The Musician Comes First

February 25, 2021 3:38 PM

Dave Grohl delivers the SXSW keynote, 2013.
posted by dfm500 (7 comments total)

That was fantastic. My two favorite bits:
1. The 33 song seven inch
2. The fact that Sound City was renting a couch for TEN YEARS.
posted by jonathanhughes at 5:09 PM on February 25, 2021

My old boss!
posted by Ideefixe at 9:51 PM on February 25, 2021

Dave Grohl is gradually usurping Bruce Springsteen in a weird niche for me. He is now the ultimate middle-of-the-road rocker whose music doesn't really do it for me even as I'm convinced they sound like an absolutely cool person and should move into my neighborhood so I can bullshit with them at barbecues. (If that's not too awful of a word salad.)

One of the very most likable people in music.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:12 AM on February 26, 2021 [4 favorites]

I don't own a Foo Fighters album (nor a Nirvana album) but Grohl is absolutely #1 on my list of musicians I want to spend the night drinking with.
posted by COD at 1:50 PM on February 26, 2021

Transcript of the video from Rolling Stone: Dave Grohl’s SXSW Keynote Speech: The Complete Text

Parts that especially resonated with me:

"Guilt. Guilt is cancer. It will confine you, torture you, destroy you as a musician. It is a wall. It is a black hole. It is a thief. It will keep you from YOU. Remember learning your first song, or riff, or writing your first lyric? There was no guilt then. Remember when there WAS no right or wrong? Remember the simple reward of just . . . playing music? You are still, and will always be that person at your core. The musician. And, The musician comes first.

Fuck guilty pleasure. How about . . . just pleasure?
...
When Kurt died, I was lost. I was numb. The music that I had devoted my life to had now betrayed me and broken my heart. I had . . . no voice. I turned off the radio, I put away my records, and packed up my drums. I couldn’t bear to hear someone elses voice singing about pain, or joy, or love, or hate. Not one note. It just hurt much too much.

But eventually . . . that feeling that I had Independence Day, July 4th, 1983, at the base of the Lincoln memorial steps, that feeling came back to me. The same feeling that made me feel possessed and empowered and inspired and enraged, and so in love with life, and so in love with music that it had the power to incite a riot, or an emotion, or start a revolution, or just to save a young boy’s life. I felt it again."

The multitracking demonstration Dave Grohl did with the cassette recorder and player was quite fun.

Thank you for posting!
posted by cynical pinnacle at 4:21 PM on February 26, 2021

I'm not really a Foo Fighters fan, but I also really like Dave Grohl as a person, and as a musician. I was lucky enough to catch him live with Nirvana a few times, as well as to see him play drums with Queens of the Stone Age in a secret show at the Troubadour in West Hollywood (~500 capacity). He hits them drums hard, and his timing is impeccable - exactly what you want in a drummer.
posted by Anoplura at 6:25 PM on February 26, 2021

Loved the Foo Fighters since the start and I'm so pleased that Grohl hasn't milkshake ducked.
posted by dazed_one at 10:11 AM on February 27, 2021