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Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters

Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images

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Foo Fighters' D.C. JAM Fest 2020 Lineup foo-fighters-dc-jam-fest-2020-lineup-pharrell-chris-stapleton-go-go%E2%80%99s-and-more

Foo Fighters' D.C. JAM Fest 2020 Lineup: Pharrell, Chris Stapleton, The Go-Go’s and More

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The fest is set to take place on July 4th at FedExField
Onaje McDowelle
GRAMMYs
Mar 3, 2020 - 3:11 pm

Rock heroes and 11-time GRAMMY-winning band the Foo Fighters have announced the lineup for their inaugural D.C. Jam Festival. Headliners Chris Stapleton, Pharrell Williams and The Go-Go’s will perform at the festival set to take place on July 4th at FedExField in Landover, Maryland. The band has previously hosted festivals twice before (their 2017 and 2018 Cal Jam Festival).

Additional artists including Band of Horses, The Regrettes, Durand Jones & The Indications, Beach Bunny, Radkey and other special guests will round out the one-day festival’s lineup.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B9RmqWOpqwg

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A post shared by D.C. JAM (@dcjamfest)

In addition to celebrating Independence Day, Jam Fest will also help the Fighters commemorate the 25th anniversary of their self-titled debut. Earlier this month, the group announced that it would mark its quarter-century feat by heading out on a North American van tour, with stops in Phoenix, Oklahoma City and Knoxville among others.

D.C. Jam Festival pre-sales begin today, (March 3) at 12 p.m. Eastern Time and public on-sale will kick off on Friday, March 6. Tickets are available here.

For more information on full lineups and festival admission, visit dcjamfest.com.

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Dave Grohl

Photo: Mindy Best/Getty Images

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beatles-nirvana-sxsw-celebrates-musics-timelessness

From The Beatles To Nirvana: SXSW Celebrates Music's Timelessness

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THE GRAMMYs
GRAMMYs
Dec 2, 2014 - 3:22 pm

By Lynne Margolis
Austin, Texas

(Check back for GRAMMY.com's daily blog coverage from South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, including reports on Recording Academy-related events. Meanwhile, visit The Recording Academy on Facebook and Twitter for more SXSW updates.)

On March 14 South by Southwest was all about past, present and future legends and leading lights, from the Beatles and keynote speaker and GRAMMY winner Dave Grohl to his Sound City Players, featuring Stevie Nicks and John Fogerty.

The day began with a moving video tribute to the late SXSW Creative Director Brent Grulke, who passed away Aug. 13, 2012, at age 52, and festival co-founder Roland Swenson's announcement that the organization would award the first annual Grulke Prize to three of the festival's most promising acts on March 18.

Grohl delivered a humorous overview of his life and career, thanking Edgar Winter for allowing K-tel International to include his monstrous guitar instrumental, "Frankenstein," on a compilation album, which inspired a young Grohl to play guitar. Like so many before and after him, the Foo Fighters frontman and former Nirvana drummer credited that guitar and a Beatles songbook with setting his life's direction. And now, he says, he's "brainwashing" his young daughters with the Beatles — on vinyl.

Following Grohl's speech, GRAMMY Museum Executive Director Bob Santelli moderated a panel titled "Musical Milestones: Celebrating 50 Years Of The Beatles" featuring singer/songwriters Rodney Crowell, Robyn Hitchcock and Ron Sexsmith, and MTV Networks Executive Vice President/Editorial Director Bill Flanagan. The panel, which is scheduled to become an annual event, was held ahead of the June 12 opening of the new Museum exhibit Ringo: Peace & Love. The panelists offered a mix of conventional wisdom and personal anecdotes about how the Beatles affected their lives and why the Fab Four had such world-changing impact.

"When you saw A Hard Day's Night it just looked like [the Beatles] were right, and everybody else wearing Bermuda shorts was wrong," said Flanagan.  

Their rapt audience ranged from those who remembered the Beatles' earthshaking appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show" on Feb. 9, 1964, to young aspirants such as 19-year-old Jonathan Levy, whose parents schooled him in the band's now-timeless classics.

Crowell did the same with one of his daughters, now 36, when she was a young teen.

