As the other great West Walian wrote, to begin at the beginning: It is a winter, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, here is my promo 12″ of This Is A Call by the Foo Fighters which doesn’t rhyme; arse crack!*
A friend gave me an unprepossessing 12″ one day, as it was more my thing than his. It was.
This Is A Call was quite the entre. Then as now I liked the pleasantly off the wall Pixies-ish lyrics and the chirpy harmonies. Mrs 1537 and I still occasionally sing ‘Fingernails are pretty / Fingernails are good’ to each other apropos of nothing; its an us thing.
The B-sides are ‘Winnebago’ and ‘Podunk’ neither of which were on Foo Fighters. The former is pleasant enough, with a good guitar tone but it doesn’t really go anywhere, definite B-side material. ‘Podunk’ though is a far better belter, easing its way in via some slightly unhinged guitaring and very heavily treated vocals – to the point where, when I read them this afternoon, I did not recognise a single word. I like it.
Which brings us to Foo Fighters, bought from HMV in Athens in October 1997, whilst a preternaturally patient Mrs 1537 wondered why she was wasting her time in the capital of the ancient world in a shop we had at home.
I was really pleased to see Dave Grohl stand up out of the wreckage and stagger on with his life. I really loved the Foo Fighters Buck Rogers ray gun LP cover too, still do. I saw them twice on tour between ’95 and ’98^ and they were really great shows.
Foo Fighters never quite felt like a complete, totally realised LP to me, more a polished up work-in-progress. It was a totally necessary, admirable step forwards and statement of intent. It still knocks me out slightly that, one Greg Dulli guitar part aside, Grohl played everything on here.
Foo Fighters is a good, nostalgic listen for me still from a time when I was younger than both my kids are now (Christ, I’m sooo old!!). There are some excellent cuts here. I really enjoy the slightly Johnny Marr tone to the guitars in the barrelling ‘Good Grief’. The goofy ‘Big Me’ still charms with its simplicity and lack of pretence. The heavier turn on ‘Alone +Easy Target’ also gets a rise out of me, as does that churning breakneck riff on ‘Watershed’, which I absolutely love.
So them’s the positives, a few of the others fail to take flight for me (‘For All The Cows’ would have been better left solely as a jazz pastiche, ‘Floaty’ I like the intro) and a few just sound like a step too far. Foo Fighters would have made an absolutely killer mini-LP^^.
Now, I’ll lay my cards on the table I think FF peaked with Foo Fighters and 1997’s The Colour And The Shape** and an awful lot of everything else they have ever done has bored me, despite the odd excellent track here and there. I am sorry because I do like Mr Grohl despite his ubiquity, which would normally have me running for the hills.
These two records from those far off days of yore still sound really good, in parts. It has been fun revisiting a time when I was fairly young and carefree, both skinnier and skinter than I am today.
Or as that other Welsh chap would have it: Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs, about the lilting house and happy as the grass was green with my Foo Fighters LP; arse crack!
1264 Down.
*if you shout ‘arse crack!’ at the end of any line of poetry it will rhyme, I learned that at university. True story.
^^surely I don’t need to wang on again to you about how much I love mini-LPs?
^once kinda accidentally pretending/letting security assume Mrs 1537 and I were with the wheelchair bound fan in front of us so we got to watch the show from the photo/security pit at the front of the stage. Instant karma alert: said fan ran over my foot during ‘Monkey Wrench’. True story.
**best track ‘Hey, Johnny Park!’ (my fave Foo’s song, not that I have ever owned this on vinyl):
