Dave Grohl Doesn’t Appreciate Your Hipster Mustache

Dave Grohl enjoys a good mustache. “Not the fuckin’ ironic mustache,� the Foo Fighters front man quickly clarified midway through the band’s two-hour set at a sold-out Madison Square Garden Tuesday. “Not the fucking kids thinking they look like Burt Reynolds.� Ironic or not, it took the crowd (who were, to be sure, more K-Rock than Williamsburg) about the length of a Burt Reynolds film (ironic choice: Cannonball Run) to warm up to the Recording Academy’s favorite arena-rock band. But it wasn’t for a lack of effort. “Goddamn it, we’re playing Madison Square Fucking Garden tonight,� Grohl growled early on. “I hope everybody took a piss — we’re gonna be here for a while.� And with that, the former Nirvana skin man launched off of every accessible drum riser he could find, inserted “motherfucking� into virtually every song introduction (“This is motherfucking ‘Breakout’�), and spat his way through a barrage of Foo hits, stopping only briefly to indulge Taylor Hawkins in possibly the worst drum solo in MSG history. Oddly, it wasn’t until an acoustic mini-set that Grohl’s exhortations to “Come on!� finally seemed to move the crowd. By then, though, the room seemed a touch too big for the Foo Fighters, a big-hearted band dependent on a loving — and unironic — audience. —Dylan Stableford