Watch Foo Fighters Open New DC Venue The Atlantis With A Bad Brains Cover

Watch Foo Fighters Open New DC Venue The Atlantis With A Bad Brains Cover

Foo Fighters leader Dave Grohl grew up in the suburbs of Washington, DC and who had a ton of formative experiences in the DC punk scene. Grohl remains devoted to the city and its music; he was one of the investors who helped open the Black Cat decades ago. Like every other DC punk of a certain age, Grohl has a particular reverence for the Bad Brains, the band that invented hardcore. Grohl brought Bad Brains to a DC stadium stage in 2015, and he put them on TV with his HBO show Sonic Highways. Last night, Grohl and the Foo Fighters opened a new DC venue, and they made sure the first song that anyone played on that stage was a Bad Brains cover.

The Atlantis is a new venue in Washington, DC that’s based on the dimensions of the original 9:30 Club. The 9:30 Club opened in 1980, served as a crucial all-ages space for the exploding DC punk scene, and moved into a larger space in 1996. Grohl never played the old 9:30 Club, but he went to a lot of shows there. The Atlantis has a capacity of 450, and it’s run by the same people who run the 9:30 Club. Grohl spoke at the Atlantis’ ribbon-cutting ceremony yesterday, and he was there when they unveiled a life-size sculpture of him that’s made entirely out of found objects. Last night, Foo Fighters were the first band to play at the Atlantis.

Dave Grohl famously got his start as the teenage replacement drummer for the Dischord band Scream. Last night, former Scream frontman Pete Stahl joined the band for their opening song, a cover of the old Bad Brains number “At The Atlantis.” (Bad Brains recorded that song for their 1978 demo, and it was on Black Dots, a rarities collection that came out in 1996.) Watch the cover and listen to the original below.

Also, here’s Grohl speaking at the Atlantis opening and beholding his own sculpture.

The new Foo Fighters album But Here We Are is out 6/2 on Roswell/RCA.

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