This has to be one of the coolest things in rock history
http://www.insidehalton.com/community/h ... cle/994794
Foo Fighters play Georgetown....garage!
Hornby man wins contest for garage concert
Foo Fighters play Georgetown....garage!. Foo Fighters front man David Grohl gives a playful hug to Nick Perry while drummer Taylor Hawkins looks on. The multi-million record selling U.S. group visited Perry’s parents’ Hornby home last Thursday night after the local man won a contest to have the group play a gig in his garage. For more photos visit
www.edge.ca/ConcertsAndEvents/FooFighters/Index.aspx. Pina the Inside Edge chick
One of the world’s most popular rock bands paid a visit to Halton Hills last Thursday for an exclusive concert that only about 100 people were able to witness.
Hornby resident Nick Perry, a 29-year-old musician and aspiring firefighter, won a contest sponsored by BlackBerry that scored him a 90-minute concert in the garage of his parents’ farm by the chart-topping American group Foo Fighters.
Perry was invited on stage to play a few songs with the band in front of 50 family members and friends as part of the Foo Fighters’ Garage Tour.
“I’m still on cloud nine. Actually it feels like cloud 50 and I haven’t started to come down yet,” said Perry, a member of the Milton-based punk rock band Dead Celebrity.
“All around, it was the best day of my life and I don’t know if anything will be able to top it. It was like winning the lottery, except it was my favourite band that was the prize. If I did win the lottery, I’d pay the Foo Fighters $50 million to play here in my garage. But they did it for nothing.”
Proclaiming himself the Foo Fighters’ biggest fan, Perry has all of the band’s releases and never misses attending their concerts or public appearances when they visit Toronto, and several times he’s gone on road trips to places such as London, Ont. and Ottawa to see them play live.
To win the contest, Perry “went completely overboard” and sent in pictures in a collage of the 2,000-square-foot garage and had to submit a 25-word essay about why he deserved to host frontman Dave Grohl and his crew for an afternoon of music and socializing.
Perry also had to call on a few friends to do some spring cleaning of the garage in order to get it ready for the production.
“I found out I won on April Fools’ Day and at first I thought someone was joking with me, that my friends were busting on me,” added Perry, a volunteer for St. John Ambulance.
A private security firm and Halton Police made sure that non-invitees weren’t able to crash the party, although Perry doubts that many people would have even heard the fully plugged-in show, given the rural location of his parents’ farm.
Perry admits he lost his composure a couple of times, especially after the way the concert finished. When it appeared the band had played its final encore, he began playing the first few notes of their hit Big Me and the band dutifully followed along.
“Two weeks ago I was working on the farm, dreaming about playing in front of 80,000 people. Then for two-and-a-half minutes, I was the lead singer for the best band in the world. It’s still unreal to me even though it happened a few days ago now.”
Others at the concert included staffers from Waterloo-based Research In Motion, which put on the BlackBerry contest, contest winners from Toronto radio station 102.1 The Edge and the band’s road crew.
“It was pretty crazy to say the least,” said Pina Crispo, the Edge’s promotions director.
“I can’t imagine any other band of their magnitude doing something like this, the way they interact with the fans is just amazing. They’re really down-to-earth people and this was the perfect setting.”
Founded by former Nirvana drummer Grohl in 1994, the Foo Fighters have sold over 20 million records. Their latest release, Wasting Light, was recorded in Grohl’s garage and rocketed to the top of the Billboard charts last week.
The stop in Hornby was the third on the band’s Garage Tour after visits to Washington, D.C. and Yonkers, N.Y. last week as they ready for a tour of Europe this summer.
