Imagine walking in to a karaoke bar to find none other than Bono up on stage doing Psycho Killer by Talking Heads. Well, that’s what happened to the patrons of Bar Secreto in Sao Paulo last night. Bono, along with band mates Larry Mullen Jr., and The Edge, as well as Dom Howard from Muse decided to celebrate the final show of the South American leg of the U2 360 Tour by doing some karaoke. The karaoke event, with a live backing band, is a recurring feature every Thursday at Bar Secreto.
Aside from Bono’s performance, which had both Dom and Larry on drums, The Edge did David Bowie’s Let’s Dance, and the Stones’ Miss You. Larry took up vocal duties for Wild Rover, a song which he occasionally performed on stage with U2 during the Zoo TV Tour.
About a year ago rumors started that British glam rockers The Darkness were reuniting. Brothers Justin and Dan Hawkins were said to have buried the hatchet and started writing music together again. Then all was quiet up until a couple of months ago, when all of a sudden an official Facebook group for The Darkness appeared, and a website, theactualdarkness.com. Now it seems as though a summer tour is in the works, and with the original four-piece lineup none the less! The Darkness are scheduled to appear at the Download Festival on June 10th, as well as Getaway Rock in Sweden on July 8th.
I fondly remember seeing The Darkness back in 2004 at Fryshuset in Stockholm, and the great show they put on. At one point Justin passed right by where we were standing during Love on the Rocks With No Ice, when one of the crew members were carrying him around on his shoulders through the audience while he played the guitar solo. There are also reports coming out of a new album that is supposedly almost done. Hopefully this means that we’ll get to see The Darkness touring behind a new album in the fall as headliners instead of just festival appearances.
Last night I was lucky enough to see Foo Fighters in an intimate club setting at Nalen in Stockholm. We were first in line, waiting outside in the cold for three and a half hours. Needless to say we got front row center. While waiting in line two guys pulled up to deliver a Mellotron to the venue. As it turned out later one of the quys happend to be Rami Jaffee, Foo Fighters’ touring keyboardist and member of The Wallflowers! If I had only realized that sooner I would’ve asked to take a picture with him. I used to listen to The Wallflowers all the time in the late nineties.
After maybe half an hour Taylor Hawkins came out to do his own sound check! I’ve never seen that happen before. When everyone started chanting for Taylor he made everyone chant for his drum tech instead (Danny?). After another ten minutes or so Chris Shiflett came out for his sound check. They obviously weren’t trusting their crew to take care of it! Jack Daniel’s was sponsoring the event and the whole place had the sweet smell of JD. Too bad there was no waitress service for the front row.
When the concert finally started, Dave Grohl said hello to the crowd and went straight in to Bridge Burning, proceeding to play every song from upcoming album Wasting Light in chronological order. What a treat it was! Of the new songs I really like White Limo and Bridge Burning, but my two absolute favorites are Arlandria and I Should Have Known. For the latter, Pat Smear played an awesome double guitar/bass combo. Dave played his blue Gibson Trini Lopez guitar for almost the entire concert. I was amazed that he didn’t have to re-tune once while playing all of Wasting Light.
Once they finished finished the last song of Wasting Light, Walk, Dave announced that the Foo’s have over a hundred songs and they would “only” be playing 36 of them tonight (it ended up being 33)! Just before they came on stage, the roadies actually switched out all of the setlists that were taped to the stage floor. From what I have seen afterwards, what happened was that they actually added on eight more songs to the set. It was hard to believe that they would put so much in to a little club gig, but you could tell they were all having fun on stage. Dave talked about how these small shows are the really great ones.
Then it was time for a two hour “regular” concert which they started off with All My Life, and Times Like These. Could it possibly get better than that? The whole concert was fantastic, and I can not think of a single song that I didn’t get to hear. It’s fun that they’re actually playing Big Me live, which I think they weren’t doing for quite a while. All songs were played plugged in, even Cold Day in the Sun, and Skin and Bones. Stacked Actors is always my live favorite – I love the guitar duel between Dave and Chris. And Best of You sounded amazing! I also have to mention that the pressure from the crowd was insane! There’s only a handful of times when I’ve gotten that crushed against the fence before. I thought I was going to have marks from the steel mesh in the fence on my body!
