Foo Fighters 11/7/11

Yep, they're still around after 16 years and don't seem to be going anywhere, anytime soon.  Kinda like openers Social Distortion, who put on about the same show as when I saw them the first time, only it was about 30 minutes instead of a couple of hours.  The Foo's have quite a play list to choose from after eight albums and jammed on a wide range of songs, spanning their career.  Gwinnett Arena isn't nearly as intimate a setting as the Tabernacle, but it did afford Dave a cat walk stretched almost to the back with a rising platform about 15 feet off the ground.  He told us up front that this was going to be a long night and that they were going for a 2 1/2 hour plus gig.  But, turns out that meant that he was going to kill a significant amount of time by hamming it up with the crowd and attempting to be a stand-up comedian.  A little goes a long way, especially when you have so many songs that want to be heard.  As far as rock star humor goes, keep it short, dry, and obscene.  They made up for it by bustin out some cool covers like Pink Floyd's "In The Flesh?" and a dueling guitar solo between Dave and Chris Shiflett in the middle of "Stacked Actors" that sounded loosely akin to the solo in Zeppelin's "Heartbreaker."  At one point they had all the lights turned down and I was surprised to see a 50/50 ratio of the archaic yellow glow of hand-held fire to the blue and white illumination of modern communication devices.  Does anyone remember going to shows without those distracting text machines?  Ancient memories, huh?  The encore set brought Dave back to his perch for a couple of acoustic tunes but then brought the whole band back in the middle of "Times Like These."  The next tune, "Dear Rosemary," was off the new album, Wasting Light, and unexpectedly faded into Tom Petty's "Breakdown."  With a dazzling light show throughout the night they closed it down with "Everlong."  Arena Rock lives on.