Episode 26
Jeff and Scot talk to Jay Caruso about Foo Fighters.
Introducing the Band
Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) with guest Jay Caruso, editorial writer & board member at the Dallas Morning News and co-host of the Fifth Estate podcast. Follow Jay on Twitter at @JayCaruso, check out the Fifth Estate here, and read his most recent work here.
Jay’s Musical Pick: Foo Fighters
This week the gang dusts up the ashes from Nirvana’s auto-combustion as they cover Foo Fighters, Dave Grohl’s wildly successful follow-up band. Jay talks about how he got into the Fighters Of Foo via ’90s radio play, initially skeptical when he heard “Big Me” as “the next big single from the drummer of Nirvana” and then SOLD SOLD SOLD once “Everlong” checked, he bought The Colour Of The Shape, and was in for the long run. Scot, as a DJ, was familiar with them from jump, but for once it’s Jeff who is coming to a band on Political Beats as a true tyro: to him, the Foos were merely a namechecked “ex-Nirvana” band until *literally* three weeks ago, at which point he dove into their discography and realized that he’d been a terrible, terrible fool. Everyone appreciates the fact that, while they take their music seriously, they don’t take themselves seriously — which anyone who’s seen any of their music videos already figured out.
From mere colour to real shape: Foo Fighters and The Colour and the Shape
The gang discusses how the band’s first album emerged from the wreckage of Nirvana, with Grohl recovering from depression after Kurt Cobain’s suicide to go in and record a demo tape of his favorite self-penned songs all by his lonesome: drums, bass, guitars, vocals, the whole shebang. That tape was so good that it became, after a mere remix, Foo Fighters (1995): a debut album for a band that wasn’t, at that point, actually even a band. But everyone loves this one and considers it among the Foos’ best, particularly Jeff, who considers it a My Bloody Valentine tribute record in all but name outside of “This Is A Call,” which is the most Nirvana-like song Nirvana never recorded.
The big hosannahs are reserved for 1997’s The Colour And The Shape, however. Suddenly the Foo Fighters are an actual band: Grohl recruited the rhythm section of the newly-defunct Sunny Day Real Estate and added ex-Nirvana (touring version) guitarist Pat Smear — but then subtracted the Sunny Day drummer to re-record his tracks himself! — and came up with one of the finest albums of the late ’90s, and one of the most long-lasting as well. We’ve collectively forgotten the vast majority of the alt-rock/hard-rock acts from that era, but Shape lives on, all the way from “Dolls” to “New Way Home.” Jeff adores the whiplash contrasts of “My Poor Brain” and the earned anthemicism of “My Hero,” while Scot and Jay both single out “Everlong.” Scot and Jeff strongly disagree about the merits of “Hey, Johnny Park!” (“in my notes, there’s a big equals-sign saying ‘Goo Goo Dolls'” — Jeff), but there is universal agreement about the utterly consistent greatness of the rest of Colour And The Shape, whether it’s “Monkey Wrench,” “Up In Arms,” or “Wind Up.”
Something Left to Lose
Opinions differ about the Foo Fighters’ 1999 follow-up (recorded as a drums/guitar/bass trio) There Is Nothing Left To Lose. Jeff thinks this is nearly as good as The Colour And The Shape, and labels the two-song sequence of “Generator” and “Aurora” as the backbone of the Foos’ entire care
Published on 7 years, 9 months ago
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