Dave Grohl, Foo Fighters frontman and former Nirvana drummer, is well-known to be involved in a wide number of side projects, besides his main activity in the rock band, the Foo Fighters. Recent history saw Foo Fighters announce an indefinite hiatus to their fans, but only after serving them with more than a year of astonishing live performances. The tour ended in September with the charity performance at Global Festival in New York, and it promoted the band’s  seventh studio album ‘Wasting Light,’ which had great success and won the band 5 Grammy Awards in the latest edition of the event.

Foo Fighters take a break then, Dave Grohl does not. Not only is he busy with the development of his long announced Sound City Documentary, a film about the infamous recording studios located in California which closed in 2011 after giving birth to some of the most influential albums in music history, he has also recently confirmed his presence on the drums of Queens of the Stone Age’s new album. Talking about the rock band, Grohl seems to be extremely excited, defining Queens of the Stone Age as the baddest rock and roll band in circulation. It is not the first time Dave Grohl participates to a Queens of the Stone Age album; in 2002 he banged the drums on the album ‘Songs For The Deaf.’

He recently talked about his feelings for the band in an interview with  BBC Radio 1′s Zane Lowe, saying:

“With Queens of the Stone Age, like, there were no boundaries with that band, there were no limits with them, it was like if you did something insane, you’d do more, if you did something that seemed too ridiculous– and honestly the new Queens of the Stone Age record, I’m playing drums on that, and I’ll do something so completely ridiculous, I’ll just, like, ‘There’s no way that Josh [Homme, Ed.] isn’t going to let me do that,’ and he’ll say, ‘Do that for forty-five seconds, over and over again, that’s become, like, part of the song, that is a big part of the song,’ and that’s the way they work.”

He then added about the general feeling of being part of this band:

“When you walk into a festival backstage with Queens of the Stone Age, it’s like, the record stops. People stop and they stare, and it’s like, Queens of the Stone Age are, without question, the baddest rock and roll band in the world! And they still are, and when ‘Songs For The Deaf’, when that came out, it blew people’s minds, man, for real.”

Dave Grohl and Josh Homme are also both involved in another project, the rock supergroup Them Crooked Vultures, which also features Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones at the bass.

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Global Festival 2012 will take place on September 29 in New York’s Central Park at the same time of the United Nations’ General Assembly in New York. The festival will be headlined by the Foo Fighters, The Black Keys,  Neil Young with Crazy Horse, Band of Horses, and K’NAAN, who will join around 54,000 attendees.

The charity festival is “a catalytic event to end extreme poverty,” as stated on the show’s Facebook page. It is part of the Global Poverty Project, and the spirit behind the organization of the show has been expressed by the organizers, who wrote: “The fight for justice has never been easy. But human history has always been shaped by courageous actions and a vision of a better world.  As Global Citizens, we’ve put our hands up to stand against the greatest injustice of our time: extreme poverty.”

No tickets will be sold; they have to be earned. This is the “action” part. People (18+) will be able to participate to a lottery for the chance to win tickets for the event by completing some steps as explained on the Global Citizen’s website. After taking actions such as signing petitions, promoting awareness via social networks, making donations and so on, people can earn points that will open them to the doors to the lottery.

For the organization of the event, The Global Poverty Project is assisted by promoters Goldenvoice/AEG. The festival will be financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Sumner Redstone Charity Foundation, with the participation of international groups such as UNICEF.

Organizer, Hugh Evans, said the goal of the event is to have fans take 100,000 actions by September. This will then be used as leverage when asking the world’s leaders, who will be in town during the event, to make monetary commitments for reaching development goals.

According to Huff Post, The Black Key’s Patrick Carney said about the event: “The scale of things that they’re trying do just felt really cool, and we’re trying to get the ball rolling. Especially with everything that’s been going on for the last three years, I suppose, after the stock market crashed. There’s attention on the amount of people living below the poverty line and the disparity between the rich and the poor and everything that’s going on now … . It just felt like the right time to do something.”

Foo Fighters released a statement which read “We are very proud to be lending a hand to such a creative, important event and are looking forward to adding to the noise in the big park and helping the effort toward reducing the global shame of deep poverty.”

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Fans of the nicest man in rock must be thrilled knowing that Dave Grohl is back in the studio. Butch Vig, the man who infamously produced Nirvana’s “Nevermind,” wrote on Twitter a while ago that he and Grohl spent an entire day together at studio 606 in late December listening to some of Grohl’s new material.

From being the drummer of Them Crooked Vultures to collaborating with glam metal band RATT, Foo Fighters’ frontman has never shied away from side projects during his career. So the question is; where does this upcoming work belong?

In 2011, the release of “Wasting Light,” another production by Butch Vig, proved a successful start on the new decade. The April album release was followed by a world tour, international recognition and six Grammy nominations, and its successor is supposedly on its way so it would not be a long shot to assume that the new material could be destined for Grohl’s primary project Foo Fighters.

