Back in 2014, Uncle Meat asked me to sit down with him and write up Dave Grohl’s series / album Sonic Highways episode by episode, song by song.  Eight hour day at minimum.  I said OK.  I took meticulous notes.  Then we never finished it.  So I’m posting them all now, nine years late, as-is and unrefined.

FOO FIGHTERS – Sonic Highways 2 – Washington – “The Feast and the Famine”

Washington DC.  Home of the Bad Brains.  PMA: Postive Mental Attitude.  Time to record another song.

The episode begins with the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.  Dave grew up in nearby Virginia, a place that feels like home.  The stark poverty surrounded by the upper crust is the inspiration for “The Feast and the Famine”.  It’s an ugly reality that cannot be ignored.  There was also racial segregation.  The only white people that the kids in Bad Brains saw were their school teachers.

DC didn’t have much of a rock scene in the 70’s, but it did boast some pretty wicked funk.  “The art form that should have been popular instead or rap.”  It’s based on something called the “pocket beat” which switches up the hits to make something new: “Go Go music”.  Pharrell is on hand to offer his perspective of growing up with Go Go funk.  It’s repetitive but irresistible.

Grohl goes to Inner Ear Studios in Virginia, a studio responsible for some early classic Black Flag records with Henry Rollins.  Don Zientara was the producer who was responsible for virtually every punk record to come out of Washington.  Bad Brains bassist Daryl Jenifer says that speed was the key for their brand of punk rock.  Faster and more aggressive, says Rick Rubin. Mike D from the Beastie Boys says that Bad Brains were the best show he’d ever seen.  The original Inner Ear studio was in a house in the suburbs, a crazy juxtaposition of the punk and the normal.  The records were released on Dischord records and other indi labels.  The labels started out of necessity; they cut, folded and glued the record sleeves together themselves.  Ian MacKaye (Minor Threat/Fugazi) has many great stories about the scene at the time.

Virginia band Scream attracted young Dave as a highschool kid.  When they needed a new drummer, Dave gave them a call.  To his surprise, they actually hired him.  He went on to record the pretty crap album No More Censorship, but he was doing it!  When he wasn’t doing that, he was protesting apartheid in Washington.

The new Inner Ear doesn’t seem much bigger inside, but the drum sound that Taylor Hawkins gets is a killer.  It’s the studio that bassist Nate Mendel was most looking forward to, because of all the records he loved that were made there.  The band start working on a stuttery, syncopated riff.  It’s rhythmically interesting, but the melody reeks of punk rock.  It combined the punk/funk relationship in Washington DC.  It has the speed and melody of punk, but with the rhythmic chops of funk.  It’s not a basic, straightforward punk song due to the interesting stuttering rhythm.  To Meat, it sounds like Foo Fighters.

Episode 4/5 stars

Song 4/5 stars

Back in 2014, Uncle Meat asked me to sit down with him and write up Dave Grohl’s series / album Sonic Highways episode by episode, song by song.  Eight hour day at minimum.  I said OK.  I took meticulous notes.  Then we never finished it.  So I’m posting them all now, nine years late, as-is and unrefined.

FOO FIGHTERS – Sonic Highways 1 – Chicago “Something From Nothing”

Chicago.  20 years.  Time to do something special. Something they’d never done before.

The assumption is that the environment in which you record, affects the finished recording.  The history of each city resonates in the grooves.

Buddy Guy, Joe Walsh, Bonnie Raitt, Rick Neilson, Jimmie Vaughan, Billy Gibbons, and more are all on hand to talk about the Chicago blues.  It all started with Muddy Waters – “Muddy was the magnet.”  The blues clubs in Chicago grew into a phenomenon.  Buddy Guy came to Chicago “looking for a dime, but found a quarter”.  These blues roots later influenced the guitar work of Cheap Trick’s Rick Neilson.  Coming up, he played with all the greats before finding his own fame.

The Foo Fighters enter the Chicago studio of producer Steve Albini, a tenacious bastard of a producer clad in coveralls, to see what will happen.  Dave Grohl is a big fan of his drum sound, having worked with him before on In Utero, and he knows he will get a huge drum sound here.  Butch Vig is the producer for the sessions. Albini, though, was initially attracted to Chicago for its infant punk scene.  He was an “annoying kid” who hung out with the band Naked Raygun, who really kicked off the scene.  Even Dave Grohl’s Chicago cousin Tracey had a punk band called Verboten.  Punk was coming up in Chicago.  The record store Wax Trax was critical to the growing scene.  Grohl himself bought records there when visiting his cousins in town.

“Something From Nothing” begins to emerge from that funky “Holy Diver” riff.  Chris Shifflet lays down a noisy, fast guitar solo with the raving encouragement of his bandmates.  Rick Neilson lays down some thick chords, even though the Foo Fighters already have three guitarists!  Lyrically, a lot of the song comes from Buddy Guy’s own story coming up in Chicago.  The record company wanted him to change his name.  “Buddy Guy isn’t a stage name.”  How wrong they were!  Buddy Guy used to make rudimentary musical instruments with buttons and strings, and that made it into the lyrics.

The result is a powerful, epic song of massive proportions.  It snakes its way through multiple riffs and sections, but it’s that “Holy Diver” riff that first hooks you.  “Funky Diver”, maybe.  It’s a clear sonic assault.  This is, by far, Uncle Meat’s favourite Foo Fighters song.

Episode 4.5/5 stars

Song 5/5 stars