Dave Grohl’s Keynote speech for SXSW

The man with a plan this week is, hands down, Dave Grohl. His documentary ‘Sound City’ was released this week along with the amazing soundtrack. I have been playing the bonus features like crazy to try and wrap my mind around the massive-ness that was SOUND CITY. Do you know who recorded there? That is a question for another post, but a hint will come from a performance by the Sound City Players that are performing at this year’s SXSW.

This year Dave Grohl is the keynote speaker.  For all of us that have watched a Dave Grohl performance (TV or Live), you know he is a well spoken and outgoing presence. I would have just attributed these qualities to years of performing, but he humbly credits his folks, saying:

“My father wrote speeches for politicians in Washington and worked on Capitol Hill for 20 years. My mother is a forensics coach. She’s a public-speaking coach, so she teaches debate and she’s a brilliant woman … So one of the things I know to do is not to read a speech.”

His confidence in this year’s speech stays on the right side of modest, as he admits that Bruce Springstein’s speech last year is going to be a hard act to follow. He jokingly remarked,“That was like the Gettysburg Address. He laid it down.”

The speech is taking place in Austin 12pm EST, and for those of us unable to attend it is being streamed live. Since this is a live post, I will be updating once a video of the full speech is available. Stay Tuned.

Update and Full Speech Now Available after the jump

Though he read a lot of this epic history from pages set in front of him (while wearing his drugstore glasses), I think he knocked this year’s speech out of the park. He even managed to make a One Direction joke, in a way that was charming and not douchy… I didnt know it was possible.

He broke away from his pages and sang renditions of songs that inspired him and demonstrated his early years of multi-tracking songs in his childhood bedroom. Hopefully you have watched the speech in its entirety because it has great moments in the history of rock-n-roll.

…the five words that changed my life, “Have you heard of Nirvana?”