"She disappeared upstairs for about six months," he said. When his daughter emerged from her room, she announced, "Dad, I know what integrity means."

Even artists such as Americana favorites Buddy Miller and Jim Lauderdale showed Beatles influences during their lively afternoon set at the popular New West Records party at Threadgill's.

Another popular party was the annual GRAMMY Block Party held by The Recording Academy's Texas Chapter on the lawn at the Four Seasons Hotel. The exclusive event featured Texas-based artists the Wheeler Brothers, Quiet Company and Ray Wylie Hubbard.

"This party is unique," said Christine Albert, Recording Academy Vice Chair. "Members from all over the country get to be in one place. That doesn't happen very often."

"It's become the premiere industry event of South by [Southwest]," added Texas Chapter Senior Executive Director Theresa Jenkins. "You never know who's going to show up here."

Unquestionably one of the hottest live music shows of the night was performed by Grohl's Sound City Players, the outgrowth of his Sound City documentary about the legendary Los Angeles studio where Nirvana recorded Nevermind. Several artists who appeared in the film, screened that afternoon, ignited a packed outdoor audience at Stubb's BBQ, including Nirvana members Krist Novoselic and Pat Smear, Cheap Trick's Rick Nielsen, Rick Springfield, Foo Fighters, Fear's Lee Ving, Slipknot's Corey Taylor and, in an incredibly energizing finale, Fogerty.

"You gotta have a lot of little boy in you to play rock and roll," Fogerty noted. And with the glee of teenagers, the players proved that great rock and roll is, indeed, timeless.

(Austin-based journalist Lynne Margolis currently contributes to American Songwriter, NPR-affiliate KUTX-FM's "Texas Music Matters," regional and local magazines including Lone Star Music and Austin Monthly, and newspapers nationwide. She has previously contributed to the Christian Science Monitor (for which she was the "go-to" writer for Beatles stories), Rollingstone.com and Paste magazine. A contributing editor to the encyclopedia, The Ties That Bind: Bruce Springsteen From A To E To Z, she also writes bios for new and established artists.)

Trini Lopez in London in 1965

Trini Lopez in London in 1965

Photo: Stanley Bielecki/ASP/Getty Images

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Trini Lopez Has Died From COVID-19 At 83 trini-lopez-who-revitalized-american-mexican-folk-classics-has-died-covid-19-83

Trini Lopez, Who Revitalized American & Mexican Folk Classics, Has Died From COVID-19 At 83

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The GRAMMY-nominated singer/guitarist's biggest global hits were lively covers of folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary's "If I Had a Hammer" and "Lemon Tree"
Ana Monroy Yglesias
GRAMMYs
Aug 12, 2020 - 3:18 pm

GRAMMY-nominated singer, guitarist and actor Trini Lopez, whose lively blend of American and Mexican folk songs with rockabilly flair earned him worldwide fame in the '60s, has died at 83. The Mexican-American artist died from COVID-19 at a hospital in Rancho Mirage, Calif. yesterday, Aug. 11.

Beginning with his 1963 debut studio album, Trini Lopez At PJ's, Lopez found success bringing new life—and a raucous, danceable beat and vocal delivery—to other artists' songs, including folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary's hits "If I Had a Hammer" and "Lemon Tree." Both songs would be his biggest, with his versions out-charting theirs both on the Billboard Hot 100 and international charts.

Back at the 6th GRAMMY Awards in 1964, following his epic breakout year, Lopez was nominated for Best New Artist.

If I Had A Hammer: From Aretha Franklin To Public Enemy, Here's How Artists Have Amplified Social Justice Movements Through Music

His rocked-up rendition of "I Had a Hammer," released in 1963 on his live debut album, hit No. 3 on the Hot 100 and No. 1 in 36 countries. The song was originally written by political activist/folk icon Pete Seeger and Lee Hays and recorded as a protest song by their band The Weavers in 1950, reemerging as a GRAMMY-winning No. 10 hit from Peter, Paul and Mary in 1962, the year prior to Lopez's breakout success with the classic song.

Popular '60s West Hollywood star-studded venue P.J.'s, where the Dallas-born singer recorded his first two albums (which also put the club on the map outside of Los Angeles), was where he got his big break, from none other than Frank Sinatra. After catching a few of his shows, the Rat Pack leader signed him to his Reprise label.

