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When it came to picking the featured artist for tonight’s theme, there were two things that I discovered when doing the research.

First, a “foo fighter” is a term that originated in World War II for unidentified flying objects and even though I’m seriously a fan of aviation, I truly did not know that.

What I did know was that the main creative force behind the Foo Fighters was Dave Grohl formerly of Nirvana.

I’ll be honest here…Nirvana represented pretty much everything I loathed about music in the 1990s and was one of the reasons I’d largely checked out of contemporary music by then.

There were more than enough reasons to pick from but the two main ones was how overplayed “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was to how I could hardly understand what in the world Kurt Cobain was saying when he was singing it!

And yet I can listen to “Weird” Al Yankovic’s parody cover of the song “Smells Like Nirvana” all day long because it captures my ambivalence toward Nirvana better than I could ever express it.

The Foo Fighters sound very much like Nirvana and it’s not surprising considering Dave Grohl recruited a couple of members of Nirvana after the breakup and Cobain’s death.

And yet, “Learn to Fly”? Absolutely love it and will play it on repeat at the highest volume!

Go figure.

Game 1 Warm-Ups

Post-Game

Right as the game was starting, I got a notification that John Anderson had passed away at the age of 71.

John Anderson probably did more to bring the plight of the Everglades to life with “Seminole Wind” and moved heaven and earth to reverse the severe ecological damage to the Everglades that had been wrought in the name of flood control.

When you visit Florida some thirty years on when most of the worst projects have been reversed and the Everglades are again flourishing, you have John Anderson to thank for hearing the anguish and seeing the tears of Osceola at what had been done to the Everglades.