As Good As It Gets

Allow me to rave, once again, about my incredible wife. For the past couple of weeks, she's had to deal with my preparation for the Missouri Bar Exam, meaning that I was just generally unavailable to talk or hang out or do as much as I usually do to help keep the house in order. She was patient, loving, and incredibly helpful when it came to my studying, and she topped it all off by getting me a fantastic gift to help me relax now that the bar exam is over and done with... tickets to see the Foo Fighters!

Now, I love me some Foo Fighters. A couple of years ago I got to see them perform in DC with Kaiser Chiefs and Weezer, and that experience definitely tops the list of my favorite concerts. I told everyone within reach at that time that it would be worth going to great lengths to see this band live whenever they're on tour.

As misfortune would have it, however, this year's tour did not include any stops within at least a four-hour drive of our home in Saint Louis. I was crushed. I even toyed with making wild trips to Dallas or Nashville in order to catch one of the performances, but all those plans had to go by the wayside due to the fact that most of the "nearby" shows were very inconveniently timed for me. I gave up on the hope that I'd be able to see them on this tour.

In a stroke of blind, crazy luck, though, the scheduled performance in Fayetteville, Arkansas, had to be postponed due to Dave Grohl being ill. The band rescheduled that show for tonight.

I was oblivious to all this, of course. But Jenifer spotted the change in schedule and went above and beyond all expectations by snagging second-row seats for us. So this afternoon we drove the six hours from Saint Louis to Arkansas to take in the show.

As expected, it was awesome. Dave Grohl is a tremendous, energetic, and engaging performer whose motor just keeps running through the entire performance. It was also clear that he felt bad about the previous cancellation (FF has only cancelled three performances in thirteen years of touring), so the band really pulled out the stops to ensure that the concert-goers got their money's worth. The band played for more than two solid hours, with tunes ranging from amped up renditions of their newer songs, wild, enthusiastic arrangements of older, more familiar tunes, and a healthy dose of quieter, acoustic songs that have been an important part of the past couple of albums.

Of the songs played, I think that "Everlong" and "Times Like These" were probably my favorites. Even though the recent tendency has been to play a slower, acoustic version of "Everlong," for this night they ripped it out with its original electric ferocity. Even some of their more obscure selections ("Marigold," "Stacked Actors") had the audience going nuts.

While I can't say that tonight's show was quite the equal of the masterpiece from two years ago, it was an excellent evening and it just reaffirms my commitment relentlessly to pursue opportunities to see these guys again.