FOO FIGHTERS – Sonic Highways 8 – New York – “I am a River”

New York City.  The end of our journey, and the very last song on Sonic Highways.

We’ve had a hell of an education so far.  New York is the final stop, the “greatest city in America” according to Grohl.  If you make it there, you can make it anywhere, says LL Cool J.  Every style of music could be heard just by turning the dial.  Tin Pan Alley, Billy Holiday, Woodie Guthrie, Lou Reed, New York Dolls…the scene was eternal and endless.  The streets, and the recording studios, were tight and crammed with people.

CBGB’s, Max’s Kansas City, the folk singer-songwriter scenes all formed a potent mix of styles.  The Ramones and Dead Boys emerged, as did the hip hop scene.  Hip hop started in New York, in the Bronx, but soon spread to Brooklyn and Queens and Long Island.  Guys like the Beastie Boys made the jump from punk rock to hip hop, because the attitude was the same.  “Rap seemed like a party, and then Public Enemy came out,” says Grohl.  They introduced a militancy that hadn’t existed in rap before.  Chuck D was influenced by the things he saw around him in the aftermath of the Vietnam war.

Woodie Guthrie did something similar.  He “wrote what he saw” which is something Dave Grohl tried to do, for a change, on “I am a River”.  Dave noticed that things are all connected, the stories and the people.  “I am a River” also refers to an underground river that runs beneath Electric Lady studios.

Jimmy “Shoes” Iovine became one of the most powerful men in music, and he was right there recording John Lennon and Elton John in the late 70’s.  Electric Lady studios, built by Hendrix, was the place for artists like Kiss, Bowie and Zeppelin to record.  But Dave chose the Magic Shop, in Soho.  Owner Steve Rosenthal has a collection of vintage keyboards to use (and bands like Coldplay did use them).  So did Norah Jones, Arcade Fire, and David Bowie.  The Magic Shop isn’t in the nicest part of town, but it does have an incredible sounding drum room.  Butch Vig recorded Sonic Youth’s Dirty there.  The room even has a Neve board.

When MTV stopped playing rock and roll, the Magic Shop had to do something to survive.  Now, the main income in made in another room, restoring old classic recordings for permanent storage.  The future, says Steve Rosenthal, is “cloudy”.  He doesn’t know if recording studios are obsolete in the face of laptops and easy home recording.  The final interview presented is with President Obama, who thinks it’s more important to produce art than to consume it.  “It’s all about the garage band, the juke joint, the jazz club.  It’s about people rejecting what’s already there to create something entirely new.”  It’s the American dream he says.  Play some rock and roll, take a chance, and make it.  Obama refers to “musical rivers” that connect us, bringing us back full circle.

Finally, “I am a River” closes the Sonic Highways series and album.  It has a long, slow and meandering Floydian intro, and a pleasant easy melody.  Dave mentions the “water” beneath the “subway floor”.  It’s your typical Foo Fighters closer. It builds from quiet to more epic, with choruses of shimmering guitars.   It’s nothing new for Foo Fighters, but it is basically everything you expect for a closer.  A youth string section joins them to end the album in style.

As an album, we applaud the Foo Fighters for the concept and vision of what into making it.  Without the TV series, however, we would have no inclination about what makes each song different.  Sonic Highways would remain “just another Foo Fighters album,” all but interchangeable with the last two.  That’s unfortunate.

Episode 4.5/5 stars

Song 3.5/5 stars

Album 4/5 stars

Series 5/5 stars

FOO FIGHTERS – Sonic Highways 6 – New Orleans – “In the Clear”

New Orleans.  Streetcars, paddlewheels, big brass and the Foo Fighters.  Let’s rock!

The city is alive with music, all day and all night.  It starts with the jazz, Louis Armstrong all the way down to Harry Connick Jr.  Little Richard transformed it into rock and roll.  Dr. John was born there, and was mentored by Louis Armstrong.  Preservation Jazz Hall was the historic place to be, but could it stand up to the full blast of the Foo Fighters?  The streetfront venue picks up all sorts of crowd noise, from horses to passing musicians.  It’s all part of the charm.

In this installment, Dave speaks to Allen Toussaint, born and raised in New Orleans, in a segregated city.  It was actually illegal for black and white musicians to share a stage together.  “It just seemed jive to me,” says Dr. John, who played with who he wanted to play with regardless of the consequences.   Allen Toussaint wrote one of his biggest hits, “Summer Nights” which was directly inspired by the New Orleans sky at night.  Also from New Orleans came the “first family of funk”, the Meters.  The funk they produced was a new form for New Orleans – the Meters sound.

