Whos opening for foo fighters at fenway

There was a moment during the Foo Fighters' second encore tune Saturday night, before a sold out Fenway Park, that seemed to encapsulate the band's appeal. As singer/guitarist Dave Grohl and the sextet roared through the snarling, pell mell rocker “Times Like These,” there was a melodic element that was positively Beatlesque.

Sure, it was their typical hard rocking framework, straddling hard rock and metal, delivered at the kind of warp speed tempo that speaks to their punk influences, and yet there was still unmistakably an infectious – even pretty – melody underpinning it all. Combine that with the kinetic joy with which Grohl and his mates perform everything, and you can understand how 35,000 music fans of all ages were dancing, singing, veritably leaping in place for nearly three hours Saturday night.

Tickets are available for the Foo Fighters' Sunday night show at the old ballpark.

Last night's 26-song set list included material from every one of the band's nine albums, and five tunes from their latest, “Concrete and Gold,” which was released last September. There were also half a dozen covers, dazzling in the ways they re-interpreted other people's music. The night included some star turns by individual Foo Fighters beyond Grohl, and you came away last night convinced that drummer Taylor Hawkins has serious star quality himself–and should definitely sing more.

There was also a female quartet used for harmony vocals on several songs, and Grohl pointed out that the newest member there was his teenaged daughter Violet Grohl. Daddy Grohl embarrassed his daughter by noting that Violet was so serious about music that she'd informed him he wasn't even the best singer in his own band. (Having heard Hawkins and guitarist Chris Shiflett take vocal leads by that time, some in the crowd may have agreed.)

But in general, the overwhelming impression last night was that this band has made a lot of compelling music over its 23-year run, and they're winning the Grammy four times for Best Rock Album is no accident. A lot of the songs did use the contrast between soft, almost acoustic sections and roaring rock fury to good effect, but the whole night flowed with such dynamic energy that embodied the tension-and-release that it all worked superbly.

The Foo Fighters include Grohl, Shiflett and Pat Smear on guitars, Hawkins on drums, Nate Mendel on bass, and former Wallflower Rami Jaffee on keyboards. “Concrete and Gold,” the most recent album, is their ninth.

Most fans probably know how Grohl, who had been the drummer in Nirvana, sought to pursue his songwriting after that band ended with Kurt Cobain's death in 1994. Recording an album a year or so later, where he played all the instruments himself, Grohl had been reading about UFOs at the time, so he called his project The Foo Fighters, hoping to have people think it was a real band. Eventually those songs were popular enough that he had to form a band to play live shows. The lineup has shifted and expanded over the years, but this current sextet has been its most successful and stable. The common element of course, has always been Grohl's singular songwriting, and as more recent work has the band trying to expand their stylistic range, the frontman continues to demonstrate his versatility and command of many different idioms.

Saturday's stage set featured a long catwalk extending halfway across the field seating, and Grohl bounded down it to the furthest reaches several times, but not really a lot of times. Huge video screens on either side of the stage showed the musicians in close-up shots, but mainly special effects were kept to a minimum, and the music spoke for itself.

The pounding, punk-inflected “All My Life” opened the show, with Grohl romping all down the catwalk and to the extreme edges of the wide stage as he played and sang. One of the band's most popular and best known hooks is on the '98 song “Learn to Fly,” and despite the volume and pace the sound quality where we were on the field was fine, allowing you to feel the drum crescendo that ends the tune. “The Pretender,” which topped the singles charts for 19 weeks in 2007, completed a magnificent three-song opening skein. That last song was a special tour-de-force of dynamics, beginning as a slow, quiet ballad and growing into a frenetic rocker that threatened to shake the Green Monster down.

“I came here for one reason,” Grohl, 49, growled after that third number, “I love rock and roll.” Such statements and exhortations were a continuing part of the night, and Grohl's earnest, everyman persona won over the throng easily. He did probably set a new park record for saying (motorscooter), at least until the next Yankees series.

It was surprising to see how many fans Saturday night were singing along to “The Sky Is A Neighborhood,” from the most recent album, a driving march of a tune, where that female vocal quartet provided harmonies. The elastic, push/pull momentum of “Rope,” enhanced by Hawkins' cascading drum figures, featured some of Grohl's most determined catwalk jaunts, but it also provided ample proof why the 2011 album (“Wasting Light”) it came from snagged five Grammys. The gritty, midtempo “Sunday Rain” was a good change of pace, before matters amped up into overdrive for the anthemic “My Hero.”

The mid-show covers segment began with Shiflett doing a most creditable version of Alice Cooper's “Under My Wheels,” and then Hawkins sang Queen's “Another One Bites the Dust.” Mendel's bone-rattling bass line keyed “La Dee Da,” which came across as a playful sort of side trip.

But then The Foo Fighters tossed in a local tribute, as their producer, Greg Kurstin, joined Jaffe on keys for a stellar instrumental version of “Foreplay” by the band Boston. If fans hadn't noticed before, Hawkins was wearing a sleeveless tee with the logo of the band Boston, and on the back, the inscription, R.I.P. Sib, an obvious nod to the late drummer Sib Hashian, who died last year. Later, Hawkins noted that Grohl himself had made the shirt, drawing out the classic logo in black ink on the white shirt, and it was an impressive design.

But the covers mashup the band has been doing on this tour that really dazzled had Jaffee playing a lovely electric piano take on John Lennon's classic “Imagine,” while Grohl intoned the lyrics to Van Halen's “Jump.” Grohl had introduced it by saying “If there's one thing I'm responsible for tonight, it is bringing you all together for one song.” As strange as that pairing sounds, the result was a sweet and soothing ballad that had cell phone lights glittering all over the old edifice.

Smear's serrating guitar chords led the way on a sprint through The Ramones' “Blitzkrieg Bop,” and then Hawkins and singer Luke Spiller from The Struts did a groove-happy treatment of “Under Pressure,” ending a covers segment that had been tremendous fun for all–onstage and off.

The squalling guitars of '97s “Monkey Wrench,” the anthemic “Run,” and the 'old school' singalong “Breakout” kept the night careening along. “best of You” began with just Grohl and his guitar, and roughly 35 thousand backup singers, and even when the band joined in, the tune's melodic foundation was still to be savored.

The first encore was “Big Me” from that debut Foo Fighters album in '95, another solo start for Grohl with the band subtly joining in, but still almost a singer-songwriter type rendition. That marvelous “Times Like These” was worth the price of admission by itself, and the punky, metal rush of “This Is A Call for Fighters” kept things roaring. The night ended with a heartfelt performance of Everlong,” the song the band played for fan David Letterman's last show, and a paean to keeping on and keeping the flame alive.

Earlier, British quartet The Struts delivered almost an hour of their gritty rock, seeming like a combination of The Faces and The Rolling Stones, with a bit of glam-rock thrown in. Luke Spiller is a potent frontman for The Struts, and their “Put Your Money on Me” suggested serious rock fans ought to do just that.

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