"I remember reading in the trades that Frank Sinatra frequented P.J.’s a lot so I moved over there so I could meet him," Lopez said. "I was hired for three weeks and I stayed a year and a half. I played four or five shows every single night and I never repeated a song. I just kept waiting to meet Frank Sinatra, and within a month he came with an entourage and to my surprise he offered me an eight-year record contract on his label. I put P.J.'s on the map with my live albums since they were recorded for Sinatra's record company."

Read: Sin-atra City: The story of Frank Sinatra and Las Vegas

A self-proclaimed "proud" Mexican-American born to immigrant parents in Dallas in 1937, Lopez also performed and recorded many songs in Spanish at a time when artists, including himself, were asked by labels to hide or Whitewash their Latin identity. Trini Lopez At PJ's included a rendition of traditional Mexican folk song "Cielito Lindo" and in 1964, he released The Latin Album, filled with of Spanish language classics. His father, Trinidad Lopez II, was a ranchera singer who made his living as manual laborer.

As The Guardian notes, "in the mid-'60s he was releasing as many as five albums a year, though that slowed in the late '70s. While he continued performing, he released very little music until 2000, when he began recording again and released a further six albums." His final album, released in 2011 and titled Into the Future, was a nod to Sinatra, featuring songs from his catalog.

Save Our Venues: Capturing Los Angeles' COVID-Closed Venues

At the peak of his musical fame in the '60s and '70s, he also found moderate success in film and TV, with roles in films The Dirty Dozen (1967) and Antonio (1973) and a variety show special on NBC in 1969, "The Trini Lopez Show."

A talented guitar player—he started playing at age 11—Gibson Guitars had him design two instruments in 1964, which remain highly sought after to this day. Dave Grohl and Noel Gallagher are both fans of the vintage models. Grohl paid tribute to Lopez on Twitter today, underscoring that he's used his on every Foo Fighters album ever recorded.

https://twitter.com/foofighters/status/1293331650982510592

Today the world sadly lost yet another legend, Trini Lopez. Trini not only left a beautiful musical legacy of his own, but also unknowingly helped shape the sound of the Foo Fighters from day one. (1/3) pic.twitter.com/9KRJXDXeWK

— Foo Fighters (@foofighters) August 11, 2020

His electric live performances and hit records made him an in-demand artist in the Las Vegas circuit, as well as around the globe, including one jaunt he found most memorable—stealing the show as the Beatles' opener in Paris in 1964.

"I used to steal the show from them every night!" he said in a 2014 interview. "The French newspapers would say, 'Bravo, Trini Lopez! Who are the Beatles?'"

Ivan Barias On Silence As Complicity, Holding Major Labels Accountable & How To Be A Non-Black Latinx Ally

GRAMMYs

Dave Grohl in 1995

Photo by Niels van Iperen/Getty Images

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He Stuck Around: Foo Fighters' Debut Album At 25 he-stuck-around-foo-fighters-eponymous-debut-album-turns-25

He Stuck Around: Foo Fighters' Eponymous Debut Album Turns 25

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In his post-Nirvana 1995 debut, Dave Grohl launches his legacy as a creator of truly great, mood-stabilizing alternative rock
Dan Weiss
GRAMMYs
Jul 21, 2020 - 10:37 am

You could call Dave Grohl rock's greatest survivor, and have an uncomfortable laugh, but that doesn’t make the question go away. Robert Christgau once put it even more darkly by referring to him in passing as "Nirvana’s most successful member." You'd be hard-pressed to find happier post-tragedy endings in the genre, though, than two albums with significant anniversaries this month. One is AC/DC’s now-40 Back in Black, in which their new singer Brian Johnson sang "Forget the hearse, ‘cause I never die" on the title track, which is supposed to be a tribute to the late Bon Scott, and somehow winds up one of the most tasteful things on the record. The other is Grohl’s first time in the spotlight himself, 1995's Foo Fighters, which turns a more robust 25, and was keyed to the early hit "I'll Stick Around," a promise the drummer's made good on since his last singer killed himself and in some ways took a whole generation with him.

