 Foo Fighters, Weezer satisfy at Wachovia
The bespectacled geeks of Weezer seem like the types who would have hung around the computer lab after school publishing a little emo fanzine.
Down the hall, you would have found the long-haired Foo Fighters, holed up in wood shop fashioning smoking paraphernalia from found parts while blasting Led Zeppelin on a boom box.
They form an unlikely alliance. But the principals of the co-headlining "Foozer" tour, which played a sold-out Wachovia Center Thursday, showed that if you fill an arena with the glorious noise of power chords and radio staples, the fans will come. And leave feeling they got bang for their buck.
With huge choruses, and guitar and drum sounds engineered to kill, Weezer has never hid its arena-rock ambitions - particularly on the last couple of albums, like this year's not-so-hot Make Believe .
That record's stomp-and-shout first single, "Beverly Hills," wants to be Joan Jett's "I Love Rock & Roll" and Steve Miller's "The Joker." It wants to be funny, too, though you can never really tell with Weezer front man Rivers Cuomo. Live, it did nothing but kill the buzz generated by the plowing "El Scorcho," with a jerky, funk backbeat supplied by drummer Pat Wilson, and the quiet-storm falsettos that steamed up "Say It Ain't So."
The Foos headlined this show (the acts alternate nightly), and leader Dave Grohl led them through an 80-minute set as though his hair were on fire. His throat probably was, the way he screamed through the martial opener "In Your Honor" and the head-rattling "All My Life."
They performed in front of what looked like an amplifier junkyard. After the sonic boom they unloaded on the Courtney Love-baiting song "Stacked Actors," and the Beach-Boys-on-Red-Bull encore "This Is a Call," they might have had a few more contributions to the pile.
Delightful as the decibel barrage was, it wasn't all about the crunch. There were (relatively) mellow moments of pop splendor, like "Learn to Fly," and the jangling new song "Cold Day in the Sun," which saw drummer Taylor Hawkins fronting the band as Grohl slid behind the kit.
And sweet spots, too: Grohl dedicated "Everlong" to his wife, who was illuminated by a spotlight as she stood by the soundboard. Awww. |
