A Piece of Something Special: Dave Grohl and How it All Started

writ3003 — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 05:13:04 +0000

Last night around 3am, I was sitting on my couch watching a live acoustic concert from Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters. As every fan in Southern Ontario knows, The Foo Fighters are making an appearence at Toronto’s Virgin Music Festival on September 4th 2008. For all of you who haven’t secured their tickets yet I feel your pain.

There is something special about this band. Something so inspiring. As I was watching this dvd last night I had realized some things that I never have in all the years I have loved this band. Dave Grohl the lead singer had returned back to stage for an encore, only him and no band. He stood in the middle of the stage with a strapless guitar in the centre of a dark Pantageous Theatre with only a single spotlight on him. Dave began telling a story, a story that obviously was difficult for him to do infront of such a mass crowd. Dave began entailing his life as a teenager. He dropped out of school when he was 17 to play in a band with 3 others guys who were all 9 years older than him. He toured with this group for about a year or so. When dave was on tour with the band, he stayed in a bedroom of a house of one of the band members. It was dark, quiet, there was also tank with turtles in it near the door, and an old guitar in the corner – a piece of shit according to Grohl. Dave used this as a time to write his own music, it was a place that inspired alot of his songs. The band wasn’t that successful. The group had split up due to the results the group had produced. Dave was bascially living on the streets, living day by day – his only posessions being a bag of clothes and a U-Haul box with his drum set in it.

Dave had received a call from one of his former agents. He was informed that the Band Nirvana was looking for a drummers. Dave was in wonder. The agent mentioned Kurt Cobain had seen a video of dave performing and said “If we only had a drummer like that guy.” The agent mentioned to Dave “You should give them a call”. So dave did…well according to Grohl’s exact words — “The Rest is history!”

Dave flew down to L.A. for an audition with Nirvana. All he brought with him was his bag of clothes and the box that contained his drums. The night before his audition with Cobain and Nirvana, Dave went to a party upstairs of an L.A. complex. As Dave walked in to the house, he noticed a girl playing music. She was playing despressing music on an old guitar. acorrding to Dave’s words he thought the party was fucking gay, so he left.

The next day at the audition, Dave met Kurt for the first time. He mentioned “Yeh last night I went to this fucking shitty party, it was fucked, there was this crazy bitch playing fucking fucked depressing music on this shitty old guitar, fuck it was gay so we left.” Kurt replied, “Yeh, that was my girlfriend”.

Keep On Rockin’ In The Real World…

Satisfaction

writ3003 — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 10:09:27 +0000

Like anyone else who has been around since 1964, I’ve heard ‘Satisfaction’ many dozens of times. But in a way I felt like I heard it for the first time today, when I came across the cover by Bjork and PJ Harvey. Whatever it is that the song states that it can’t get any of, I don’t really know, but I think those two women probably do. I always thought it was basically about not getting enough sex, with some fairly trite verses about consumer alienation thrown in. Well, according to these two it’s about not getting anything at all: it’s about an emptiness in life that is exactly captured by the monotone (not that far from Jagger’s voice in the verses, but far from the overall effect of the Stones’ version) that builds relentlessly through this three minute performance. So now it makes perfect sense, even the banalities about doing this and signing that. Amazing.

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A Piece of Something Special: Dave Grohl and How it All Started

Satisfaction