I don't admire anybody. But sometimes I stare in wonder at what a person does, and I find more often than not that Dave Grohl's body of work leaves me with a sense of wonder.
The man LOVES music, and his definition of music is extremely broad.
Better yet, he makes music FUN, as it should be.
His latest music project is involves a bunch of new tracks with artists he worked with as part of his movie about Sound City, a now defunct recording studio. The movie is currently available for purchase pretty much everywhere, and a new album comes out this Tuesday. I already have the track with Paul McCartney, and I've heard the tracks with Corey Taylor (of Slipknot and Stone Sour) and Stevie Nicks, both of which are phenomenal.
Music is one of the few things that makes us human, that differentiates us from all the other automata out there. Music is our soul and our spirit and our joy. There is nothing we can do as human beings that is more rewarding or more profound than making music.
Even the most banal pop music can be a wonder, if you look at it properly. For example, imagine the Beatles' "I feel fine," which is a great pop song in its own right, told from her perspective, but as a blues song. I personally look forward to Sheryl Crow's "The Difficult Kind" recast as a hard rock power ballad told from his perspective. Take a song, speed it up or slow it down, arrange it differently with different instruments as an ode to a different genre of music, and you can discover a whole new world.
