes going on. And while Rubin indeed deserves his flowers, the band made sure to pay homage to Hawkins with an emotional rendition of “Aurora” from the band’s hit third LP, 1999’s There Is Nothing Left to Lose.
Of course, we had to stay until the bitter end so we could hear “Everlong,” which the Foos saved until the big encore finale with fireworks and shit. It was a massive thing, man. Can any modern rock band outside of maybe My Chemical Romance top the way the Foo Fighters reveled in this fading art of stadium rock? That was the question on my mind as me and Ben walked back to the car and began the journey back to North Jerz.
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