Everyone Hates Foo Fighters

OK, not everyone. But they bored me at the Grammys and there's been a lot of buzz about Dave Grohl's speech about how computers don't belong in music. Here's what Grohl said, according to the Los Angeles Times:

"This is a great honor, because this record was a special record for our band. Rather than go to the best studio in the world down the street in Hollywood and rather than use all of the fanciest computers that money can buy, we made this one in my garage with some microphones and a tape machine...
To me this award means a lot because it shows that the human element of music is what's important. Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument and learning to do your craft, that's the most important thing for people to do.
It's not about being perfect, it's not about sounding absolutely correct, it's not about what goes on in a computer. It's about what goes on in here [your heart] and what goes on in here [your head]."

Well, at first blush that doesn't sound offensive. But here's why it is: Foo Fighters -- as I unartfully blogged on Sunday night -- are a bore. They haven't offered anything creatively in about 15 years. In fact, they've been pretty much re-making their debut album in the years since. Sure, every now and then (and frequently in their early years) they come up with a catchy song like "This Is A Call" or even 2002's "Times Like These", but it's all the same stuff. Grohl's still dining out on his days backing up Kurt Cobain. And their body of work is a warmed over catalog of generic rock, the stuff only has-beens and never-will-bes can truly be proud of.

Grohl fails to comprehend that music -- real music that drives those deep emotional responses he's talking about -- can be achieved in a variety of ways, on a variety of instruments, electronic and otherwise (OK, Not with Auto-Tune!). But it's not like he's out there recording Zen Arcade - in one take. And it's a poor craftsman who blames his tools. After all, it's not how we make music but the music we make that matters.