It's time to see what the most-played songs and artists on rock radio have been from January to June. And surprise, surprise, the drummer/singer/guitarist you can't get away from is in the top 5 of each list—twice. First, the top songs:

1. Seether, "Fake It"
2. Foo Fighters, "The Pretender"
3. Foo Fighters, "Long Road To Ruin"
4. Linkin Park, "Shadow Of The Day"
5. Puddle Of Mudd, "Psycho"
6. Bravery, "Believe"
7. Seether, "Rise Above This"
8. Finger Eleven, "Paralyzer"
9. Paramore, "CrushCrushCrush"
10. Rise Against, "The Good Left Undone"
11. Atreyu, "Falling Down"
12. Weezer, "Pork & Beans"
13. Three Days Grace, "Never Too Late"
14. Linkin Park, "Given Up"
15. Flobots, "Handlebars"
16. 3 Doors Down, "It's Not My Time"
17. Death Cab For Cutie, "I Will Possess Your Heart"
18. Jack Johnson, "If I Had Eyes"
19. Panic At The Disco, "Nine In The Afternoon"
20. Chevelle, "I Get It"

Almost every song here cracked the top 5 of Billboard's Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart, and the four that didn't—Rise Against, Jack Johnson, Death Cab and Panic—peaked elsewhere in the top 10. But these figures are all about longevity, songs that stay on playlists for months and months, not the ones that make a big splash and then quickly disappear. Therefore, we get plenty of the 2007 hits that refuse to die like "The Pretender," "Paralyzer," and "Never Too Late." And songs that broke in the spring and have been unavoidable ever since, like "Pork & Beans" and "Handlebars," will almost surely rate higher on the year-end list.

"Nine In The Afternoon," which I predicted would be a flash in the pan airplay-wise, has turned out to have substantial legs based on its placement here. That's not to say I'm ready to halt my sophomore-slump schadenfreude for Panic At The Disco—their album Pretty. Odd. has still sold below expectations, and the slightly more tolerable follow-up single "That Green Gentleman" failed to chart at all, which may have helped clear the way for the long radio shelf life "Nine" has had.

Now, let's look at the 20 most-played artists on alternative radio so far in 2008:

1. Foo Fighters
2. Linkin Park
3. Red Hot Chili Peppers
4. Green Day
5. Nirvana
6. Seether
7. Weezer
8. Pearl Jam
9. Stone Temple Pilots
10. Smashing Pumpkins
11. Three Days Grace
12. Offspring
13. Sublime
14. Incubus
15. Nine Inch Nails
16. Puddle Of Mudd
17. Paramore
18. Beastie Boys
19. Alice In Chains
20. Killers

Again, no surprises at the top, where the Foos and Linkin Park take their predictable spots, dominating with multiple singles from their 2007 albums and a comfortable bedrock of earlier hits. And Seether's two big recent hits get them plenty far up, despite a relative lack of airplay for previous singles. But overall you've got an interesting cross-section here, one that demonstrates just how much older recurrents dominate alt-rock radio these days. Less than half of the artists—nine total, four in the top 10—have had new singles out in the last few months. Three of the bands haven't been together for more than a decade, and the fact that those bands are Nirvana, Sublime, and Alice In Chains, all of whom have deceased frontmen, is a little creepy.

Even some of the still-active older bands get a negligible amount of their chart placement from recent material: Smashing Pumpkins have eight songs in the top 500 most played songs of the year, but last year's underwhelming comeback single "Tarantula" is the least popular of those; all 10 of Pearl Jam's entries are from no later than 1994; and even if Stone Temple Pilots came home from their reunion tour
tomorrow and recorded a smash hit, it'd struggle to get as many spins as "Interstate Love Song." Meanwhile, Green Day, RHCP, Weezer and Nine Inch Nails get healthy spins for songs from the '90s as well as those from this decade.

The enduring popularity of first-wave grunge bands makes the presence of umpteenth-wavers like Three Days Grace and Puddle of Mudd unsurprising. But it's impressive that a relatively new band like Paramore has inched up so high on the list—especially since its two big hits were released in '07, and the one single the band released this year, the Idolator fave "That's What You Get," pretty much tanked, barely cracking the Modern Rock chart. And though The Killers' Sam's Town, released way back in 2006, was widely deemed a disappointment, enough of the band's singles, including that album's "When You Were Young," have remained in recurrent play enough to keep them high up on the list. In fact, they're up much higher than bands who achieved comparable success around the same time and haven't had alt-rock hits lately, like My Chemical Romance (59) and Fall Out Boy (74). FOB might wanna keep that "Mr. Brightside" cover in their set for a while, because it might eventually be more familiar to the casual fans in the crowd than any of their originals.

