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Saturday 17 November 2007

Foo Fighters at The O2 Arena (London) with Serj Tankian

4 stars (1 vote). Rate this concert

Venue: The O2 Arena

Millennium Way, Greenwich
SE10 0AX
London, UK

Recent activity

  1. Added to npjones's gigography. 9 days ago
  2. A review with 4 stars was added by Gumgum2804. about 1 month ago

    "The O2 Arena in London is the city’s newest venue and part of what was the old Millennium Dome complex. I’d never been to the dome and had always thought of it as this country’s ‘White Elephant’ joke of an attempt to mark the millennium celebrations, which turned into a bottomless money pit.

    Well that may have been true back then, but now the place has been converted into a state of the art entertainment centre, finally doing the site and the amount of money spent on it some justice. Half of the dome (essentially a bastard big tent) is taken up with the arena itself, a 20,000 capacity self contained behemoth of a building, at least twice the size and height of the old Wembly Arena. The other half is where it gets a bit odd, as it’s made up of real streets, lined with real buildings containing real restaurants and bars, which meant that we ended up getting a bite to eat in a restaurant, in a building, in a tent, like I said odd. The remainder of the site is made up of a 12 screen cinema and the smaller 2,000 capacity Indigo music venue.

    Anyway, enough of the venue, on with the music. After seeing the Foos headline Reading a couple of years back I had no doubt that that would be able to rock a massive arena like this and I wasn’t disappointed, they were absolutely incredible. The atmosphere was very intense for such a big venue and as the band took to the stage at 8.45pm the place went mental as they started with 2 new songs, Let it Die and the awesome first single ‘Pretender’.

    One of the, no sorry THE best thing about Foo Fighters, is frontman, genius, official nicest guy in rock™ Dave Grohl who from the off makes it his business to make sure that every single person who has paid their money to come and see his band have the best gig of there lives, he realy is the epitome of the perfect frontman. Another great thing about the Foos is that they appreciate the fact that they have an incredible back catalogue of music, so while other bands may try to shove their latest album down their fans throats we’re treated to a 2 hour plus greatest hits set that includes all the biggies (‘Times Like These’, ‘Breakout’, ‘Monkey Wrench’)and some slightly more obscure stuff (‘Marigold, ‘Weenie Beenie’).

    The evening was basically split into three sections with the first brought to a close with a massive and I mean massive rendition of stacked actors including a dualing metal guitars and a chance for Taylor to show off his skills turning in a spectacularly long drum solo.

    After this the band made their way to the centre of the arena as a circular stage lowered itself from the roof and the band set about a stunning 45 minute acoustic set starting with the lovely Skin and Bones before the band were joined by Queen legends Brian May for Roger Taylor for a cover of Queen’s folky ’39. This seemed to be the band’s favourite part of the show as they relaxed into it and produced some great banter, which included Dave persuading their percussionist to perform the world’s first triangle solo before spine tingling acoustic versions of My Hero and the always beautiful Everlong, starting with Dave on his own before the rest of the band brought the track to a almighty crescendo. The band then returned to the main stage to finish off the set nicely with extended versions of Monkey Wrench and All My Life.

    As they disappeared backstage the video screens show them in the dressing room with a set list of all the songs that they had already played as if that was our lot, before Dave peeled off a sticker on the bottom of the page to reveal loads more songs to a massive roar from the crowd.

    Returning to the stage we were treated to an encore of older material in form of the awesome ‘Wattershed’ and ‘Weenie Beenie’ along with ‘My Poor Brain’ before finishing with ‘Best of You’ prompting the biggest singalong of the night

    I’m not usually the biggest fan of huge gigs like this but when you get a band like the Foo Fighters there really isn’t any other kind of gig for them to do, the tunes and the band’s own presence demand the arena/stadium setting and produce an incredible experience for their fans"

