After a fairly tumultuous past year -- both personally and professionally -- Foo Fighters made their surprise live return last night at San Luis Obispo's Fremont Theater. The pop-up show was their first gig with new drummer Ilan Rubin, and they celebrated the occasion by dusting off a few oldies they hadn't played in years.
Foo Fighters (who also include Nate Mendel, Pat Smear, Chris Shiflett, and Rami Jaffee along with Rubin and frontman Dave Grohl) played 2002's "Have It All" for the first time since 2015. From their 1995 self-titled, they also played "Exhausted" and their cover of Late!'s "Winnebago" for the first time since 2014, and "Alone + Easy Target" for the first time since 2018. The Foos leaned into the whole throwback aspect of it all by promoting the show with mixtapes in a local record shop and hidden around the neighborhood. They brought back some circa-'95 designs for their merch, too, including a shirt that says "Playing The Old Songs Because You Like Them Better."
It does appear that Foo Fighters are working on new music, too. They shared the SLO show flier on Instagram with a short audio snippet of an unidentified unreleased song.
A few days ago, FF shared a curious photo of "Weird Al" Yankovic with Grohl’s face on Instagram. Al famously got his start in San Luis Obispo, but he wasn’t there last night. And Al’s on tour so it seems unlikely, but maybe he’ll be at the just-announced next pop-up show: tomorrow Sept. 15 at the Observatory in Santa Ana, CA. Tickets go on sale in-person only at the box office today at 1pm.
See some fan-captured clips of the gig below along with the setlist.
SETLIST:
“All My Life”
“Rope”
“Have It All” (first time since 2015)
“Times Like These”
“Wattershed”
“Stacked Actors”
“La Dee Da”
“These Days”
“The Pretender”
“Walk”
“My Hero”
“Learn To Fly”
“Rescued”
“Aurora”
“This Is A Call”
“No Son Of Mine”
“Shame Shame”
“White Limo”
“Winnebago” (Late! cover) (first time since 2014)
“Best Of You”
ENCORE:
“Alone + Easy Target” (first time since 2018)
“Low”
“Monkey Wrench”
“Exhausted” (first time since 2014)
“Everlong”
