Can a
rock band doing a cover of a
rock song bolster one's
faith in
humanity?
Perhaps it can -- if the band has literally
one thousand members, and if they have come together in
common cause (even a cause is as simple as persuading the originators of the covered song to come play a gig in their town); and if that originating band responds with a loving and appreciative promise to fulfill the dream of the thousand.
The Cesena Rockin' 1000 was not simply a project to gather a thousand random people and have them sing a song. It was a project to gather a thousand seasoned rock musicians -- capable performers -- in Cesena
Italy, there to have them practice and perform one song,
Learn to Fly by the
Foo Fighters, to create a sound that emulated the highest expectations of rock music.
And in this it can hardly be disputed that they succeeded grandly. The performance included 250
singers, 250
drummers, 150
bass players, and 350
guitarists. All people united by the love of rock and roll. At about 2 1/2 minutes into watching the official video, I found myself so overcome by the beauty of this human effort that I began to cry, openly weeping manly
tears of joy at this display of brotherhood and sisterhood in common cause. And in so beautiful a common cause as that of
art and creative achievement.
One of the most remarkable features of the
video documenting this performance is watching the drummers playing all down a row all simultaneously striking the same drum-and-high-hat combination at 1:25. Other videos shot while rehearsal was underway show how each set of players of a single instrument sounded playing on their own --
here all the drummers,
there the guitarists,
vocalists, and
bassists. In the rehearsal of the guitarists the cameraman seems to wanders back alongside the group, until, naturally, he finds an attractive girl around 1:55, and discreetly focuses on her for the entire rest of the vid. Another interesting aspect is the plethora of individual videos of individual performers during the final performance using personal cameras like a
GoPro or the like. There you can see how
an individual drummer or bass player or guitarist can't really hear anything outside of the field of other people playing the same instrument.
The effort itself was a magnificent thing -- but equally magnificent was what followed. First, Foo Fighters frontman
Dave Grohl made his own brief video
praising the tribute (in Italian!!) and promising that the band would indeed come. And when the Foo Fighters finally did come to play that concert in Cesena in November 2015, they dedicated a performance of
There Goes My Hero to Rockin' 1000 organizer Fabio Zaffagnini,
and then they had him body-surfed from the audience to the stage, to let him rock out with the band. And I cried with joy all over again.