When the band came out for the encore the crowd was still chanting Best of You. Taylor started playing along and Dave started singing Walking on Sunshine! Dave talked about how bands who have played together for ten years are not allowed to play for less than two hours, and that by that reasoning, the Rolling Stones should have to play eight hour sets. Then Taylor and Chris started playing Start Me Up, while Dave pretended to walk a cross the stage with a walker – hilarious! For the first song of the encore Dave decided to surprise the band by just starting to play a song that wasn’t on the setlist, Wattershed. The Pretender was great fun and the crowd went nuts. Some guy in the audience called out for a bass solo (???), which Dave thought was really funny, remarking how it was a great night, but it could be a great night with a bass solo. During set closer This is a Call, Dave tried jokingly to get Nate to burst in to a soaring bass solo, but Mr. Mendel wisely abstained from such atrocities.
And so ended an amazing almost three hour long concert with thirty-three songs, by far the longest set list I’ve experienced (the longest concert was Bruce Springsteen on June 7th 2009 at Stockholm Stadion). Thank you Foo Fighters for choosing Sweden for such a special event. Can’t wait to see you again this summer in Stockholm!
Unfortunately the security was very tight and I wasn’t able to bring in my camera, so all I have right now are some crappy pictures from my iPhone 3G. Hopefully I’ll get some better ones plus some videos soon.
My huge thanks to my friend Erika for letting me tag along as her +1 for the show. I owe you a drink!
01. Bridge Burning
02. Rope
03. Dear Rosemary
04. White Limo
Arlandria
These Days
Back and Forth
A Matter Of Time
Miss The Misery
I Should Have Known
Walk
All My Life
Times Like These
Generator
Up In Arms
My Hero
Long Road To Ruin
Cold Day In The Sun
Big Me
Learn To Fly
Enough Space
Breakout
Stacked Actors
Skin and Bones
Best Of You
Monkey Wrench
Hey, Johnny Park!
Everlong
Encore:
Wattershed
For All The Cows
The Pretender
Aurora
This Is A Call
I saw Buckcherry, Papa Roach, and Disturbed as part of the Taste of Chaos tour package. My main reason for going was Buckcherry. It was fun to finally get to see them, unfortunately I didn’t think they were that great in this particular setting, it felt like an arena is too big for them, I have a feeling they would be much better in a club. I was also a bit disappointed that they only got to play for 35 minutes and chose to play only one song from 15, my favorite album of theirs. The best songs of Buckcherry’s set were Lit Up and Crazy Bitch.
Biggest surprise of the night for me was Papa Roach. I’m not a fan, and have only heard the singles that get played on rock-radio. However, I must say that they were really good live! It turns out that Jacoby Shaddix is quite the entertainer. I really liked the opening song Kick in the Teeth, as well as Scars and Getting Away With Murder. I also have to add that there were quite a few mosh pits going on during Papa Roach’s 55 minute set – insane!
Disturbed were the headliners of the whole event, and probably the main ticket draw, along with Papa Roach. They played a 75 minute set starting with Remnants and Asylum, off of their latest album of that same name. The band put on a great show with tons of energy. Singer David Draiman is a great front man, but his voice did seem a bit strained. Perhaps a remnant from his vocal problems earlier in the fall. The audience was, as is so typically Swedish, slightly unresponsive, and at one point Draiman actually addressed the crowd saying they wouldn’t continue playing until everyone who had seats were standing up. My favorite songs were the Genesis cover Land of Confusion and the insanely powerful finale of Indestructible and Down With the Sickness. Before the band left the stage, Draiman urged everyone that enjoyed the concert to go home and tell two of their friends about it, promising if everyone does that, Disturbed will come back. Then he lead the audience in their “We all are disturbed” chant.
Buckcherry
01. Tired of You
02. Rescue Me
03. All Night Long
04. Oh My Lord
05. Lit Up
06. It’s a Party
07. Dead
08. Crazy Bitch
Papa Roach
01. Intro
02. Kick in the Teeth
03. Lifeline
04. One Track Mind
05. Scars
06. The Enemy
07. Getting Away With Murder
08. …To Be Loved
09. Forever
10. Burn
11. Hollywood Whore
12. Between Angels and Insects
13. Last Resort
Disturbed
01. Remnants
02. Asylum
03. The Game
04. Prayer
05. Liberate
06. Land of Confusion
07. The Animal
08. Inside the Fire
09. Stricken
10. Another Way to Die
11. Stupify
12. Indestructible
13. Down with the Sickness
Now listening to:
