An almost sold out Scottrade Center in Saint Louis was very loud for about four hours last night, especially during the almost three hour long set by headliner Foo Fighters. It is true what they say: The volume and quality of the mix improve pretty dramatically as you move from openers to headliners. Mariachi El Bronx, the alter ego band of punk hardcore aficionados The Bronx, opened the night with a tight half- hour set of well written and upbeat tunes (although I think the references to Jesus is dead was lost on most of the crowd). Throughout the set singer Matt Caughthran showed he has chops, which is no small feat for a hardcore singer. He smiled, swooned, and left the impression that he couldn’t believe he was playing mariachi music in front of a couple thousand people. The irony was not lost at all, but it didn’t take away from his presumably genuine delivery. I did take offense to their suggestion that everyone was here to see the Foo Fighters. More on that later.
Next was Rise Against, who absolutely killed it in their way too short of a set. They delivered about nine songs spanning their last three albums, culminating with one of their top singles, Savior. Lead singer Tim McIlrath was straight on with his vocals all night, as usual, and “lead” guitarist Zach Blair (poorly pictured above) was as animated as ever. As with the first time I saw the band, drummer Brandon Barnes kept time nicely but is about the worst show person drummer I’ve seen. He always looks bored, never makes eye contact with the crowd or his band members, and seemed like he needed a nap. The mix sounded fuzzy for the last couple of songs, like the guitars were peaking out, which was really disappointing. Also disappointing is that Tim said nothing political, or even mildly controversial, other than how everyone loves the Foo Fighters (again, more on that below). Rise Against’s radical left politics were probably lost on most people who listen to their somewhat top 40 friendly songs, and that is just a shame. Maybe they are trying to code everything too much.
Headliners Foo Fighters emerged exactly at 9 p.m.. Armed with three guitars along with a keyboardist and the usual rock rhythm section, Grohl spastically and enthusiastically showed he loves his music perhaps more than anyone else. Good for him. He also took great pains to tell everyone how many songs the Foo Fighters have and how they could play about 120 of them. Wow, impressive. Any musical writer over the age of 20 has a hundred songs written. Anyway, Grohl and his men plunged through several dozen songs representative of their past studio efforts. The crowd was at times wild with energy at others times sort of confused, especially on some tracks from their new album and some b side tunes from years ago. I was perplexed throughout the show, mostly because the Foo made about every other song into a boring Bachman Turner Overdrive sort of mess. Here’s how it went: Starting a song as the studio version was recorded, then cutting it in the middle, and then Grohl looking around for some support for a major musical tangent, then various cacophonies of substance less instrumental boredom. None of those dudes are excellent musicians (especially the wildly overrated drummer Taylor Hawkins) – they should leave that hack kind of stuff to those that are. The funniest part of this show was the so-called dueling guitar event. Grohl, hamming it up to the tee for yet another hour, was at one end of the venue on a catwalk while another guitarist Chris Shiflett was at the other end. They went back and forth in a series of pedestrian pentatonic hammer ons and pull offs any second year guitarist could do in her or his sleep. The crowd went wild throughout all this, despite the fact they could have heard better soloing by musicians at local venues Lemmons and The Way Out Club that night. And for like five bucks. Dave Grohl likes his music, likes to ham it up, and likes to show off, even when he isn’t really doing anything. These are not bad things, but when packaged with lyrics about nothing but his weird feelings (which are narcissistic and uninteresting) and super boring musical tangents reminiscent of old guys in a garage playing the 12 bar blues quite poorly, it is not a good combination.
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