What You Talking About, Foo?

This was a while back, now...but I'm just getting around to it. And it stuck with me, so that counts for something, right?

I went to the Foo Fighters concert at Madison Square Garden back in February. I don't go to many concerts, primarily because I'm lazy/busy and, secondarily, because I'm not that big a fan of anyone enough to get off my lazy/busy ass to get the tickets. But my love for the Foos is well-documented, so I decided to see what I can do. Now, since I work where I work, trying to get into a concert doesn't involve constant calls to Ticketmaster, or angling to win a radio contest. I call in some favors. And because I never ask for this sort of thing, people are generally willing to help me out.

So I'm in a luxury box in Madison Square Garden, courtesy of the fine folks at Fuse—which I've never really watched, but, apparently, they show music videos, which is more than I can say for either of the channels that are supposed to show music videos. (The irony of me getting seats that would cost a fortune for nothing isn't lost on me at all. Neither is the distinctly un-rock-ness of attempting to rock out in a corporate suite.)

We discretely headbang our way through the show—a fine performance, to be sure—until we get to the encore. One of the Fuse publicists tells me that there's a Make-A-Wish kid who met the band during soundcheck; that he was really sweet, and that Dave Grohl took a liking to him. Just as she says this, Dave steps up to the mic and says something like, "Hey, guys. This here's my buddy Josh...he's gonna play a song with us." This teenager walks out, sits behind the drum kit, and the band launches into "Long Road to Ruin."

And this kid is phenomenal. No one spoke in the luxury suite for the whole four minutes Josh was playing. Personally, I couldn't. A smile had plastered itself on my face, goosebumps broke out everywhere, and a frog had taken up residence in my throat.

To get to meet your favorite band, to play with them at soundcheck, to be asked if you wanna get out on the stage of MADISON SQUARE FUCKING GARDEN, and then to knock it out of the goddamn park.... If that's not a wish coming true, then they flat-out never do.

And the thing of it is, if I hadn't been sitting in the Fuse box and hadn't gotten that information from the publicist, it just would've been the second song of the encore. Instead, it was heartbreakingly wonderful.

Just one of the times when I really, really love my job.

Here, so you can feel it too:




P.S. Ask my buddy Adam to tell you the story of the time he saw U2 in LA and Bono brought a bunch of teenage girls on stage to play with them.