  3. Added to Gumgum2804's gigography. about 1 month ago
  4. el_nij and ModerateRock added this to their gigographies. 2 months ago
  5. Added to justin_ng's gigography. 3 months ago
  6. Added to Chinatowner's gigography. 3 months ago
  7. 10 people added this to their gigographies: victoria_plum, Vanderz, slughead54, jamesheal, TheMonk, Dagmara78, carloshillfield, holly11368, Ilastsawthemin..., and emilytest1 5 months ago
  8. Serj Tankian was added to the line-up. 5 months ago
  9. manicyaz and adclark85 added this to their gigographies. 5 months ago

Reviews

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  1. 20091006-194543-484429Gumgum2804 (about 1 month ago)

    The O2 Arena in London is the city’s newest venue and part of what was the old Millennium Dome complex. I’d never been to the dome and had always thought of it as this country’s ‘White Elephant’ joke of an attempt to mark the millennium celebrations, which turned into a bottomless money pit.

    Well that may have been true back then, but now the place has been converted into a state of the art entertainment centre, finally doing the site and the amount of money spent on it some justice. Half of the dome (essentially a bastard big tent) is taken up with the arena itself, a 20,000 capacity self contained behemoth of a building, at least twice the size and height of the old Wembly Arena. The other half is where it gets a bit odd, as it’s made up of real streets, lined with real buildings containing real restaurants and bars, which meant that we ended up getting a bite to eat in a restaurant, in a building, in a tent, like I said odd. The remainder of the site is made up of a 12 screen cinema and the smaller 2,000 capacity Indigo music venue.

    Anyway, enough of the venue, on with the music. After seeing the Foos headline Reading a couple of years back I had no doubt that that would be able to rock a massive arena like this and I wasn’t disappointed, they were absolutely incredible. The atmosphere was very intense for such a big venue and as the band took to the stage at 8.45pm the place went mental as they started with 2 new songs, Let it Die and the awesome first single ‘Pretender’.

    One of the, no sorry THE best thing about Foo Fighters, is frontman, genius, official nicest guy in rock™ Dave Grohl who from the off makes it his business to make sure that every single person who has paid their money to come and see his band have the best gig of there lives, he realy is the epitome of the perfect frontman. Another great thing about the Foos is that they appreciate the fact that they have an incredible back catalogue of music, so while other bands may try to shove their latest album down their fans throats we’re treated to a 2 hour plus greatest hits set that includes all the biggies (‘Times Like These’, ‘Breakout’, ‘Monkey Wrench’)and some slightly more obscure stuff (‘Marigold, ‘Weenie Beenie’).

    The evening was basically split into three sections with the first brought to a close with a massive and I mean massive rendition of stacked actors including a dualing metal guitars and a chance for Taylor to show off his skills turning in a spectacularly long drum solo.

    After this the band made their way to the centre of the arena as a circular stage lowered itself from the roof and the band set about a stunning 45 minute acoustic set starting with the lovely Skin and Bones before the band were joined by Queen legends Brian May for Roger Taylor for a cover of Queen’s folky ’39. This seemed to be the band’s favourite part of the show as they relaxed into it and produced some great banter, which included Dave persuading their percussionist to perform the world’s first triangle solo before spine tingling acoustic versions of My Hero and the always beautiful Everlong, starting with Dave on his own before the rest of the band brought the track to a almighty crescendo. The band then returned to the main stage to finish off the set nicely with extended versions of Monkey Wrench and All My Life.

    As they disappeared backstage the video screens show them in the dressing room with a set list of all the songs that they had already played as if that was our lot, before Dave peeled off a sticker on the bottom of the page to reveal loads more songs to a massive roar from the crowd.

    Returning to the stage we were treated to an encore of older material in form of the awesome ‘Wattershed’ and ‘Weenie Beenie’ along with ‘My Poor Brain’ before finishing with ‘Best of You’ prompting the biggest singalong of the night

    I’m not usually the biggest fan of huge gigs like this but when you get a band like the Foo Fighters there really isn’t any other kind of gig for them to do, the tunes and the band’s own presence demand the arena/stadium setting and produce an incredible experience for their fans

    Reply