Foo Fighters - The Colour and the Shape

I’ll admit it, I’m not the world’s biggest Foo Fighters fan.  Dave seems like a helluva nice guy.  He wasn’t too embarrassed to talk to me when I approached him and he was buying underwear at the Macy’s Men’s Store at the Beverly Center in West Hollywood in 2002.  That’s gotta count for something.

This isn’t to say I don’t respect the hell out of Dave and everyone who has ever been in the band, all the way to new drummer Josh Freese.  Dave might be the most talented musician/writer of our generation.  Most of it just doesn’t move me.  There’s usually one song on each record I love, otherwise, I can do without.

Except, The Colour and the Shape.  I love this record from first note to last and I have since it came out on May 20, 1997. 

I can’t remember for sure where I first heard “Monkey Wrench” (released almost a month earlier on April 28) but I assume it was on the radio, X103 out of Indianapolis.  The song is perfect.  It has the punk rock energy that 17-year-old me loved, the pop hooks that made you want to sing along at the top of your lungs and riffs for days.

Recorded from November 1996 to February 1997 at Bear Creek Studios in Woodinville, WA, WGNS in Washington, D.C. and Grandmaster Studios in Hollywood, this was the first Foo Fighters record as a band, and the first one with a proper producer in the legendary Gil Norton.  While this is still very much Dave Grohl’s record (more on that later), the influence of Gil, Nate Mendel and Pat Smear is all over this record.

Gil Norton’s first influential record was The Pixies’ Doolittle, but he continued working with indie rock and British bands until 1996 when he produced Recovering the Satellites with Counting Crows.  He has pop sensibilities but is used to working with bands on the fringe of the mainstream and drastic dynamic changes. 

Dave’s a punk at heart and with Nate and Pat on board, the energy level and emotion are red lining on almost every track.

This is a divorce record and while making it, two other marriages ended, yet at the same time, this is the sound of a band being born. 

While Norton is known for having multiple dynamic parts going on, all with a crystal clarity, this record, listened to on high-end headphones, has all kinds of nuggets of the past.  Things that don’t happen anymore because no one records live in a room together, tracking to tape.  String noises, what I swear is a burp, it’s distinctly human. 

And though I hate comparing them to Nirvana, it’s a disservice to both bands, Dave writes with a vulnerable plainness that was never Kurt’s style.  He’s poetic without being abstract.  He’s still finding his voice as the man out front (he was a great harmony singer if you ever hear isolated Nirvana tracks), the music is up and down in tempo and it perfectly fits the artistic vision of a punk kid going through an emotional time.  But…

Dave is a perfectionist.  To a fault often.  If you’ve seen Back & Forth or Sonic Highways, there are pieces of this in there, he’s man enough to admit his faults on this.  This is why Dave lied to original drummer William Goldsmith and re-recorded all the drums, save for “Doll” and “Up in Arms”.  In spite of this being a bit of a dick move, it made the record better and it’s what led to Taylor Hawkins joining the band, and no one thinks of the Foo Fighters without thinking of Taylor right alongside Dave.

I would definitely put this record on my list of “perfect” albums.  It’s a 10 out of 10.  I still listen to it and it’s almost like I’m co-existing in the now and the summer of 1997 at the same time.  Driving my 1966 Ford Mustang around dark country roads after my shift at Blockbuster, listening to “February Stars” as loud as my Kenwood cassette deck and Jensen speakers could handle, flicking ashes from my Camel Light out the quarter glass.  Stylistically, it doesn’t fit anything that was out in 1997 but it laid the foundation for every band that came after.  Much like Nirvana didn’t happen without Surfer Rosa and Doolittle, so many huge bands sound completely different, or at least the bands on the radio/MTV/etc. sound different if not for The Colour and the Shape. 

That’s it.  I’m not going to go deep into the songs because you know the hits and the other songs, if you don’t know them, you’re missing out.  I still hope one day I make a record this good, but I highly doubt I will.