NEWS
(L-R) Chris Shiflett, Rami Jaffee, Dave Grohl, Nate Mendel, Pat Smear and Taylor Hawkins pose onstage as The Foo Fighters reopen Madison Square Garden on June 20, 2021 in New York City.
Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for FFIt’s here! It happened! After 15 months (and a week or so) of near total darkness for most indoor American concert venues, the lights are back on. Last weekend, the Foo Fighters sold out New York’s Madison Square Garden at full capacity, indoors, in person.
The band sold 15,371 tickets, grossing over $1.4 million on their June 20 comeback performance, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore. “Full capacity” can deceptively vary from arena to arena and from show to show, but there is no debating the Foo Fighters’ status. Across 662 shows reported since 2015, MSG’s average cap is 15,140, a couple hundred seats less than Saturday’s show.
While it may feel shocking to have full-fledged arena shows back in action, it is no surprise that Dave Grohl & co. posted such strong numbers. Dating back to 1995, the Foo Fighters have grossed a reported $209.7 million and sold 3.38 million tickets across 300 (exactly) headline shows.
Sunday's return marked the band’s fourth trip to the Garden, and their 10th report of a New York show throughout their career. (Billboard Boxscore may only have reports for a portion of the act’s tour history.)
They started out in relatively humble fashion with an Aug. 13, 1995 performance at The Academy, playing to a sold-out crowd of 1,600 fans who each spent somewhere between $10 and $12.50 for a ticket. The Academy led to Roseland Ballroom, Hammerstein Ballroom and the Beacon Theatre before the Foos took on MSG for the first time in 2008.
The Foo Fighters hit a career high with a double-header in 2018, grossing $2.7 million from 31,000 tickets sold. But on a per-show basis, the June 20, 2021 concert edges it out as the band’s biggest NYC show yet.
The last report from Madison Square Garden was a sold-out show for The Brothers on March 10, 2020. The next scheduled act at the venue is the Eagles on Aug. 22 and 24, followed by Banda MS and Dan + Shay in September.
The Foo Fighters will hit the road again with six shows from July 28 - Aug. 9. They, and many others, are just getting started.
NEWS
Supergrass are teasing an upcoming announcement with fans, according to a new post.
The British band, fronted by Gaz Coombes, shared a cryptic new post across their social media channels this morning (September 13), suggesting to fans that a new announcement is on the way.
Posted at 9am BST, the post simply shared artwork of the band’s logo in red, alongside next Monday’s date, September 16. In the caption, the band simply wrote: “Sign up now”, alongside a link to their website’s homepage.
Upon clicking the link, the page prompts fans to sign up for future updates, and asks them to input both their email address and the country they live in. Check out the post below.
While details on the announcement remain sparse, the post has already caught fans’ attention, with some speculating that the news could be around the upcoming 30th anniversary of their debut album, ‘I Should Coco’.
Released in May 1995, the release marked the record that first put the band on the map, and contained singles ‘Mansize Rooster’, ‘Caught By The Fuzz, ‘Lose It’ and ‘Lenny’. It also saw Coombes and Co. nominated at the 1995 Mercury Prize, and contained what would soon become their biggest track to date, the Ivor-Novello winning ‘Alright’.
At time of writing, the band haven’t shared any further indication as to whether the announcement is related to the huge upcoming milestone – whether it be an anniversary tour or reissue – nor whether it has anything to do with new music that could be on the way.
The band’s last studio album was ‘Diamond Hoo Ha’, which arrived in 2008. Since then, they have shared remastered versions of both their 1999 self-titled album and their 2003 record ‘Life On Other Planets’.
In other news around the band, last year it was reported that the band’s frontman joined Johnny Marr onstage last month to perform The Smiths‘ classic ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’ at Lakefest 2023.
Before then, Coombes opened up about how “nervous” he was about reuniting Supergrass following the success of his solo albums.
Supergrass split up in 2010 but reunited for a series of live shows in 2019. They released a live album in 2020, Live On Other Planets, to celebrate their 25th anniversary and raise money for grassroots venues affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Having got into a flow and the last two albums having done so well, it seemed a bit odd, like a backward step,” he said. “But then I was confident that I could operate both things together and it seems that I did, because I was obviously writing this record mainly during the reunion so I feel like I made best use of both things.”
Coombes’ fourth solo album, ‘Turn The Car Around’, came out in January of last year.
