Times Like These

#It's times like these you learn to learn to live again
It's times like these you give and give again
It's times like these you learn to love again
It's times like these, time and time again#
Foo Fighters, Times Like These

In stark contrast to my recent trip to see the Sex Pistols on my own, Saturday was the eagerly anticipated Foo Fighters show at London's new O2 Arena. The O2 Arena is funny, since it started out life as the disastrous Millennium Dome. To celebrate the Millennium an awful lot of money was wasted on building the dome, which as I recall housed only a rather poor sort of exhibition. It will go down in history was one of the worst ideas ever, and popular opinion has largely been that the London Eye was much more sensible. For several years, the fate of the Dome has been open to speculation -- until it seems that someone had the belatedly-good idea of making it into what it is now: the best selling live music venue in the world.

Housing two live music venues along with numerous bars and restaurants, it's hard to see why nobody thought of doing this with it in the first place. The only thing that disturbs me is how much it looks like the Death Star when you look at the floor plan.

Anyway, on Saturday I headed into London with my friends first for dinner and drinks and then the gig itself. We'd talked ages ago of going up early and getting something to eat first, but sometimes with my friends it can be hard to know if this means pub food, Subway or an actual restaurant. With plenty to choose from, we settled on Las Iguanas for its Latin American food. Naturally, it was slightly on the pricey side -- but it was good food.

I'd never been seated at an arena show before -- so it was slightly disconcerting to see how far up we were once we'd found our seats at the back, when I stood up to take off my coat I had to ask someone to hold on to me so I wouldn't worry about falling over the seats in front.

The Foo Fighters show itself was amazing, and definitely among one of their best ever. Joining them on this tour is the legendary Pat Smear -- a founding member, and briefly the second guitarist in Nirvana. I'm willing to bet his presence contributed to the inclusion of some songs from the band's self titled debut album. Among the crowd favourites from the new album, there was the surprise of hearing the band play songs like For All The Cows, This Is A Call and Weenie Beenie -- the latter I haven't heard them play since the V festival, in 1997.

I was slightly disappointed they didn't play MIA, but you can never expect to hear every single last song you want to. The best song of the night for me -- and possibly my favourite of their songs -- was Times Like These. I like the idea of it -- of learning to live and love again. I couldn't even begin to list all of the songs they played -- but it was one of those impassioned performances that are close to a religious experience, with thousands of people all singing along together. It makes you want to hug someone.