“We never fuckin’ played here before? Shut the fuck up. Shut, the fuck up. Are you fuckin’ serious? … Whoops… Sorry.” That was the moment during the Foo Fighters show at Save Mart Center Friday when Dave Grohl realized it took Foo 22 years to play Fresno.
It seemed they may have actually felt guilty because they played an extra long time and more songs than they have been playing on their current Concrete and Gold tour.
It was an amazing rock show. A clinic. This group has been playing a long time and they knew what the crowd wanted and delivered it.
That sucks. It was an epic show. They played 3 hours 15 minutes. It was a loud nonstop master class in great live rock n roll. The best rock band of our time.
— Kathy Mahan (@km_squared) December 2, 2017
The setlist came dangerously close to my dream setlist, I was shocked they played “White Limo” and really could not have been much happier. Let’s take a look at the Fresno show setlist:
- Run
- All My Life
- Learn To Fly
- The Pretender
- The Sky Is A Neighborhood
- Rope
- Drum solo (with Dave & Taylor jam intro)
- Sunday Rain
- My Hero
- One Of These Days
- Walk
- Let It Die
- This Is The Call
- White Limo
- Arlandria
- Times Like These
- Breakout
- Make It Right
- Under My Wheels (Alice Cooper cover sang by Chris Shiflett)
- Better Shape Up (Grease)/Jump (Van Halen)/Blitzkrieg Bop (The Ramones)
- Under Pressure (Queen cover, with Dave Grohl drumming and Tayor Hawkins/Luke Spiller [the Struts] singing)
- Monkey Wrench
- Best Of You (First closing song)
- Dirty Water [encore]
- Breakdown (Tom Petty cover/tribute) [encore]
- This Is The Call
- Everlong
Pretty sure I got that right, 26ish songs. Crazy. The show lasted 3 hours and 13 minutes. It did not feel that long at all. When the show let out I thought it was maybe 10:45, but it was Midnight.
I’m not a good enough writer to conjure up all the proper descriptions of what happened during this show. All I can say is it was fucking metal and moving, all at once. Thank you, Foo Fighters, for playing Fresno finally. And thank you, Dave, for not doing the “I don’t call it FresNO, I call it FresYES” joke hack singers use when they play here.
Speaking of Fresno, my favorite part of big shows is when the city is acknowledged by the band and a bit can be made out of it. Here is Dave talking out how the Foo Fighters have never played Fresno, complete with “sad mutherfuckers” and “Times Like These“:
I was super impressed by the stage lighting and video screen, so whoever designed that, kudos. It kept evolving throughout the night and my favorite is when it came down over the stage, creating a ‘roof’ on the stage and giving the show an intimate club feel for a few songs. Very cool.
Anyway, thanks for reading, please leave any Foo Fighter show thoughts in the comments!