Show review
Foo Fighters, The Transplants
RIMAC - UC San Diego
April 15th 2003

By Amber Shaffer, SDAM Staff Writer
©Copyright 2024 SDAM.com/Amber Shaffer
Thanks to Paul Parks for the awesome photos.

If you listen to popular radio, you've probably heard The Transplants' song "Diamonds and Guns". Most likely your mistook it for a new, bad, Gorillaz single when you first heard it, not the work of so-called "punk super-group" the Transplants, which features members of Rancid and Blink 182. Not that I've ever thought much of this band, but Tim Armstrong was so f'd up it was sad. I know it was a big deal years ago among his crowd of friends when he sobered up. I don't even know why he bothered to have a guitar slung over his shoulder last night.

Foo Fighters, on the other hand, were quite the surprise. I found it interesting that they opened with "All My Life" and proceeded to play 4 more of their biggest hits before visiting some of their lesser-known material. I actually liked this approach, since I don't own a single Foo album and only know their singles. Plus it really got the crowd energized. It was great to see a band that actually plays really well together. One thing I gotta give FF, they are masters at writing rockin' alternative songs with pop hooks. Plus singer Dave Grohl is a funny, funny man who knows how to play to the crowd. And how to mess with them too. In the opening part of "Breakout", right before the big "jump around and start a pit" portion of the song begins, they stopped cold to say hello to the audience and talk about how it had been 7 years since they last played here. It was great. Grohl's running joke for the evening (and keep in mind, he is the former drummer of Nirvana) was that Taylor, the drummer, had a drum solo every third song. Pretty much true. But they were good solo's. I'm still not going to go buy an album since I hear plenty of FF on the radio, but they put on a stellar show. Not quite as funny as their music videos, but close enough.

Find out more about Foo Fighters on their Web site.
Find out more about The Transplants on their Web site