Before we begin, another piece of evidence:

1. ARE YOU ABSOLUTELY SURE YOU'RE NOT SEEING LEZ ZEPPELIN?
Hey, it's confused people before.

2. IS JOHN PAUL JONES PLAYING BASS?
If your answer is "yes," then go to question three. If your answer is no, then skip to question seven.

3. IS JIMMY PAGE PLAYING GUITAR?
If your answer is "yes," then go to question four. If your answer is no, then skip to question seven.

4. IS THE REANIMATED CORPSE OF JOHN BONHAM OR HIS SON PLAYING DRUMS?
If your answer is "yes," then go to question six. If your answer is no, then go to question five.

5. IS THE GUY PLAYING DRUMS A REASONABLY WELL-KNOWN DRUMMER LIKE, SAY, DAVE GROHL?
If your answer is "yes," then go to question six. If your answer is no, the skip to question seven.

6. IS ROBERT PLANT SINGING?
If your answer is "yes," then you were probably at the O2 arena last winter. If you weren't, go to question seven.

7. SO WAIT, WHO'S FILLING IN? DAVID COVERDALE? EVEN THAT DOESN'T COUNT. SERIOUSLY, PEOPLE, I KNOW THE TERM "LED ZEPPELIN REUNION" GETS THE GOOGLE HITS, AND I'M HAPPY THAT DAVE GROHL WAS REALLY PSYCHED ABOUT SINGING WITH HIS FAVORITE LEGENDS—BUT HONESTLY, YOU DON'T HAVE TO OUT-AND-OUT LIE TO PEOPLE IN ORDER TO GET TRAFFIC TO YOUR PIDDLING WEB SITE.
Just saying.

Led Zeppelin reunite at Foo Fighters show [NME]
Foo Fighters Wembley Rock'N Roll Led Zeppelin [YouTube]
Foo Fighters — Led Zeppelin Ramble On [YouTube]

Just wanted to write a quick note to clear up this whole "Open letter to Metallica" fiasco......For the record, I never "wrote" anything to Metallica. I was asked by a journalist, at the end of a long interview (abut the Foo Fighters) to give a quick message to Metallica in the studio. So, I rattled that quote off the top of my head. No biggie, right? Somehow it became my "open letter" to the band, and now it's been picked up by everyone from Blabbermouth to Rolling Stone (as if anyone really cares!). Now, it's true that I've been a loyal fan of this band for 25 years, and I can't wait to hear the new shit, but an "open letter" to the band?!!?? Nah. Not my style. I'd rather just text 'em......

Ah, Dave. If you're so friendly with them, wouldn't they invite you over for listening sessions? Or at least to be the second drummer on their version of "Fight Fire With Fire" that had an extra bass-playing appendage in Flea, so as to max out the number of extra people on stage?

Hey Everybody, [foofighters.com; HT Absolute Punk]
Metallica at the Wiltern - Fight Fire With Fire (w/ Flea) [YouTube]
Earlier: Dave Grohl To Metallica: "Please Don't Make Another Shitty Record. Also, I'm Available!

Dear METALLICA,

Hey, it's Dave! Remember me? Yeah, I'm the guy that's been listening to your band faithfully since 1983. I bought your first album 'Kill 'Em All' from a mailorder catalogue called Under The Rainbow, I think. Actually I can't remember. It was 1983 for Christsakes! But that album changed my life and I've been listening to your albums ever since (even 'St Anger'!).

I can't wait to hear the new shit, and no matter what you guys do I'll always be first one at the shop waiting to hear it. I'm sure you'll come out and blow everybody's fuckin' minds, because you're fuckin' METALLICA!

Good luck. And don't release it until it's kick-ass.

Yours, Dave Grohl.

P.S. Are you finished recording the drums yet?

I'm not really sure who he's trying to mess with here, but that P.S. sounds kinda... ominous. Watch out, Lars—you know that Dave Grohl thinks he's THE BEST, THE BEST, THE BEST... right?

DAVE GROHL's "Open Letter" To METALLICA [Blabbermouth]

The station began promoting the false concert - an intimate acoustic show by the American rock act at Auckland venue the Powerstation - yesterday morning. They expected around 50 people to turn up for the show this morning - April Fool's Day - at 8.15am. Instead of an appearance by Dave Grohl and the rest of the popular act, the station planned to play a Foo Fighters album on a tape deck.



But by 5pm yesterday the station was overwhelmed by inquiries and pulled the stunt. It confessed that it was an April Fool's Day gag and apologised to listeners. Programme director Brad King said the station received inquiries from fans, record labels and promoters. People were booking the day off work and planning to drive or fly to Auckland, he said, and more than 2000 people could have turned up at the venue.



