Culture

Richmond Just Crowdfunded a Foo Fighters Concert into Existence

Fans of the rock group Foo Fighters in Richmond, Va., raised $70,000 in an effort to convince the band to play a show in the city. It worked.

By Adam Chandler
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This article is from the archive of our partner .

Fans of the rock group Foo Fighters in Richmond, Va., raised $70,000 in an effort to convince the band to play a show in the city for the first time since 1998. It worked.

What started as your typical against-all-odds crowdfunded plea for a sleepy capital city to get some culture ultimately turned into a successful reverse-engineering of an event once word spread.

Here was the pitch from the organizers:

Rather than waiting, and waiting and waiting for our favorite band to come to us, we're making it happen. We're selling tix to a Foo Fighters concert that the band doesn't have scheduled yet in the hopes that they'll come to our great city and play a show. Then if the band comes we all rock out.  If they don't come, everyone gets their money back. Every cent. So buy your tix, spread the word, and let's make some rock-n-roll history."

The gambit worked. Enough people started pledging to buy tickets at $50 a pop with a goal of 1,400 tickets ($70K). Once the band caught wind of the efforts to make them some money and the fundraising goal was met on Friday night (with the help of some local businesses), the Foo Fighters confirmed they'd play the show on Twitter earlier today.

Way to go, internet!

Here's my humble bid for the show's opening song:

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.