DAVE GROHL IS A BIG TEASE. With a mop of dark shaggy hair covering his face and tight black pants hardly masking his ultra slender body, the leader of the Foo Fighters recently wowed a packed crowd at the Worcester Palladium with both his onstage antics and his immense musical prowess. For over an hour, the band-featuring Grohl on guitar and vocals and occasionally drums, Nate Mendel on bass, Taylor Hawkins on drums and guitarist Chris Shiflett along for the nationwide tour-rocked hard, splicing and dicing most of the songs from their 1999 album, There is Nothing Left to Lose, along with band staples and radio hits like "Everlong" and "My Hero." For his part, Grohl careened around the stage, jumped into the audience, lambasted the British press, and tantalized the crowd by unplugging his guitar and parading it around like he was going to toss it to some lucky fan.

Grohl's hyperactivity and brashness onstage prove that he has come a long way from his Nirvana days as the shy one behind both the drum kit and Kurt Cobain's immense shadow. Though Grohl hardly revealed his face from behind his shaggy layers during the 80-minute jamfest, there was no question that this was his show. It was his drum kit raised high on a platform above the stage. It was he who dove into the crowd and returned onstage, not with a pretty young groupie, but with a decidedly troll-like looking man of at least 45. And every once in a while, when he would brush back his hair to showcase his trademark goofy grin, it was obvious that he knew all eyes were on him and was loving every minute of it.

The Foo Fighters followed Queens of the Stone Age, who played a 50-minute set admirable for its instrumental layering, but lacking in any real melodic structure-a perfect point of departure for Grohl and his boys. The Queens' simple black curtain background was replaced by the Foo Fighters' somewhat whimsical setup of two drum kits, five white boxes suspended in the air for reflecting lights and lasers and bouquets of flowers scattered about the stage. The somewhat tepid crowd immediately warmed up when the Foo Fighters burst onstage with "Stacked Actors," a guitar-heavy power ballad bemoaning the superficiality of Los Angeles.

The band kept things interesting by constantly mixing up the tempo and combining their own songs in rhythmically tight medleys. Even the most diehard Foo Fighters fan would have been hard pressed to figure out just where one song ended and the next began. Grohl's almost unbelievable energy level pushed the seamless transitions further and further, leaving the audience wondering how long he could press on.

The crowd went wild for "Monkey Wrench," a pop-rage ballad off the band's second album which showcases Grohl's seemingly inhuman ability to scream without tearing his vocal chords. Even on the band's slower, softer songs like the beautifully intricate "Aurora," Grohl couldn't resist pumping up the pace and the volume. Indeed, the only time Grohl stopped slashing at his guitar, he lambasted the British press for publishing rumors of the Foo Fighters' eminent breakup and for comparing them to the constantly troubled Brit-rockers Oasis. Though there was no tension immediately apparent onstage, Grohl's insistence that things had never been better for the Foo Fighters rang a little hollow in light of his seeming neglect of Mendel and Shiflett during the show.

Grohl did, however, engage in playful banter with Taylor Hawkins, the band's long-time drummer and the most rock-starish of the Fighters, with his long bleached hair and penchant for dark sunglasses. The two duked it out on the drums at one point, answering each other's rhythms in an impressive, but somewhat self-indulgent display. For those who like the Foo Fighters' softer, more melodic side, the show came up a little short. But for those who value the band's ability to rock out and appreciate a touch of arrested adolescence, the concert delivered everything one could ask for and then some.

FOO FIGHTERS

at

Worcester Palladium

November 8