PORTLAND — Last stop? Yeah, right. With Dave Grohl traipsing through the crowd and Anthony Kiedis, Flea and John Frusciante bouncing on stage, it was hard to believe Sunday’s show at Cumberland County Civic Center was the end of a 14-show tour leg for the Foo Fighters and Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Rather than close up shop early and take some time off, the Foo Fighters and the Chili Peppers played a little less than three hours (break included) of frenetic, hot, moshing, crowd-surfing tunes before the mind-bending finale.
The crowd was young (the girls in front of me were under 5 when the Chili Peppers’ breakthrough album, “BloodSugarSexMagik,” was released in 1989), but this was a pure, old-school rock concert, complete with lighters waving during the ballads and bras being thrown on stage.
In one of the Foo Fighters’ few, short pauses during their set, Grohl joked that he didn’t come to Portland for the lobsters, he came for the lingerie.
Midway through an extended jam of “Stacked Actors,” Grohl hopped off stage with his guitar and made his way through the audience as girls and guys reached out to touch him. When he reached the gated sound boards set up in the middle of the floor, he climbed on the sound crew’s couch and played for the fans in the nosebleed seats.
But the crowd favorite started with the soft opening riff of “Everlong,” which Grohl played enveloped in fog and green light.
The Foos’ smoke and lights were no match for the Chili Peppers’ technicolor backdrop, with suspended TVs in front of a giant, white screen that mirrored the video terminals. The TVs came on with colored static and the Peppers ran onstage — in clothes, not socks — and tore into “Around the World” off “Californication.”
The set mixed old favorites with fresh tracks, grabbing the twentysomethings, who were there when the Chilis hit the airwaves, and drawing in the Foo-loving, Nirvana-worshipping teen-agers, some of whom only came to see former Nirvana drummer Grohl. The whole civic center sang along to “Under the Bridge,” off “BloodSugarSexMagik.”
The Chili Peppers’ set spanned a decade and bridged the absence of Frusciante, the guitarist who left the band in 1992 and returned last year after a long, almost lethal heroin addiction. In a way, the tour, and Sunday’s show, was a celebration of his return. While Flea had more flash, hopping around in Day-Glo orange sneakers and screaming “helloooooooooo, Portland,” Frusciante had the spotlight in a short solo and the dizzying final jam.
As the Chili Peppers wrapped up “Search and Destroy” in the encore, Kiedis turned the stage over to Frusciante, Flea and drummer Chad Smith, who led the crowd down a sensory inferno. As flames burned up the black projection screens and strobe lights popped, the trio played a roar of sound. Saturated in red light, Frusciante dropped to his knees, bowing over his guitar and making it howl. Flea, also on his knees, thrashed with his bass on the opposite side of the stage. And Smith ceaselessly hammered the drums, shaking seats and stomachs with a furious, mesmerizing intensity until the foot drum fell and he left the stage.
Flea and Frusciante remained, kneeling with their guitars like they were praying, as the flames burned and the strobes flashed. The fans on the floor, up until the jam one undulating, surfing, moshing mass, did nothing but stare. No bopping heads. No tapping feet. Just wide eyes and open mouths as the dizzying lights and wailing strings brought the audience down from a 10-minute trip. Then, as innocently as they began, they stopped playing and left the stage.
And then there were none.
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