...in the beginning...

It has taken three weeks of unemployment and the constant nagging of one brother for me to start a blog but start I have and with an atypical day of unemployment in Sydney. Until 5:30pm yesterday the highlight of my day was re-arranging my t-shirt draw into colour order after taking what I considered too long to find the one shirt I wanted to wear - my black The Nightmare Before Christmas one - I wanted to wear to the Foo Fighters accoustic gig at the Sydney Opera House. So I'll ignore the whole morning, afternoon nap, having a shave...zzzzzzz.

Jumped the bus at the top of the road and spent the thirty minute journey reading the Randwick and surrounds local free rag and discovering that installation of parking meters seeems to be the single biggest news item and there is even an independant politico going to stand on that single issue in the local elections. Shame I can't vote. Other stuff about a home invasion and an Irish bloke being beaten and now laying in a medical induced coma and roads in La Perouse being - potentially - gated and shut at night to stop rev-heads doing burnouts and other rev-head stuff. Whatever that is. I borrow Mara's Hyundai Excel and tend to avoid such gatherings.

So anyway...met Sally at the Opera House Steps, collected the tickets and headed to the open-all-hours-right-at-the-key-predicatability of City Extra for a quick dinner and to wait for Mara.
Spinach and cheese crepes later and now all arrived we headed over to the opera house and watched the support acts Timmy Curran and another bloke whose name I cannot recall and does not make it to the promo poster so will forever be, to me, the other bloke. They were both decent enough but everyone was there for the Foos so they passed uneventfully as support actys typically do.

Accoustic Foo Fighters

Dave Grohl strolls on stage to a hero's welcome and from our cheap seats behind the band we get a great view of the adoring fans out front as they whoop, whistle, applaud and cheer for or at their hero. A couple of tracks from the new album's accoustic side and the rest of the band appear, now 8 Foos with the addition of a violinist, precussionist, keyboards cos this is, after all, accoustic in case the carpets had not given that away. Dave Grohl's voice is top notch, as his guitar playing. Each song starts off slowly and tends to build to a crescendo and it is a miracle that his arse stays in contact with the chair as long as it does, finally breaking free with My Hero from one of their older albums. Please do not expact set lists and nerdy detail like this track from that album. The internet, and my CD collection is full of that info so I tend not to duplicate it in my memory.

The show lasts around two and half hours and there is plenty of the new and the old, the obligatory solos from all the band, Cool Day in the Sun sung by Taylor on drums and the violinist (among other instruments) sings a number as well after being made to to a tamborine solo cos everyone gets a solo. All good stuff. The chatting to the audience was good to with explaniations of where songs came from and comic monologues on Mentos and Eric Estrada. You had to be there. The only out of place number was Best of Me, which after explaining how he liked not having to bust his nuts at these accoustic gigs he screamed his way through. The girls were not too keen on that but I thought it was kinda cool.

When I find a review I'll add a link but enough to say that it was a fantastic show and as front men go he rates as one of my favourites probably because he seems as far from up himself as you can get. Nuff said.

And as promised, this from The Sydney Morning Herald.