Twenty-year anniversary pieces in Stereogum and The AV Club this week reminded me that the Foo Fighters’ sophomore album reached that milestone recently.
I remember the excitement of seeing the video for lead single “Monkey Wrench” on MTV for the first time; the red room, Dave’s short hair, the impossibly high level of energy captured in the recording, and then the third verse hitting and taking it from 11/10 to 12. It overwhelmed every pleasure center in a rock kid’s brain. It was like switching to color TV from black and white.
Bear and Matt have been my super-geek-out fellow Foo Fighters fans. Bear and I traded links any time there were singles out for upcoming albums, news of tours or recording sessions, or random Dave or Taylor interviews and videos. I watched “The Pretender” video on repeat with Matt for the first time together (itself 10 years old in August) at his old house before Five Star Crush practice one night.
It’s not cool to be a big Foo Fighters fan and hasn’t been for a long time. I think that too-cool-for-Foo take is pretty tired; they’re the best mainstream rock band of the last 25 years and it’s not really close. Criticizing them for not being what the critic wants them to be – noisier, less popular, more arch, whatever – says more about the critic than anything else.
I don’t listen to The Colour And The Shape very often because I don’t need to; I know it by heart.