Foo Fighters @ The Forum. 10/13/11.

I remember the  exact moment I realized I was a huge Foo Fighters fan. It was in 2005, at the Long Beach Arena. Foo Fighters were doing their first nation wide arena tour and were co-headlining with Weezer. The FOOZER tour as it was called was one hell of a show. I'm an die-hard Weezer geek and always liked the Foo Fighters radio songs, I even owned a few of their CD's, so I figured this concert was a no brainer. Well, Weezer was fun and all but holy shit the Foo Fighters stole the show. I walked out that night with one thought in my head: Foo Fighters do not fuck around.

Flash forward six years later. Foo Fighters have only gotten bigger, having become arena rock masters and even headlining stadiums/massive festivals these days. The band's Los Angeles stop on this tour was their hometown show and they sure made it feel like one. It was just the band, the stage, and 18,000 of their friends hanging out for three hours.

We missed the opening bands due to hunger and hassling to park. Eating before hand turned out to be a genius idea since Foo Fighters played a marathon set that yes, really did go on for close to three hours! Everyone got their money's worth tonight that's for sure. They played a heap of tracks off their newest album, Wasting Light. The album is so good it's stupid. Go get it. Aside from their awesome new material, the band tapped into their massive catalog of hits from their 17 year career and kept everyone on their feet. Songs like "This is a Call," "Monkey Wrench," and "Breakout" for the oldz, "The Pretender," "Skin and Bones" and "Best of You" for the millennials. Not to mention the band's laundry list of anthems. "My Hero," "Times Like These," "One By One," "Everlong." It's kind of astonishing when you think about it. Nothing like hearing 18,000 people drowning out Dave Grohl, screaming "Heee's ORdinaarrrrry!" or "THE BEST. THE BEST. THE BEST."

My two highlights of the night were when they turned "Stacked Actors" into an extended jam/dueling guitar solo battle. Then, when they seamlessly mashed up their awesome new song "Dear Rosemary" with Tom Petty's classic "Breakdown." Pretty rad, especially since Dave Grohl was asked to join Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers after Nirvana disbanded back in the day (learned that little tidbit from the Foo Fighters movie =p ).

A few gripes about the show. Our seats were a little farther than I would have liked. We had a great view of the band, but the sound was little muddled at times. Also, with heat tending to rise and all, it got wicked hot up where we were. Nothing major though. The band's energy and amazingly setlist got us through just fine. I didn't take any photos/video since we were a wee bit out of range for that but seriously I'm sure just about everyone knows what the Foo Fighters sound like anyways. If not...get out from under your rock and Google them pronto!

I'll leave you with some rad footage of Foo Fighters playing "Breakdown" in some lucky bastards garage. Imagine this x18,000 and that's what the show at The Forum was like.