Hello, we’ve waited here for this. Foo Fighters’ sold-out, full-capacity Madison Square Garden show welcomed back more than just live music in New York. Over three loud, sweaty, emotional, and supremely fun hours, the band ushered back in the exhilarating familiarity of our pasts, giving an experience many music fans feared wouldn’t come back for a much longer time.
Even before getting into the venue, the scene outside MSG was its own brand of weird. The queued audience members carried normal Covid anxieties: Some were masked as many eased into what would become New York’s largest indoor concert since March 2020. Hovering over the line, a small group of protestors touted signs that railed against both the vaccine (“VACCINES CONTAIN PETROLEUM,” read one) and the Excelsior Pass, the NYC-only digital “passport” that provides proof of vaccination and was required for entry at the show. (“MSG & Foo Fighters Complicit in Crimes Against Humanity,” said one sign adorned with a needle and skull.) Another sign invoked Dave Grohl’s late Nirvana bandmate Kurt Cobain, claiming he would be “Rock ’N’ Rollin’ Over,” which does a lot of work in just assuming that Cobain would be both anti-vaccine and a Covid conspiracy theorist.
The weird vibes outside washed away once inside: the Excelsior Pass check didn’t add any extra hassle to the sometimes tedious hoops to jump through before entering any concert venue. It bodes well for the coming future of indoor concert safety, which will likely necessitate other versions of the “passport” on a national or global level. The scene inside was more relaxed and carried on as if no time had passed at all. One older couple apologized for their exuberance on their first “big night out” in a long time, as if we all weren’t feeling that same type of nervous but thrilling energy of being inside with tens of thousands of strangers once again.
With no opening act, Foo Fighters fittingly eased into the show with a stripped down “Times Like These” that built into a boisterous, full-band experience. The first three songs were a thunderous “welcome home” to the crowd and to the band themselves, with “The Pretender” and “Learn to Fly” rounding it out. It was truly a sea of bodies, with the GA standing-room section packed to the brim with people politely honoring the fact that maybe not everyone was ready to open up this pit. Instead, the almost synchronized-looking jumping and arm-pumping was a sight to behold.
