So apparently, The Anthem is THE new rock club of the East Coast. It is not just a rock club, my friends, it is a concert hall with the most epic acoustics, the most beautiful design, but with a feel of a cosy rock club, holding anywhere between 2.500 and 6.000 music lovers. It sits on the redeveloped Wharf on Washington’s Southwest Waterfront and has been developed by no other than Seth Hurwitz, the legend behind D.C.’s other epic venue 9:30.
So, who would you want to open up such a venue? You would probably want a local hero and there happens to be this one guy who played his first ever gig in D.C. at 16 years of age. His name is Dave Grohl and his current band is of course the Foo Fighters.
The initial warm up gig for “Friends & Family” on Wednesday goes down like a storm, but the official opening night on Thursday is by far the longest show the Foos may have ever played. 2 ¾ hours of Foo Fighters, reminiscing about his days on the wharf eating jumbo crabs on the waterfront, listening to the local radio stations and mostly importantly playing a huge range of songs from “I’ll Stick Around” to “The Pretender”, all along teasing the audience with a universal question these days “Is rock’n’roll dead?”. Not if the Foo Fighters have anything to say about it and to prove this phenomenon not only have they enlisted three drop dead gorgeous backing vocalists for some of their new stuff from “Concrete and Gold”, they also ask The Anthem guy himself, Seth Hurwitz, to come and play drums on the Rolling Stones cover “Bitch”, giving the epic Taylor Hawkins a little more limelight in the process.
The gig without a curfew ended with “Everlong” and it doesn’t matter how often you have heard or seen this song- smiles and goosebumps all around in this epic new venue, The Anthem.