It caused "absolute carnage," King said. "This is what happens when fools plan April Fool's jokes. Word spread beyond far and wide."

King has been quoted as saying "heads have rolled," but there's no specific word on whether the DJs or the promotional department that came up with it have actually been fired.

Radio station 'sorry' for Aprils Fool's stunt [Stuff.co.nz]
Radio Station Apologizes over Foo Fighters prank [Yahoo! UK]

HAVING SEX

LOANING SUNSCREEN

HAVING THEM GIVE ME A PACK OF SILK CUTS

DOING A LINE

PLAYING TRIVIal PURSUIT

VISITING THEM AT HoME IN THE SOUTH OF FRANCE'

GOING TO THE LOUVRE WITH

CUTTING UP FRUIT FOR A FRUIT SALAD

'MAKING PASTA

LISTENING TO PUCCINI IN MATCHING KIMONOS DRINKING PETRUS READING THE NEW YORK TIMES'

SHARING MAKEUP AND CLOTHES( BOTH SEXES)

SNUBBING

NOT SHARING DRUGS WITH

KIckING THE ASSES OF ( SONICALLY)

hitchiking from sardina with

Obviously some of these were one-off experiences and obviously some were frequent go-to's for a bored Courtney. (Once you find a good Trivial Pursuit partner you don't give them up easily.) But with who did she listen "TO PUCCINI IN MATCHING KIMONOS DRINKING PETRUS READING THE NEW YORK TIMES'"? Perhaps we'll never know. Or perhaps maybe you know. (I'm guessing David Coverdale.)

have a beer with? [Courtney Love/Photo: AP]

Reply to: sale-579420104@craigslist.org

Date: 2008-02-19, 1:46PM EST

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The three of us below need tickets to the Foo Fighters concert desperately. We cannot offer money because we spent all of it on drugs, but we can offer you sexy time. Any position, with any combination or all of us three involved for 3 hours after the concert. This is a real offer. You cannot contact us directly, however you can contact our pimp, Goozmang at 516-423-1891. He can setup all arrangements.

Thanks,

Los Monos Del Culo

P.S. We don't use rubbers.

And nine months from now we get the Maury episode we've all been waiting for.

FOO FIGHTERS TICKETS WANTED. WE HAVE GREAT OFFER. [Craigslist; HT: James Del]

Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.

[Photo: AP]

Dave Grohl
Bruce Springsteen
Beastie Boys
Joni Mitchell
John Fogerty
Lucinda Williams
Jack White
Steve Earle
Herbie Hancock
Chaka Khan
Fantasia
George Lopez
Jay-Z
Justin Timberlake
Tim McGraw
Beyonce

Eep! And isn't Whitney Houston in the Screen Actors Guild, too? Maybe Mike Huckabee can learn how to play the triangle sometime in the next month, because from the lineups I've seen for the late-night talk shows, dude is all about crossing picket lines.

Glare From Golden Globes Starting To Heat The Grammys? [The Set List]
[Photo: AP]

Every year, the announcement of the Grammy nominations, more than just about any other major awards show, invites the same level of confusion and intense speculation as the discovery of a serial killer's latest victim, or the release of a new Cloverfield trailer. What does it all mean? Are they trying to tell us something? Did you know that Herbie Hancock put out an album of Joni Mitchell covers this year? One of the big questions raised by last week's nominations was just
how the hell the Foo Fighters got the Album Of The Year nomination, particularly when the token rock-veteran spot could have been so capably filled by Bruce Springsteen.

The Foo Fighters are no strangers to the Grammys—in previous years they've won four and been nominated for eight more, usually for Best Rock Album, and a few irrelevant niche categories like Best Hard Rock Performance and Best Short-Form Music Video. But this is their first year with a nod in any of the Big Four, let alone two of them (they were also nominated for Record Of The Year). Of course, bestowing the AOTY nod to a '90s alt-rock mainstay has kind of become an established pattern for the Grammys in recent years. But the two other instances—Red Hot Chili Peppers last year, and Green Day two years before that—were a little less surprising. After all, both albums were multi-platinum blockbusters with Grammy-friendly hooks: a diverse double album, and an uncharacteristically ambitious rock opera, respectively.

