Foo's in London....
This week we had the pleasure of spending some time with one of our favourite individuals, Geof Templeton. Geof has been taking care of Nate in terms of his live set up for as long as we can remember around 14/15 years or so now, ever since we got the first call from Nate asking what support we could help with as Nate had just purchased an ABM-500 from a shop in Seattle called Bass Northwest which is sadly no longer with us. Nate was handling bass duties in an un related Foo Fighter project called the 'Fire Theft'... Anyway the question Geof put to us what could we do to help take the Ashdown on the road with the Foo Fighters...
For us it was a real moment of 'WOW' the Foo Fighters want to take our amps on the road! One we will never forget.. From that day on Geof has been our point of contact and has become a very close friend and one we treasure in every capacity... When Geof isn't on the road with the biggest rock band in the world Geof has a passion for making things, one of his proudest moments and we can remember it well was when they started working on Studio 606 in Northridge, CA. Geof was manned with the task of acoustically treating the live and control rooms, as well as many other jobs... This one sticks in our mind as he was so insistent we went down to check out his handy work... So one NAMM show maybe 2006 we headed down to see the studio in between setting up the booth...
Geof was unfortunately not available to give us the tour himself so i think it was Lou who gave us the tour and just seeing the place finished it was incredible, these acoustic clouds Geof had made were the size of a decent yacht around 20ft and hung around 20 ft in the air above the desk and in the live room... Any way Lou was regaling us in the story of coming in one day to find Geof just stood there with a cup of coffee in one hand and cigarette in the other leaning against the control room wall looking at these clouds 20ft in the sky with a huge look of pride & contentment upon his face... Geof had been the only person working in the studio that night and was left to pack up, Geof however didn't leave for the night but stayed and hung these clouds all on his own... Now we weren't exaggerating when we said they were 20 ft in the air, it was a serious feet of ingenuity but he did it all on his own! This is just one of his many talents, he has been known to take his hands to all sorts of trades from making old amps look like Ashdowns to be destroyed in videos (see video for the pretender we have never made an amp like that and never will look closely... )
to fishing on ice lakes in Alaska. Geof we down our hat to you Sir thank you for being you and taking such good care of us over the years!
Any way on to the show! It was great to see the mighty Foos in London once again for an unforgettable evening, the stand out bit for us was the on stage mash up of "Imagine' by John Lennon and Van Halen's 'Jump' It was a wonderful addition to the set... After being referred to as 'Night 2' the whole night it was clear Dave was having a great night as were all! Nate was on fine form and in good spirits as he dived into their rendition of 'Under Pressure' with Dave taking up duties behind the kit and Taylor taking to the Mic for his best Freddie impression, Dave being behind the kit was great to see as he dropped into a brief flam from the intro of 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' right at the end the whole crowd gasped but that was that....
It was a magical night and one that felt far more personal than previous shows we have witnessed at the London Stadium recently.. Check out the set list below:
The band have 10 days before they head of on their North American tour....
Set List: 22nd June 2018 - London Stadium
- All My Life
- Learn to Fly
- The Pretender
- The Sky Is a Neighborhood
- Rope
- Sunday Rain
- My Hero
- These Days
- Walk
- Under My Wheels (Alice Cooper cover) (Chris Shiflett on lead vocals)
- Another One Bites the Dust / It's So Easy / You're the One that I Want / Foreplay (snippets played during band intros)
- Jump (Van Halen cover) (mashed up with John Lennon's "Imagine")
- Blitzkrieg Bop (Ramones cover)
- Under Pressure (Queen cover) (Taylor on vocals, Dave drums.… more )
- Monkey Wrench
- Wheels
- This Is a Call
- Breakout
- Dirty Water
- Run
- Best of You
Encore:
- Times Like These
- Everlong