He chooses the Bud first, a sensible move given the sun bouncing off the concrete of the endless parking lot he’s camped out in near Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia on Aug. 13. Foo Fighters are set to play inside the stadium in five hours, and Bob is with his son, 31-year-old Albert, and a gaggle of his buddies. Now I just turn on a podcast on the way to work.” “Radio sucks!” Albert yells from a few feet away, underlining the point.
Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl has become a one-man army committed to keeping guitar-driven rock alive. He opened the second song of their set that evening, “The Pretender,” by shouting, “Do you want some rock ‘n’ roll music? I know Philadelphia loves rock ‘n’ roll!” It elicited one of the biggest responses of the night, as the stadium roared with support.
Unfortunately, outside of the Foo Fighters and tour openers Queens of the Stone Age, it seems like nearly every other genre is having an outsized moment that rock can’t match. Country is topping the charts at a historic pace, pop continues to capture the zeitgeist, indie and emo are having Millennial-driven resurgences, and even folk rockers like Noah Kahan and Mumford & Sons are selling out arenas and ball fields. Even buzzy guitar-driven groups like Geese and Idles can prove too experimental and esoteric for fans looking for anthemic rock.
Outside of a handful of other acts still regularly recording (Green Day, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Weezer, Muse and Metallica) and legacy groups touring the hits (AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses and Iron Maiden), the larger cultural footprint of rock, much like hip hop, has waned in recent decades. But you wouldn’t know it by these fans’ enthusiasm. There’s no guitar bands anymore; there’s no sing-along songs.
I just have a few bands I plug into Pandora and end up hearing the same stuff, so I’ve embraced going to see my favorites when they come to town. And who doesn’t love Foo Fighters?” The sentiment of there being no good rock bands anymore was expressed by several of the fans I spoke to. Jeremy, a 16-year-old attending the show with his parents and cousins who introduced him to the night’s headliner, considers himself tech-savvy but still hasn’t found any current music that evokes the same emotion in him.
It sounds great so I listen to it, but my friends think I’m old-school.” Jeremy must have felt right at home at the five-and-a-half-hour show, which was started up by Philadelphia natives Mannequin Pussy. Lead singer and guitarist Marisa Dabice blazed through 10 punky tracks, which, given her strong voice and hooky songwriting, surely converted some early arrivals. Queens of the Stone Age then played a hits-fueled hour, with Grohl’s BFF and Queens frontman Josh Homme delivering his signature swagger.
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