The heart is racing from voices on a wire

At first I didn't give a lot of thought to going to the Foo Fighters concert - it was not in town, we already had plans to go away in early February to the South Island and well... who wants to go to Auckland?

But one late-night walk in town with our friends Bridget and Andy, I spotted the poster and said it would be pretty good to go - and it turns out they had already been talking about going (for their honeymoon). Lucky they were happy to have us along for a double honeymoon, so a plan was hatched. We made sure to catch at least a few of the Sonic Highways documentaries they released with the album but still have a handful to watch.

I'll skip over the part where I bought tickets on an auction site, they turned out to be invalid at the gate and we had to buy a second set of tickets, and then subsequently got a refund from the seller...

We made a weekend of it (as you do) and went up the Friday after work. It was a late night as we didn't get out of town as early as we wanted to but we had lots of laughs along the way.

Saturday, we found a Vietnamese restaurant, a few rude Jafas and a lot of traffic to pass our time until the show. We wanted to be early to catch the openers, Rise Against. Despite the aforementioned ticket troubles, we managed to get in our seats with enough time to chill before they started. We ended up seated at the stand opposite the stage so even though we were a rugby pitch away, the big screens and excellent sound made it just right.

I hadn't seen Rise Against before (I think they started Warped touring just as I stopped going) so I was absolutely stoked. Even though they just had a short set, it was energetic, powerful and pumping. I might have been the only one up dancing and singing in our seats but that was fine with me!

Then after some eager waiting, the Foos took the stage and kicked off with Something from Nothing. We were on our feet immediately, dancing and stomping, testing the limits of the stand for the rest of the evening. We knew it was going to be a great time.

Throughout the songs, Dave Grohl entertained the audience in his easygoing chattery way. They were supposed to have played a benefit show the previous night but the truck carrying their gear up from Christchurch crashed on its way and the driver was hospitalized and the gear did not survive. Thanks goodness for modern times - they flew a set of gear out from LA in time for that night's show. He told stories about their time in NZ and the last time they played in NZ, and their first show ever - which had taken place 20 years ago that night. I was 11 at the time.

The night included a wide range of their library of tunes - we had our must-hear songs outlined: Wheels, Times Like These and Best of You. During a Dave-only set of songs is when Wheels turned up with an acoustic rendition. He was teasing the crowd not to sing but to no avail.

Times Like These was half-acoustic and then the band kicked in to finish it up.

They really took some artistic licence with Monkey Wrench and Best of You - fitting a big 5 minute jam into the middle of each. Monkey Wrench really chilled down and bordered on jazzy before slamming hard back into "One last thing before I quit...." with a vengeance.

There was a big covers section with a rotating stage and although I wasn't quite as keen on 3 of the 4 songs in there, I couldn't help but respect that they were "living out their teenage garage band dreams" with that set. The fourth cover, Under Pressure, got us back up dancing though!

They wound up the night with Everlong and I felt like a teenage NKOTB fan as tears streamed down my face - the energy and excitement and euphoria just had me crying with all of the greatness that the show was. So many of these songs have been the soundtrack to many moments of our lives and to hear them live on a beautiful summer evening with great friends was just incredible.