FOO FIGHTERS 
Finally, I have a recommendation to go with my confession earlier. If any of you are still signed up with Netflix, you should add the 1994 film Backbeat to your queue. It is the early history of the Beatles mostly when they were in Hamburg, Germany and primarily follows Stu Sutcliffe (played by Stephen Dorff), an old friend of John Lennon who was in an early incarnation of the band. Along the way, you meet Paul McCartney (the two actors who play John and Paul are dead ringers), George Harrison, and even Ringo Starr, who was hanging around the group even though he wasn’t in the band yet. Actually the words “the Beatles” were only spoken once during the entire movie; John Lennon mostly just called them “the band”. The idea is that, in those days, the Beatles were the world’s greatest punk rock group, so the band that they lined up to play the music was drawn from the top American alternative rock bands of the day, like the Afghan Whigs, Soul Asylum, R.E.M., and Sonic Youth. The drummer was Nirvana’s Dave Grohl, who later became the front man for Foo Fighters (sadly, I believe that I read that they have gone on a hiatus). However, he still hits the skins from time to time for bands like Queens of the Stone Age. Highly recommended. (September 2012) * * * Back when MTV and VH1 used to play music videos, and when I wasn’t watching anything else, I would often have one of those channels on, with my videocassette recorder at the ready, in case a video came on of a song that I really liked. Particularly when there was a song in “heavy rotation” that I really wanted, I would often have the VCR already cued up, on “hold”, so that I would miss as little of the video as possible. Sometimes I would get lucky, and I would already be recording a song when another one came on that I wanted as well. That happened one time with “No One Knows” by Queens of the Stone Age. The time was back in the Garage Rock Revival period of the early 2000’s, when the White Stripes, the Hives, the Strokes, and several other great retro bands were really getting established. I hadn’t heard the song before, but the beat sounded good, so I left the recorder running. That song got to be a real favorite of mine, and I was particularly thrilled when I later recognized Dave Grohl – former drummer for Nirvana and front man for Foo Fighters – on drums in the video (that’s a video cap from the “No One Knows” music video above). (December 2012) * * * The truly heartbreaking part of his Alzheimer’s diagnosis is that Glen Campbell had just launched a comeback a few years before, with his 2008 album Meet Glen Campbell that features Campbell covering songs by U2, Foo Fighters, Tom Petty, and Green Day – “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” being the latter song – plus one of the last songs written by John Lennon, “Grow Old with Me”, and an early Jackson Browne song, “These Days” that was first recorded by Nico in 1967.
(February 2015) * * *
Dave Grohl and Foo Fighters have been traveling to music meccas across the country, making short films of their stays there and writing and performing a song to mark the occasion. They are now playing on HBO, and 60 Minutes also had a piece on their efforts a week or so back. Their sojourn to New Orleans is particularly enjoyable; they tell the history of Preservation Hall and how it is now fulfilling its mission of preserving jazz in the city. Highly recommended.
(June 2015)
|
