Concert Review: Foo Fighters rock Fenway, Bosstones pull double-duty at T.T.'s

Three punk-inspired bands – the Foo Fighters, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Mission of Burma – found glory at Fenway Park on Saturday with intersecting story lines, carrying on to T.T. the Bear’s Place for at least one of the groups.

The headlining Foos, who put the Fenway bill together, played the beat-adversity card, with singer/guitarist Dave Grohl rocking out on a custom-made throne for his band’s first U.S. stadium swing after breaking his leg last month in Sweden. “We’re trying to make this stadium feel like the sweaty f—ing club down the street!” Grohl told fans who seemed to surprise him by howling back “Foooo!!”

That sweaty club would be T.T. the Bear’s Place, which Grohl name-checked and provided the Bosstones with their second stop of the night, letting frontman Dicky Barrett get in the face of a fervent crowd to heat up that rock haven’s final week.

For its part, Mission of Burma came the closest to Grohl’s former band Nirvana as a bare-bones trio that laid out angular, textural post-punk, seemingly out of place to the slow-arriving stadium crowd. “One of the bands that made me want to play music in the first place,” Grohl later gushed of Burma in thanking his opening acts (the Foos leader set a different guest plate Sunday with the Dropkick Murphys).

Grohl sure didn’t let a loss of mobility temper his passion or energy as the Foo Fighters roared through more than two and a half hours of loud, tightly honed originals plus covers that included Queen’s “Under Pressure” (a vocal showcase for whiplash drummer Taylor Hawkins) and a climactic rampage through AC/DC’s “Let There Be Rock.” Nonetheless, at one point, Grohl asked the crowd whether it wanted classic rock or Foo Fighters material and a “Foooo!” chant made the choice clear; the group responded with a dynamics-wrung detonation of “All My Life.”

Grohl’s throne, encrusted with guitar necks and a ring of swiveling lights around the Foo Fighters’ emblem, did slide up a runway to part the middle of the crowd. But the singer also hobbled out there on crutches for acoustic versions of “There Goes My Hero” and “Times Like These,” waving his crutches like battle shields. He also slid down the ramp on his throne for an indulgent solo of scrapping guitar strings across his boot cast in “Outside,” a gambit that wore out its welcome, much like the long set exposed the Foos’ rather same-sounding sonic palette.

Barrett was the first to stalk that runway, however, during a Bosstones set that included a walk-on by legendary oddball Red Sox pitcher Bill Lee and dropped favorites like “Where’d You Go?” and “Don’t Worry, Desmond Dekker,” though horns got lost in stadium acoustics except for Chris Rhodes’ beefy trombone.

Those tunes were reprised at T.T.’s, where the ska-punk combo’s longer, sweltering throwdown found Barrett and dancer Ben Carr shedding their military-styled suits. Grohl never showed up at T.T.’s as rumored, but he didn’t need to. The night closed with a manic “Lights Out,” a cover of punk band the Angry Samoans that even inspired a couple of stage-divers and provided a fitting nod to a Central Square landmark that Barrett hailed for serving as “A great place to hang around.”

Dicky Barrett entertains the crowd that packed T.T.’s for the Bosstones.


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