Back & Forth – Foo Fighters

I’ve stayed away from theme week for a tiny while. Some of the ones I’ve wanted to do have seemed too great a task. Whenever I think about doing a Clash theme or a Hendrix theme or a Sabbath theme I think to myself ‘How the hell do I get that down to seven picks?’

That’s the thing with SteveForTheDeaf. It’s governed by my many arbitrary unwritten rules. So when we did Alice Cooper week all the entries were Alice and Alice alone.

We did Bowie and they were all covers. We did Pearl Jam and it covered mostly side projects. Usually the rule is no two posts in a row by the same act (unless it’s Alice)… A week is long time for people to read about a band they don’t like, so I try to change it up, all the time.

On reflection though, there is the reality that this is My Website and I set about writing about the music I love (& then there is always the ‘stuff your rules SteveForTheDeaf I’ll do what I want’ voice in the back of my head) so we’re doing more than a week on this one.

This isn’t Dave Grohl Week, It’s not strictly a list of Foo Fighters stuff either. And yet we’re going to be hearing from Dave, Taylor, Nate and Pat and their extended universe of nice guy rockers over the next 14 entries so I can’t resist this puntastic title. Welcome to Foo Fortnight. Foo Fight-night? Fort Fighters?

Day one of fourteen. Footeen? Fook it let’s go.

My favourite Foo’s track is from what I consider their second best album. It’s a deep cut. It’s Back And Forth from Wasting Light.

Back And Forth is just a great song. It’s got that magic uplifting intangible element to it that ‘favourite songs’ have. I can’t put my finger on why Back And Forth is the Foo’s song I love the most but I play the hell out of this track all the time and I find it a grin inducing buzz every time I do.

Wasting Light was the album that sealed the band as permanent A List headliners. They had been huge for a long time before 2011 but the output had been patchy if we’re all honest with one another for a couple of records. That’s before the ‘back to tape’ obsession kicked in and they truly nailed what it was that made this band THE biggest non memorial heavy rock band in the world.

I’d seen them live several times at this point and yet the Wasting Light Tour was the one that cemented their reputation as the ultimate ‘deliver the goods’ live act.

In the UK they played two incredible summer shows at the MK Bowl with Bob Mould joining them as special guest and Alice Cooper playing the encore with them on the second night. A week later they came back to the UK for the iTunes Festival.

I was at the Roundhouse show which has gone down in legend as one of the bands finest live recordings. It’s the one with Lemmy on guest vocals for the Probot cover. It’s the one where Dave makes his way across the audience to play a solo on the bar. It’s the one where he stops the show and kicks a guy out for fighting. It’s the one where they bring out the guys from Queen to play the encore. It’s also one of the finest concerts I ever saw.

The Foo’s didn’t play Back And Forth at any of those three shows, they were promoting Wasting Light though and the buzz around the band at the time was palpable. The album came with an inch of the original master tape tucked into it’s sleeve. I’d love to think I’ve got a split second of this track sitting on my racks.