The announcement of an upcoming record came from Dave Grohl himself; he wrote a note to the fans, thanking them for their support in late December and letting them know a new album would come out soon. The note read, “And to all of you…..we’re not finished yet. There are still more shows to play, more songs to write, more albums to record, for years to come. I mean… If you would have told me 17 years ago that, in 2012, I would be writing songs for our eighth studio album… well…”

On the other hand, fans of Them Crooked Vultures, with Dave Grohl on drums, John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin on bass, and Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age as lead vocalist and guitarist constituting a super band, are also very excited. After a successful self-titled album released in 2009, the band has not released anything else.

Since 2010, there has been much talk about a second album, which was supposed to be release in late 2011, but never made it, according to some sources. One of the main reasons for the delay has been Grohl and Homme having been too busy with their respective bands. So with the news of Dave Grohl working on new material, and considering the timing, there is a real chance that Them Crooked Vultures are the benefactor and will be releasing their second album soon.

However, as mentioned, Them Crooked Vultures is not Grohl’s only side project. Recently, a collaboration between RATT, and the Foo Fighters frontman was announced by RATT themselves.

This is bound to be an interesting project as Nirvana, Dave Grohl’s former band, is considered to be responsible for the ‘defeat’ of glam metal in the 1990s through their introduction of grunge. RATT singer, Stephen Pearcy, has said that the song they will release together, “will not be a new RATT song, but just something cool Dave wants to do.”

Hence, the new material could turn up in any direction, from his Foo Fighters base to any of Grohl’s side projects, even new ones. After all, he is a music explorer. What is certain is that Grohl’s choice of Butch Vig as a collaborator is destined to create a musical firestorm and keep interest soaring for his new project.

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Foo Fighters is one of the most popular Rock bands in the music scene since years, being active since 1994. The band is led by Dave Grohl (ex Nirvana drummer), and composed of Taylor Hawkins, Nate Mendel, Chris Shiflett, and Pat Smear.

Although Foo Fighters’ success is not new, what this band accomplished this year is unbelievable. Their 7th studio album “Wasting Light” debuted as number one in the Billboard 200 chart upon its release on April 12 this year, sold 235,000 copies only in its first week, becoming soon a Gold record in the U.S., as well as in other countries. In some others it even became Platinum record. As Dave Grohl declared, although they were big before, mainly in some parts of the world, this album made them huge.

The record comprises other artists’ participations, including the ones of Krist Novoselic (Nirvana) and Bob Mould (Hüsker Dü, Sugar). The album has been recorded in Grohl’s garage completely analog to tape, and was produced by Butch Vig, the same producer of Nirvana’s “Nevermind”. As Dave Grohl recently declared referring to the producer “Together, we made the album of a lifetime. Again.”

The record sound is raw, powerful, loud, aggressive, sweet, melancholic, and angry, it explores all of the aspects of Rock. It is the heaviest record belonging to the band so far as well as the “grungiest” one. The lyrics come as emotional waterfalls on the perfectly melt sounds. It goes from the screaming hard rock of “White Limo” to the deep and intriguing “I Should Have Known” where Novoselic’s performance gives goosebumps due to its perfection.

Besides the album release, the documentary “Back and Forth,” which explores the development of the band, came out in April; in the same month the band released the limited vinyl “Medium Rare,” a covers album, for Record Store Day. Furthermore this year their video for the track “Walk”, which is a parody of the movie “Falling Down,” won the prize as Best Rock Video at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards.

After recording the latest album in Grohl’s garage, the Foo Fighters also started touring in some garages. The band, indeed, performed from New York to Seattle in garages belonging to their fans who participated to a dedicated contest. Moreover the band played secret gigs in small clubs. Then, they started the world tour, touching Europe, North America, South America and Australia. Japan and other countries are coming next year. They played in arenas, festivals, stadiums. In July they played two concerts at the Milton Keynes National Bowl in the U.K to over 140,000 fans. The band just owns it all.

Foo Fighters started in 1994 as a solo project by frontman Dave Grohl, after the death of the late Kurt Cobain and the consequent disappearance of his band Nirvana. What Grohl had for Foo Fighters at the time was only a tape, not even a band. During those seventeen years a lot happened to Foo Fighters. Musicians have come and gone, motivation seemed to be lost for a moment, but what always stayed was Grohl’s determination.

The guy who gained the title of “The nicest guy in Rock,” due to his particularly considerate and respectful personality, seems to be also the toughest guy in Rock, in the best sense of it. He had a dream and did not let anything corrupt it. He did not just try, he did it. Not even when Foo Fighters gained the big scene he let the business corrupt the music. He came back to his garage with a finally solid and sound group which expressed its cooperation in the highest level possible, recording the album on tape where everything sounds just real.

Foo Fighters’ history shows that probably the most remarkable characteristic of Grohl’s personality is his respect to music, and to Rock in particular, beyond any boundary. Let’s not forget this guy, twenty years ago, changed the music scene forever together with two friends of his. Listening to Foo Fighters one can feel the same attitude is still all there in Mr. Grohl.

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