Obviously, it wasn’t the usual young hipster crowd I see at a lot of shows, I was surrounded by lots middle age guys wearing Foo Fighters shirts who had been apparently there hours in advance: the Palladium looked already very crowded around 8 pm for a show starting at 9:30 pm. It was hard to find a good spot, and I gave up the idea to go at the front and decided to stand up on the steps in front of the bar. This was my spot for the night, the very long night, and I can’t believe I didn’t move an inch from it for almost 5 hours.
David Grohl is a very crazy person, what was he thinking? That his fans would follow him into this marathon-show idea? But he was right and he also proved he was a very tough guy as he didn’t leave the stage once during this 3 hour-and-half performance, jumping behind the drums or playing guitar with the same passion and fire in the belly. His Sound City Players all-star line-up was his way to celebrate the LA premiere of his documentary about Van Nuys recording studio at the ArcLight’s Cinerama Dome across the street, and for the occasion he had managed to gather on stage many of the key musicians from the film. That’s why there was a 'concert of the century' aura floating around the night, a when-are-you-going-to-see-this-again-in-your-lifetime idea, which probably made all these aging rock lovers change their Thursday-must-see-TV routine, and venture in the Palladium till past 1 am. Did I get the impression I was living a historic moment? Not really! But did I enjoy the show? Certainly! At one point, I looked at the time on my phone and was really surprised to see it was already past midnight! There wasn’t a dull moment, there wasn’t a memorable line or a real highlight of the show, but the monster concert was truly about music, its rhythm was fluid and the crowd looked entertained and captivated till the end.
The night, which was almost a repeat of the City Sound Players’ concert at Sundance – and they want to do it again soon at New York City’s Hammerstein Ballroom, so much for the historic aspect of the event! – gathered Queens of the Stone Age's Alain Johannes, Masters of Reality’s Chris Goss, Rage Against the Machine’s Brad Wilk, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Fear’s Lee Ving, Nirvana’s Krist Novoselic, Slipknot’s Corey Taylor, Cheap Trick’s Rick Nielsen, Foo Fighters’ Pat Smear and Taylor Hawkins, Rick Springfield, and iconic legends such as John Fogerty and Stevie Nicks…. Sure, there was a bunch of others who appear in the film that I would have wanted to see on stage too, Josh Homme, Tom Petty, Trent Reznor,… Neil Young, Paul McCartney? And we would have really talked about history in the making, but this may have been too much to ask.
A short footage of Dave Grohl’s documentary was projected on a screen in front of the stage to introduce the next act, so that there wasn’t any real interruption during the performance. It could have been a night to celebrate Grohl’s glorious achievement, but he and his bandmates were playing sidemen, backing up the other acts and truly giving them the chance to shine at what they do the best: rock ‘n’ roll.
Johannes opened the show, and gave the hard rocking tone of the evening with QOTSA’ ‘Hangin’ Tree’, while having a love fest with Grohl who called him ‘a fucking genius’,… ‘We are going to be here for a while’ Grohl added, announcing the long night ahead. Johannes stayed around for the next act with Masters of Reality’s Chris Goss, Rage Against the Machine’s Brad Wilk (and came back for a few others) making guitars roaring hard on such songs as ‘She got me when she got her dress on’ or 'Domino’. At this point, the muscle rock show was blooming to its fullest but I wasn’t caring enough about these people and their songs to have that ‘wow’… but then, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club followed and their badass distorted bluesy sound just changed this, with ‘Whatever Happened To My Rock 'N' Roll’, they drew a dense and foggy curtain, with a mean nasal delivery and Grohl on drums. It went even better with veteran punk Lee Ving of Fear, as there is nothing more refreshing than a 62-year-old shouting with rage and a raucous voice ‘I don’t care about you, fuck you’ to a loving audience rising their fists in the air,… definitively the (punk) rock highlight of the show.
‘Who is that? He sounds awful!’ shouted the girl on my left during Slipknot’s Corey Taylor’s set with Krist Novoselic and Rick Nielsen. Grohl was on drums again and they were playing Cheap Trick’s songs with a few windmills and big choruses, but I was with her on Taylor… However, someone who didn’t sound/look awful, was Rick Springfield, ‘He is cute’ said a woman next to me, and that was especially true when he threw his guitar in the air (a few times), removed his jacket, revealed his ripped arms and played the first riffs of ‘Jessie’s Girl’, ‘Rick Springfield, you have a song that people recognize after three fucking chords. Congratulations, Rick Springfield,’ said Grohl, who of course hadn’t left the stage from the beginning. Isn’t this song the soundtrack of the 80s anyway? Of course, none of his other songs (‘Love Is Alright Tonite’, ‘I’ve Done Everything for You‘) were received with the same sing along, but the next act top that, as practically everything John Fogerty sang – ‘Fortunate Son’, ‘Proud Mary’, ‘Travelin’ Band’, ‘Born on the Bayou’, ‘Fortunate Son’, ‘Keep on Chooglin’ – was chanted by the crowd and iPhoned to nauseum… at this point the show sounded more like an induction to the Hall of Fame, but the crowd looked very happy, Forgety was demonstrating that real rock wasn’t dead at all, and Grohl wasn’t even showing any sign of tiredness,… I was beginning to loose feeling in my feet and to conclude he was a machine, the Grohl machine, determined to play until his old fans all drop dead from rock overdose.
But we were almost at the end of it. Stevie Nicks closed the show with a few of her own songs ‘Stop dragging my heart around’, and some Fleetwood Mac’s classics ‘Dreams’, ‘Landslide’, ‘Gold dust woman’. She also sang a new one, ‘You can’t fix this’ she recorded for the Sound City Players Soundtrack, and which she told the crowd was about her 18-year-old godson, who recently died of an overdose. The atmosphere turned heavy, ‘In our days, we made a pact to never dance with the devil,’ she explained before singing, ‘and this young man danced with the devil’. Dave Grohl and Stevie Nicks were alone on stage for ‘Landslide’ and the whole room went extremely quiet.
As much as I don’t care for the Dave Grohl’s music with the Foo Fighters, the night turned out as a great one, celebrating music before anything, and mostly this Sound City studio which looked like a dump unkempt place in the middle of nowhere but which nevertheless changed the face of music, … and from the excerpts, Grohl's movie is a must see!