The Foo Fighters were invited to play the Jazz Festival, an historic event that couldn’t even happen until the end of segregation laws.  Until then, a jazz festival in New Orleans was simply not possible.  It’s an honor to be invited.  New Orleans was a cultural mecca, rich with distinct influences from around the Gulf of Mexico, and Africa as well.  Dave’s also invited to the Hall’s piano player’s house to eat and jam with his family.  It’s a really old fashioned traditional way of life.  Music is more important to the people of New Orleans than any of the other cities they visited.

When Katrina hit, seven of the eight members of the Preservation Hall band lost their homes.  It had a devastating effect but also brought people together.  The people learned to appreciate music just a little bit more.

It’s hard to get Grohl back into the Preservation Hall to work on the chunky, Motley riff of “In the Clear”.  The French quarter has its charms, and he’s busy hanging at the bar across the street with Nate Mendel!  Once they get their shit together, “In the Clear” emerges as a singalong hard rock track.  The lyrics reflect the perseverance  of the city, but the music doesn’t have any of its rich cultural sheen.  For a song inspired by New Orleans, and jamming with these local musicians, it would have been nice for them to shed a bit of the rock.  You can’t hear any influence of the old.

Episode 4/5 stars

Song 2/5 stars (Meat)

Song 3/5 stars (LeBrain)

FOO FIGHTERS – Sonic Highways 5 – Los Angeles – “Outside”

L.A.  Home of Pat Smear and the Germs.  Pat wouldn’t live anywhere else.  It’s Hotel California!

Lots of people went to L.A. to make it.  Very few did.  The first that did in the 1960’s had sunny, California sounds.  Then came the excess and rock and roll stylings of Motley Crue.  To a young Duff McKagan, straight off the bus from Seattle, it was “the wild west”.  The desert itself attracted the artist types and a hippy mentality.  Foo Fighters recorded The Color and the Shape there, but on a day off, Dave went into the desert to find an obscure studio called Rancho de la Luna.  It was home of the “desert scene” there.  Daniel Lanois helped set it up.  It’s the weirdest studio you’ve ever seen, loaded with weird, creepy and quaint nicknacks.  It’s tiny. How the fuck are the Foo Fighters going to fit in that room?

That little room necessitates all five players to be in close quarters.  No room for pianos this time, so it has to be a bare arrangement.  In the desert, there is nothing to distract the artists.  Except Joe Walsh, who shows up to lay down a quintessential solo, blowing the mind of Taylor Hawkins, who just gushes.  “That was so fuckin’ RAD!”

Meanwhile, guitarist Pat Smear is eager to hit his old home town.  Rodney Bingenheimer was the DJ you wanted to impress back then, if you wanted to make it big.  He was the first to play Pat on the radio.  He was known as the “mayor of Sunset Strip”, knowing everybody and owning the coolest clubs.  Iggy Pop played there.  Paul Stanley would check it out to see what bands were coming up.  Joan Jett and Lita Ford were regulars.  They formed the Runaways in L.A., and struggled with the sexist assholes and persevered.  Pat Smear ended up as one of their groupies.  Pat formed the Germs with the very disturbed Darby Crash, who influenced Nirvana’s frontman (and Smear’s future bandmate) Kurt Cobain.  They were also the band who convinced Duff McKagan to play music.

As a footnote, Darby Crash purposely overdosed on heroine, in order to be remembered as famous.  Even this backfired when John Lennon was killed the following day, meaning nobody would ever remember the death of Darby Crash.

Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age was born in Palm Springs, “on the edge of civilization”.  Mario Lalli, Scott Reeder, and other cornerstones of the stoner rock scene would take a generator out into the desert and play concerts by word of mouth.  They’d take mushrooms and put on a show.  According to Scott Reeder, “there was nowhere for you to play, where you could get that fucked up.”  The environment was “lawless and free”, and that was the beginning of Kyuss.  They were the antithesis of what was happening in metal at the time: the precision and speed. This was more about making a big, heavy detuned noise.  According to Grohl, Kyuss “blew my fucking mind.”  He bought extra copies of Blues for the Red Sun just to give to people.

“Outside” doesn’t sound as much like Foo Fighters as much; Grohl’s voice has a thinner sound this time.  The lyrics recall the openness of the desert.  “There’s a long straight road, out of the cold.”  The chorus is really memorable.  There are certain guitar licks that sound like they were lifted from past Foo Fighters songs such as “Everlong”.  It’s really special on that Joe Walsh solo, where he makes two notes sound more important than any others in the whole song.

Episode 5/5 stars because Kyuss

Song 4/5 stars