Day 21: "There Is Nothing Left To Lose" - Foo Fighters (1999)

It's a strange and cruel trick of The Great Pile that the first time I get a chance to talk about the Foo Fighters would be this album.

listen to me here

I have a lot of opinions about the Foo Fighters, nearly all of them positive.  I think Dave Grohl manages to be one of the nicest, most down to earth but extraordinarily talented people in music, period.  They are one of the few bands who have an album on my "If I could only listen to 10 albums for the rest of my life" list.  I've seen them live multiple times and their live shows are excellent in every regard.

In addition, I don't hate this album.  It's literally a victim of inflated expectations, where the reality of an absolutely serviceable and well crafted rock & roll record, when it is forced to follow "The Color And The Shape", is that it pales in comparison.  Going into listening to this again this time, it struck me that I couldn't name any of the songs on this album without looking at the track list, and I didn't have any strong associations with it apart from a general sense of disappointment.

Now I've reached the end of listening to it again, and not much has changed.  I'd forgotten "Learn to Fly" is on there, which is definitely the pull from this album in terms of song quality, but the entire thing just kind of meanders along without really grabbing my attention.  I spent a lot of the time listening to the album trying to figure out what I could possibly talk about to make this post into something slightly more interesting than the album its based on.

But the answer was there all along, when I thought about it;  only peripherally related to the album in question I guess, but enough of a connection and a a brief story to make me feel like I have some level of connection to this album other than ennui.

As I've mentioned before in my Methods of Mayhem post, there was a seven year span in my life, from 1997-2003, where instead of having what you might call a "proper holiday", I spent my summers going to music festivals.

Leeds 2000 would have been my 5th Festival, following eight or so weeks on from mine and Alex's trip to Glastonbury that year.  By this point, we'd probably bored the majority of our circle of friends to death recounting festival stories together, so for our trip to Leeds, there was a far larger group of people.  Me and Alex still, but this time I would be bringing my then-girlfriend Kate, who I had brought the ticket for as a birthday present, as well as a few of our other mutual friend group. 

I think what had tipped the scales for so many people wanting to come was the lineup.  Its hard to argue that it wasn't a stacked card for alternative music fans that year.

Yes, this was the infamous year when Daphne & Celeste played "Uh-oh, We're In Trouble" on the main stage of a rock and metal festival and were driven from the stage by bikers hurling plastic bottles of piss at them. 

Kate really wanted to see Placebo.  I really wanted to see the Foo Fighters.

I remember that weekend being a particularly wet and miserable bank holiday, but despite the inclement weather, everyone had managed to have a good time.  The Foo Fighters and Muse were the only bands I was really keen to see on the final day, so I remember hanging around in front of the main stage on my own to get a good spot for Foo Fighters while the rest of the group went off to see...someone else, I forget.  Regardless, the upshot of this was that I found myself alone, somewhere in the pit at the front of the stage, when Dave Grohl and company came on.

If you've never seen the Foo Fighters live, they're an incredible, energetic and fun Rock band in the truest sense of the word.  The audience were hot from the start, especially when Dave Grohl asked "is everyone excited for Oasis later tonight" and was met by a resounding round of boos from the audience.  The band played through most of "There Is Nothing Left To Lose", but throwing in some hits from the previous two albums.

As the set drew to a close, the band embarked on "Everlong", their hit single from "The Color And The Shape" and the audience went crazy, and I along with them.  Our enthusiasm quickly turned sour though, when the band rushed straight from the end of the first verse to the final breakdown, and the audience erupted into boos again.  As the band stopped playing, Dave Grohl addressed the crowd:-

"We've been told we have to come off in 2 minutes so the other bands can sound check".

More boos.

"Ah, fuck it".

The band starts Everlong from the beginning again, the crowd goes mental.  At the side of the stage, you can see techs arguing.  A minute into the song, the mics start cutting out.  By the end of the second verse, every stage mic is dead, the only thing you can hear is Taylor Hawkins' drum kit.  And the audience, in full voice, sings the entirety of the rest of the song at the stage, thousands of people showing their appreciation for the band which stay on, even though their output is inaudible to us all.

It's probably the most Rock & Roll moment I've ever witnessed, or been a part of.  It's the kind of thing in a live performance that gives you goosebumps, reminds you that the real power of live music is how it brings people together.  Maybe for being a part of that experience, I can finally find it in my heart to forgive "There Is Nothing Left To Lose" for not being as good as one of my favourite albums of all time.