Foo Fighters Offer Rarities During 1st Concert With Drummer Ilan Rubin At Pop-Up Show In California

Foo Fighters delivered a surprise show at the 900-capacity Fremont Theater in San Luis Obispo, California on Saturday. The pop-up concert announced the night before marked the band’s first show with new drummer Ilan Rubin.

In late July, an announcement came down the wire that rock titans Foo Fighters and Nine Inch Nails had switched drummers, with Josh Freese returning to NIN. Freese previously sat behind the kit for Trent Reznor and company between 2005 and 2008. Nine Inch Nails’ longest tenured live drummer, Ilan Rubin, who was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with NIN in 2020, headed to the Foo Fighters camp.

Saturday saw Rubin’s first outing with FF. The band treated the roughly 900 fans who made it into the venue with a career-spanning set including rarities. The concert got underway with the classic “All My Life,” off the band’s 2002 LP, One By One. After “Rope,” frontman Dave Grohl led the group through One By One‘s “Have It All” for the first time since 2015, as per SetlistFM Stats. The 2015 play was the first since 2005.

Check out Ilan Rubin’s powerhouse drumming (and harmony singing) on “Have It All” in the clip below:

Foo Fighters filled their main set with favorites such as “Times Like These,” “The Pretender,” “Learn to Fly” and “My Hero.” As the penultimate song of the set, Grohl reached back to his 1992 record Pocketwatch, a solo album he released under the moniker Late! in 1992 while he was in Nirvana. Foo Fighters performed “Winnebago” for the first time since 2014. While the song was played heavily in Foo Fighters early days, it went into obscurity in the 2000s.

After wrapping the set with “Best of You,” Foo Fighters returned to kick off the encore with another break out, this time in the form of “Alone + Easy Target,” off the band’s 1995 self-titled debut album, marking the first performance since 2018. “Low” and “Monkey Wrench” followed ahead of yet another dust off, Foo Fighters cut “Exhausted,” played for the first time since 2014. The classic closer “Everlong” capped the concert.

Foo Fighters kick off a trek through Indonesia, Singapore and Japan in October before returning to North America for shows in Mexico. Scroll down for the band’s itinerary and ticket info.