Dave Grohl's stuck around so long that the entire guitar-loving world has watched as he became the genre's new benchmark act, the very horizon itself. The Foo Fighters founder's hard and friendly guitar-bass-drum attack redefined radio's idea of rock especially, a hard rock dad's idea of punk and R.E.M. condensed into one easily swallowed pill. You could call them the most streamlined band ever, and you might not be wrong. Oftentimes, the grain of Grohl’s swollen, jangling guitar sound recalls the unstoppably melodic fuzz of Bob Mould, another major alt-rock figure with two careers, one being a similarly legendary band that was never revived. You could even say that Foo Fighters brought Mould's noise-tune synthesis full circle, playing out its every possible combination before letting emo take over as the new standard for commercial rock. Again, Foo Fighters rarely elicit strong opinions from tastemaker types; they're generally accepted as a part of the ecosystem. But their early records are truly great, if you can imagine the band being considered for the first time and not taken for granted as a reliable AOR staple.

Foo Fighters wasn't even a band's work; save for one guitar solo, Grohl sings and plays every instrument on the entire thing, and gets a surprising variety of colors out of it. "Weenie Beenie" and "Wattershed" honored Nirvana's desire to put a killer riff to bed by simply throwing garbled screaming over top. But "Big Me" is a pop jingle far more squeaky-clean and crowd-pleasing than any Nirvana song, more akin to Weezer's "Buddy Holly." And like Weezer, he couldn’t put forth such a sincere piece of craft with a straight face, so he made the video a Mentos commercial like Weezer simulated a "Happy Days" episode.

Grohl exploited the quiet/loud dynamic even more casually and shamelessly than Kurt Cobain, because Cobain's clean verses still utilized chord sequences as jagged and misshapen as the choruses they'd explode into. You could tell they were going somewhere dark and punk. Foo Fighters on the other hand, starts with the innocent strums of "This Is a Call" as a pump-fake before launching into its reaffirmation of grunge's loudness. Its follow-up, 1997’s The Colour and the Shape, was even more Jekyll-and-Hyde, treating "Hey, Johnny Park!" and "Up in Arms" like outright prom themes plunging into waterfalls of expensive distortion, and especially the 90-second "Doll" into the rip-roar of "Monkey Wrench." Even when Grohl is as abrasive as his hardcore inspirations (which is more often than "My Hero" or "Learn to Fly" haters think), he rarely sounds too disturbed or dangerous, which is probably his legacy: mood-stabilizing alternative rock. Foo Fighters sounds like the work of a middle-class, well-balanced individual; its most enraged moment, the famous "I don’t owe you anything" refrain from "I’ll Stick Around," falls well south of, say, Billy Corgan's contemporaneous "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" on the breakdown-o-meter.

More often, Grohl comes off like a soft-spoken riff-painter who digs shoegaze as much as Corgan did, with broad-brush tones on "X-Static" and "Exhausted," the dirge-y latter of which somehow becoming the very first Foos release. But he allows a little cocktail swing into the funny tantrum "For All the Cows," and hop-skip-waltzes through "Floaty," one of the debut’s most underrated tunes. The incinerating drive of "Good Grief" has improved with time; in fact, most of Foo Fighters is comprised of extraordinarily solid tunes. It wouldn't be a Nirvana album in any way, shape, or form if only, say, "Oh, George" or "Alone + Easy Target" asserted themselves. But post-grunge was rarely so graceful and consistent, so enamored with its own textures and dynamic shifts, so confident of its melodic worth while skirting punk's obnoxiousness. It’s rarely mentioned alongside the '90s' most auspicious debuts, and it’s not like Grohl doesn’t have enough to brag about. But in more than half its songs you can hear a second banana transforming into a headliner-god without making a big deal about it, and doing it all by himself in a realization of purpose that recalls Prince's Dirty Mind. That guy was a Foo Fighters fan, too.

