Final Project: Dave Grohl

I decided for my final project to do a Audio Visual Document about American musician Dave Grohl. I wanted to focus on his contribution to the rise of Grunge, and later Alternative Rock in popular music and how he has gone about conserving the recording techniques used on those classic records. He started his career in a band called Scream in the 80s, and joined Nirvana when that band split up in 1990. His performance on Nirvana’s Nevermind was a big part of its success, and that success led to the proliferation of Grunge (stemming from Punk) in the popular charts of the 1990s. This creation led to the later term Alternative Rock, which was more of a catch all title that described bands with punk tendencies who maintain pop-inspired songwriting and performance. After Nirvana ended, he continued to guide the direction of Alternative Rock with his new band, Foo Fighters. He also has several collaborations with other artists in the genre, such as his role as the drummer on Queens of the Stone Age’s Songs for the Deaf. Even going past that, he has projects throughout the music industry. He directed a film in 2013 called Sound City where he invited many world-class musicians to record an album using the same board that was used in Sound City Studios to record Nirvana’s Nevermind, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, and Rage Against the Machine’s self-titled debut among many others. The result was Sound City: Real to Reel which featured Grohl along with the likes of Sir Paul McCartney, Stevie Nicks and Rick Nielson to name a few. With all the many hats he wears, Dave Grohl has shaped the Alternative Rock genre we know today and has also served as a conservator of the techniques and sonic quality that made him and his contemporaries so successful.