Foo Fighters: ACL Live at the Moody Theater: 10/12/23

This was a show that I had been looking forward to for a really long time - the Foo Fighters ACL TV show taping.  When it was first announced I put out feelers with everyone I knew to see about getting in the door, but it was looking dire until about a week before the show, when my firm decided that I would get the tickets the firm doles out to only its biggest and best star performers.  (or, I'm an immaculate kiss ass with the people in control of those tickets.  Or, none of the other stodgy people I work with wanted to hear Dave Grohl shred his vocal chords in a tiny theater.  Not sure which.).

Anyway, I had just gotten to see the Foos play their big stage show at ACL, and I have been playing their new disc on repeat to get into the new tunes, so I was very much ready for the experience.  My hope was that we were going to get something a little more intimate, almost like an MTV Unplugged thing where they would tell stories about losing Taylor Hawkins or Dave talking about losing his mom.  Nothing really like that, overall, this was a loud ass rock show, but there was one moment like that that has changed my appreciation for the song "The Glass."

Funny not funny start to the story.  I laugh at people all the time who go to the rock show and feel the need to WOOOOHOOO about everything.  At the ACL show, Grohl was introducing "My Hero" and said something about how it's been "thirty-three fuckin' years" of something, and the lady beside me was like WOOOOOOOOOOYEAHHHHHH!  Which just makes no sense.  So, at the taping, Grohl started talking about losing his mom, and when he did, some lady on the floor goes WOOOOOHOOO!  Which caused Dave to pause, look over with a incredulous look, and say something like "well, you really fucked that up."  Pretty funny.  

Anyway, this song is about how he couldn't be with his mom as she was dying in the hospital, that he had to sit on the other side of glass as he visited her - that is the "something between us" that he could see through, but also reflected his own face back to him as he was seeing her face.  Definitely changed the tenor of the song to think that he wrote it about watching his mom die.

So, the show was great - just a powerful blast of rock and roll.  A few tender moments - he played "Everlong" solo acoustic from the front of the stage - but mostly it was songs from their last few albums blasted as loud as they could go.  Which, of course, I would have rather had a different setlist that hewed more to the classics, but at the same time, it was really fun to get some different stuff on the table.

The one spot where I would have replaced the tune - they played "La Dee Da" from Concrete and Gold, and I just think that song is weak.  "T-Shirt" is my favorite tune from that album, but even "Run" would have been a better tune to play.  But, I have been told that I bitch too much about setlists at shows that I otherwise enjoy, so I'll stop my critique there and just say that hearing "Aurora" and "Generator" and "This is a Call" were excellent.