Dave Grohl’s band Foo Fighters has played almost everywhere in Vancouver over the years. Take a trip down memory lane.
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Foo Fighters founder Dave Grohl’s concert history in Vancouver stretches back to his teens when Scream played at the long-gone underground venue called Luxury Bob’s.
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Anyone who happened to be in the room that night remembers how hard the drummer in the D.C. hardcore unit hit his drums.
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When Scream disbanded in 1990, Grohl found his way to Seattle where he would replace Chad Channing in a trio called Nirvana. A year later, his pounding playing style was immortalized in the hit Smells Like Teen Spirit and 1991 album Nevermind.
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Nirvana played often in Vancouver over the next three years before the band’s career was cut short by lead singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain’s suicide in 1994. But, a year later, Grohl was back with his new project, Foo Fighters.
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This time, he stepped out from behind the drums to take up the guitar as the band’s lead singer. The name comes from a Second World War term for unidentified flying objects.
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Foo Fighters is presently on the Take Cover Tour in support of its 12th studio album, Your Favourite Toy. With the exception of a few very limited-view seats, the show at B.C. Place on Sunday is completely sold out.
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Before the group gets loud at the local venue, here is a look back across some historic highlights in Foo Fighters’ concerts in town.
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The Commodore Ballroom — July 20, 1995
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Together for only six months, the group featuring former Nirvana touring guitarist Pat Smear, bassist Nate Mendel and drummer William Goldsmith played a 14 song set that opened with the live premiere of the single My Hero. After exhausting its song list, the group closed off its debut with a cover of Gary Numan and Tubeway Army’s Down in the Park.
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While the concert was not reviewed in The Vancouver Sun or Province, photographer Dustin Rabin told Postmedia that the “one thing I can tell you about the show is that it’s the last concert I shot without earplugs!”
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A YouTube video of the performance proves the audio sounded loud, and it is interesting to hear how much Grohl has developed as a vocalist over the decades. He was kind of tentative at that stage.
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Tickets to the show, which also included emo progenitors Shudder to Think and Wool, were a whopping $14 plus service charges!
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EdgeFest, UBC Thunderbird Stadium — July 11, 1998
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The second edition of this all-day music festival at UBC featured Green Day, The Tea Party, Creed and Foo Fighters as headliners with additional sets from local acts like Matthew Good Band, Bif Naked, Holly McNarland and Copyright.
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Foo Fighters’ 11-song set included the local debut of This Is a Call and Tré Cool of Green Day coming onstage with an ice cream cart during Enough Space and pelting people in the audience with flying cones.
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Summersault 2000 — Aug. 4, 2000 at B.C. Place
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A veritable who’s who of 1990s alt-rock acts performed on the nine-band Summersault 2000 bill, which was headlined by The Smashing Pumpkins and included rising Canadian pop-punk stars Sum 41.
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Foo Fighters were in the second slot and on the There Is Nothing Left to Lose tour.
