Last night we lamed out and didn’t make it to either the Roy Hargrove/Jason Moran/Bad Plus OR The Reggie Watts shows in Brooklyn, despite their appealing freeness. And this is on top of the abslutely unconscionable move I tok in NOT attending the Bang on a Can marathon, not even the free performances by Phillip Glass and Glenn Branca.  I know what you’re thinking, why would this dude write a music blog with pretensions of being “cutting edge” or “post modern” and then go on, in less than the course of a week, to skip shows by two of the most famous American 20th century composers, dueling piano trios, and a groundbreaking,genre and medium-bending comedian/musician?

I know, I don’t even really know who I am anymore either, but I’ll tell ya what, I’m gonna get at least some of my cred back with the absolute MONSTER of a show that I’m going to tonight at 285 Kent. The Saturday night line-up at the Williamsburg venue started out exciting enough, the Danish punk buzz-band, Iceage were set to open for Nashville fuzz-rock duo JEFF the Brotherhood - already a fairly high profile show for a spot that deals mostly in local acts.  But then the “Special Guest” spot that had accompanied some postings of the concert was unveiled to be none other than Fucked Up, architects of the soon to be released, but no longer streaming on NPR, hardcore-musical, David Comes to Life, a relentless narrative belted out by frontman Pink Eyes (aka Damian Abraham) over chugging guitars and speed-punk tempos. Think Coheed and Cambria mixed with Refused (whose The Shape of Punk to Come is about to get a sweet 3 disk reissue).  Not to mention that David comes on the heels of their Polaris Prize winning album, The Chemistry of Common Life.

It’s going to be one intense evening, hopefully each act will build on each other and take the opportunity to make a statement about where hard guitar music is at in 2011.   Just in case you feel like making it out, the ticketing policy is kinda goofy, you’ll have to go to Record Grouch in Williamsburg, that ‘s the only way to score ‘em.

Iceage

 JEFF the Brotherhood

Fucked Up

Finally, and on the subject of tours, I just went to The Smoking Gun and read about the 2011 Foo Fighters Tour Rider.  Evidently Grohl, Smear, and Co. are notorious for their goofy, tongue-in-cheek requests while they’re on the road.  This year they put form in front of content though by using the children’s activity book theme (think color by numbers, word jumble, etc.) to get their points across.  I wonder these days just who the Foo Fighters are anymore.  The blonde drummer has stuck around from the beginning I think, then Grohl too.  I remember Pat Smear quitting after the VMAs like 10 years ago, but he’s back. I thought that they went down to a 3 man line-up at one point, and now they’ve bounced back up to 5.  I could be wrong here, the last album I really got into was the still awesome, The Color and The Shape.  Still, I have the nagging suspicion that in 2011 The Foo Fighters is the cash cow that Grohl, and whatever Seattle buddies he has got left  use to travel the world and print their own money. Not hating, not by any means, just calling it like I see it.

In any case here’s some vintage Foo for old times sake:

Now there’s a band that could cover Nirvana! Just like these guys…