Given Foo Fighters 'quick — and unmysterious — ascendance to the alt-rock throne, it's easy to forget all the intrigue and bootstrapping written into the first chapter of Dave Grohl's post-Nirvana band. For starters, there was no band to speak of: Grohl played every instrument on Foo Fighters '1995 self-titled debut, save for a lone guitar part on "X-Static" by the Afghan Whigs' Greg Dulli. The album's 12 tracks were culled from Grohl's considerable stash of basement tapes and re-cut in a professional studio; he'd already issued the solo 1992 Pocketwatch cassette under the name Late! via über-indie D.C. label Simple Machines. It's tempting to speculate whether Grohl would've stepped out from behind Nirvana's drummer chair had Kurt Cobain not shot himself, and it's downright catty to note that Foo Fighters ultimately lost the 1996 Grammy for Best Alternative Music Performance to Nirvana's Unplugged album. All of this is to point out that Foo Fighters is not the commercial enterprise of ready-made summer-shed action figures but rather the personal domain of Dave Grohl, a songwriter who'd honed his skills in Cobain's long shadow. Of course, once his work went public, Grohl just happened to become the… read more »