The Shows Must Go On! We All Need More Nandi Bushell With Foo Fighters And D-Nice at The Hollywood Bowl

You want proof of concept? Go see a concert with family, friends, neighbors and/or your community. Make sure you’re safe and comply with the guidelines the vast majority of health officials, artists, promoters, venues and municipalities are calling for (see AEG and Live Nation Unite Around Vaccines, Moving Industry Forward”). And you’ll see for yourself there are shows right now in fact engendering sublime, life-changing, transcendent experiences.

The Foo Fighters show at the Forum on Aug. 26 was a thunderous primer on the awesome power of rock, the school of rock and the kindness of a rock star. That is the cultural treasure and rock ’n’ roll champion that is Dave Grohl, who on this night gave 11-year-old drum prodigy Nandi Bushell the dream of a young lifetime.

“One day I picked up my phone, and my friends were all texting me asking if I had seen this shit,” Grohl explained before the night’s grand finale. “I clicked on the link and I see someone is challenging me to a drum off. So I’m like, ‘Well, isn’t that nice?’ I kind of brush it off, like, ‘That’s kind of fun.’ But all my friends tell me, ‘No, dude, you have to step up. This is the real deal. This is a drum challenge. This is a drum off.’ So I respond. ‘Alright, I’ll play nice. I’ll put on a little thing’ But then she comes back, and she whoops my fucking ass in front of the entire planet….So I do something else, and she comes back and she kicks my fucking ass again. Tonight was the first night that we met and I came face to face with my arch nemesis!” 

Then the wildly affable Grohl got to the heart of the matter. “But of course, this person inspired me last year so much, and I’ll tell you why: because in a time when you would pick up your phone or turn on a computer and all you had was bad news, for that one day, you could pick up your phone and see this connection between two people that have never met making music together and spreading joy and love all across the world. So ladies and gentlemen will you please welcome the most badass drummer in the world, my new friend Nandi.” 

With that, the 11-year-old Bushell sat down to a full drum kit at the front of a packed-out Forum, and while Grohl lit into the opening chords of “Everlong,” she destroyed her trap kit in the best possible way: with flawless power drumming, rolls, fills, a pounding backbeat and joyous abandon.

Her performance not only thrilled and inspired the Forum, but also millions across the globe who viewed the viral video of her unbridled joy and preternatural talent. If the U.S. knighted rock stars, like they do in the UK and as we should, Grohl would certainly be Sir Dave by now.  

Yet that wasn’t the weekend’s only transcendent live performance. “The show was special, it was spiritual, it connected with people in a way that I have never really experienced,” said no less a figure than Shawn Gee, President and Partner of Live Nation Urban about another wondrous live experience that was D-Nice’s Club Quarantine at the Hollywood Bowl on Sunday Aug. 29. There, the virtual club that helped millions to connect and get through the isolation and fear of the pandemic via weekly Instagram parties proved beyond a shadow of a doubt it could also be transformed into the most banging hard-ticket club party on the planet.

The night, most appropriately, opened with a praise and worship segment and went into the Gospel stylings of Karima Trotter, Charles Jenkins and Erica Campbell as the evening left the temporal and moved to the celestial. This was followed by a cavalcade of funk, soul, hip-hop and R&B royalty, including intergalactic superhero George Clinton, the legendary Isley Brothers Ronnie and Ernie, jaw-droppingly amazing percussionist Sheila E., the sonorous rapper Common and R&B powerhouses Deborah Cox, Tank and Trey Songz among many others. 

These American heroes were surrounded by eternal club bangers and R&B singalongs like Sister Sledge’s a propos “Lost in Music,” Prince’s “I Wanna Be Your Lover,” Stevie Wonder’s “Do I Do,” Jay-Z’s “I Just Wanna Love You (Give It 2 Me),” E.U.’s “Da Butt,” and Dimitri From Paris’ remix of Sister Sledge’s “Thinking of You” (the “song that got us through the last year,” as D-Nice explained).  A solemn bonding moment came when D-Nice paid tribute to the late Biz Markie by playing “You Got What I Need,” a sing-along with the superstar DJ explaining “I wouldn’t be here without him.” 

“It was a show like I’ve never seen before, and I’ve been booking shows at the Bowl for 20 years,” said Johanna Rees, VP of Presentations, L.A. Philharmonic Association, which runs the Bowl. “What D-Nice created during the pandemic was an extraordinary sense of community; it truly became a family, and family shows up for family. I, personally, joined that family in March 2020 and watched Club Q grow over the last 17 months. What Derrick [D-Nice], Shawn and the team brought to the Bowl was that same vibe. It was a family reunion, backyard BBQ, three-hour dance party.” 

Not insignificantly, the night also established a paradigm of sorts with a purely livestreaming event transitioning to a hard-ticket concert that sold out the Hollywood Bowl, the reverse of what was seen during the pandemic. 

“D-Nice is a connector, a curator and built a unique community in the darkest of times that definitely showed up to give thanks to the man that gave so much to all of us,” Gee said when asked about Club Quarantine’s IRL success. “I’m not surprised D was able to make the transition from livestreaming to hard ticket, because he created a community, an audience, an authentic connection.” 

And that’s just the tip of the recent live, transcendent experience iceberg. Did you see The Killers’ acoustic performances of “Mr. Brightside” and “Human” backstage after Central Park’s “We Love New York” concert was called off due to thunderstorms? Or Sleater-Kinney joining Wilco at Forrest Hills Stadium in Queens after a rain delay for a rousing rendition of “A Shot In The Arm”? Or James Taylor bringing out his son Henry for the poignant “You Can Close Your Eyes” at Bridgestone Arena, with the duo singing the heart-melting line “You can sing this song when I am gone?”

Or what about a sublime improvisational night of jazz, soul, electronic music and more in late July by Angel Bat Dawid and Jaimie Branch and Friends who lit-up a small bi-level art space called IRL in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood? Or, depending on your tastes, the wild spectacle of Kim Kardashian dressed as the “Balenciaga Bride,” perhaps remarrying Kanye West in middle of Soldier Field for yet another surreal listening event of his latest album, Donda?