The Foos' latest, Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, is for all intents and purposes a business-as-usual album, with no particular concept or editorial angle, and the Foo Fighters have never been a mega-selling act on the level of RHCP or Green Day. The old Paul McCartney theory—that Dave Grohl is just collecting the plaudits for his previous band—has been floated here and there, but the Foo Fighters' goofy cross-dressing videos and workmanlike power-pop don't exactly carry the same Most Important Band Ever cultural cache as Nirvana. Still, they're at least a more credible token rock pick for Grammy voters than, say, Nickelback. And Grohl does possess a little indie cred, occasionally playing with smaller bands like Cat Power and co-owning the great Washington, D.C. rock club The Black Cat.

The funny thing is, if the Foo Fighters were ever gonna get Grammy love, you'd think it would've happened two years ago. 2005's In Your Honor was one of them there ambitious double albums, and featured the highest-charting single of the band's career, "Best Of You." Even 2002's One By One came at a more symbolically significant phase of the band's career, when Dave Grohl was beginning to settle into his elder statesman role, and dominated rock radio with simultaneous hits by the Foos, Queens Of The Stone Age, and Nirvana (the posthumous "You Know You're Right"). But in all likelihood, this time around they just ended up the benificiaries of a slow year for event albums, in which the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences seemed to just shrug "Kanye, Winehouse, and... whatever."

One statistic I dropped in my first column was that the Foo Fighters, like several other alt-rock survivors, had nearly all of their Modern Rock No. 1s (four out of five) in this decade, despite releasing half of their albums in the '90s. The band's benefited from the slowly shrinking rock radio audience without actually growing in popularity in any discernible way. In fact, the Foo Fighters' sales history might be one of the most consistently static I've seen for a career lasting over a decade: Every one of their first five albums has sold a million copies, but none of them has jumped up to the two-million-sold plateau. Echoes, just released in September, hasn't moved a mil yet, but it presumably will by the time it runs its course. Still, I can't see it reaching multiplatinum status, even with the sales bump that would come from a big Grammy win come February.

The thing is, I'll defend the Foo Fighters more earnestly than just about anyone, or at least any critic I know. I like Dave Grohl's voice, and the fact that his songwriting plays off his experience as a drummer has made for some really rhythmically dynamic arrangements, even if it's all packaged in a a very MOR, hyper-compressed modern rock sound. And while I'll admit, like most fans, that the Foo Fighters peaked with their first two albums, they've aged better than most of their peers; In Your Honor might've actually made my Top 10 a few years ago if it was just the "rock" half and hadn't included the dismal acoustic second disc.

Echoes suffers from further ventures into ballad territory, as well as too many slow burners where at least half the song is devoid of Taylor Hawkins' drumming. But I also think that "Pretender" might be the band's best single since "Everlong." Considering how much I've cooled on Kanye's Graduation since its release, by the time the Grammys roll around I might actually be rooting for the Foo Fighters to take the big prize home. I just hope Dave Grohl doesn't feel the need to pander to voters by releasing one of the album's overly serious dirges as the next single, and that he opts for the uptempo, hilariously titled "Cheer Up, Boys (Your Make-Up Is Running)." Even better, they could play it at the televised ceremony, and dedicate the performance to Pete Wentz.

• "Like the greats, the Foos have found a way to create their own archetype, with an instinctive feel for what constitutes a killer song. From this point on, 'Fooey' will be as august an expression of approbation as 'Beatlesque.'"[EW]
• "These songs are astonishingly easy to listen to, guided by iron notions of form and musical narrative, lifted by a zesty chord, just as they're threatening to become mundane. If you're past prom age, there's a lot of craft here to admire." [NYT]
• "Most of Echoes rails against people who want to hold the singer down (which raises the question: Is anybody — okay, besides Courtney — really trying to oppress Dave Grohl?). The album's best song is 'The Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners,' a bluegrass instrumental that's an oasis amid the combative bluster. It's hard to criticize Grohl for his lack of innovation, because he's never wanted to start a revolution. But at this point, Foo Fighters' consistency has become predictability, and it threatens to trap them in the modern-rock ghetto, dangerously close to those guys in Hinder." [Spin]
• "With two folksy exceptions, it's more of the same from one of the planet's finest hard-rock acts. And since that's worked famously for 12 years, there's not much to fault with that." [Dallas Morning News]

This isn't even to slam the Foos themselves, or even this album in particular. Nor is it to praise either of those things, necessarily—which is the point. Bonus deluxe editions are an overpopulated species to begin with, and while I have my exceptions just like everyone else (put your hands together for the Pet Shop Boys), this one seems especially gratuitous. Obviously there are plenty of Foo Fighters fans out there, and surely many of them are passionate enough to want the bonus stuff included in the expanded Colour. But really—why not just release a B-sides and rarities comp? The diehards would probably buy it a lot faster than a rejiggered version of something they already own.

Foo Fighters: The Colour And The Shape [Pitchfork]