Nirvana Manager Danny Goldberg Talks 25 Years of 'MTV Unplugged In New York'

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Dave Grohl

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Dave Grohl Tells The Story Of Jamming With Prince dave-grohl-tells-story-jamming-prince-talks-growing-his-records

Dave Grohl Tells The Story Of Jamming With Prince, Talks Growing Up To His Records

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Foo Fighters' tribute to the Purple One, plus many more, will air on CBS on April 21 as part of "Let's Go Crazy: The GRAMMY Salute To Prince"
Nate Hertweck
GRAMMYs
Apr 6, 2020 - 10:01 am

There probably isn't a musician on Earth who hasn't dreamed of jamming with the one-and-only musical force of nature known as Prince. For Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl, this dream came true during Prince's now-famous 21-night residency at The Forum in Los Angeles in 2011.

Dave Grohl Tells The Story Of Jamming With Prince

Prince's L.A. takeover kicked off on April 14 that year and also included intimate performances at the Troubadour, House Of Blues. The town was abuzz, as tickets for the Forum shows were only $25, a nice gift to his fans. But even local rock stars took note of the special occasion.

"He did this 21-night run at the Forum in Los Angeles, so of course me and my friends are like, 'of course we've got to go to at least one show,'" said Grohl backstage at "Let's Go Crazy: The GRAMMY Salute To Prince."

So naturally, Grohl and his friends piled into a party bus to head down to Inglewood, taking advantage of L.A. traffic to have a few (too many) drinks. When they arrived, Grohl's security person, who also worked with Prince had some news for Dave.

According to the story, his security guard told him, "'Hey, he knows your here, he's gonna call you up to jam,'" Grohl recalled. "And I was like, 'no no no no no, I've had one too many already, I'm not going up there with Prince like this. Anybody else I would jump up on stage and make a mess, but Prince? No way."

https://twitter.com/RecordingAcad/status/1243282329772199940

The #Prince tribute concert will air on April 21, the four year anniversary of his passing, with an all-star lineup including @GaryClarkJr, @common, @EarthWindFire, and more. 💜🎶 https://t.co/xrhrbPZoPD

— Recording Academy / GRAMMYs (@RecordingAcad) March 26, 2020

After the show, Grohl would be led back behind a velvet curtain to meet Prince and the great Sheila E., a double thrill. Prince asked him when he wanted to jam, then told him to come back the next week on Friday. To arrange the details, Grohl's manager gave Prince Dave's phone number.

"I sat with that phone in my hand for a week, on vibrate, sleeping with it near my head, the whole thing, waiting for him to call, and he never called," Grohl said.

By the time that Friday came around, Grohl showed up at the Forum not knowing quite what to expect.

"I walk out into the arena... it's empy. I'm talking to my guitar tech and all of a sudden, just like that 'SNL' skit with Maya Rudolph, he just appears," Grohl said. "He goes, 'you wanna jam?'"

Grohl then recalled sitting behind the drum kit as the band started joining in with Prince on bass. After the first song, everyone is high-fiving and Prince told him he had a heavy foot, a compliment Grohl took to heart.

"Then he picks up a guitar and starts playing 'Whole Lotta Love' by Led Zeppelin," Grohl said. "And it was awesome. It sounded so good, amazing. We do that for like eight minutes and I'm like, 'Oh god, this is the best band I've ever been in."

Dave Grohl Lauds Prince Ahead Of Tribute Special

Due scheduling conflicts, Grohl never got to join Prince on stage during a show, though he was invited back. Unfortunately, he never saw Prince again, but the experience is that of a dream and one Grohl will never forget.

"I'm an '80s kid, so I grew up with all of his records, and as a popular musician, he was the most talented of anybody," Grohl said. "He was the best bass player, he was the best guitar player, he was the best drummer, he was the best singer, he was the best dancer. He was just the best."

You can catch Foo Fighters' tribute to the Purple One, plus many more, can be seen as part of "Let's Go Crazy: The GRAMMY Salute To Prince." airing on Tuesday, April 21, the four-year anniversary of Prince's death, from 9–11PM ET/PT on CBS and streaming on CBS All Access.

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"Let's Go Crazy: The GRAMMY Salute To Prince" To Air April 21 On CBS Featuring John Legend, H.E.R., Usher & More

 

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Some of the content on this site expresses viewpoints and opinions that are not those of the Recording Academy. Responsibility for the accuracy of information provided in stories not written by or specifically prepared for the Academy lies with the story's original source or writer. Content on this site does not reflect an endorsement or recommendation of any artist or music by the Recording Academy.