Green Day
“We decided we were going to be the biggest, best band in
the world or fall flat on our faces.” – Billie Joe Armstrong, on the making of American Idiot
“Wait, I have to listen to all their other albums, too?” – Me, before starting this page
“I can suck my own.” – Tre Cool
Albums Reviewed:
1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours
Green Day are a testament to patience, to the idea that, if you wait long enough, any old random band could mature beyond what they appeare capable of and, out of nowhere, produce a masterpiece. I suppose I should add the condition that a band has to be decently good in the first place for this to be true, because I don’t see Limp Bizkit or Good Charlotte tossing out anything as good as American Idiot any time soon, but the fact remains that, even as late as 2002 or 2003, if you had said to me that Green Day would produce possibly the most socially and culturally relevant album of the decade and firmly entrench themselves as the naughties’ answer to the Clash and the Who in terms of energy, spirit, conviction, and power, I would have ridiculed you mercilessly and then had large amounts of kinky sex with your mother just to humiliate you further. Between 1990 and 2000, Green Day released six albums that range from piss-poor amateurism to mindlessly catchy immature silliness to shitty boring punk music to semi-sub-standard Kinks-y, melodic pop, and absolutely nothing, outside of the occasional perfectly written single, is anything I would characterize as more than “pretty good.” Until American Idiot was released, they weren’t even within jizzing distance of being on my radar of bands to review. But then they went ahead and put out what is, in my opinion, as of May, 2005, the 2nd-best album of the decade behind Radiohead’s Kid A. Not only does Billie desperately want to be Joe Strummer, he’s succeeding, and he’s even starting to look like him. The FUCK?????
Anyway,
Green Day formed in the late eighties in
Lineup! On the left above is rock-solid, speedy,
entertaining, half-insane drummer Tre Cool (not his real name, I’m guessing)
and on the right is the other half of Green Day’s consistently effective rhythm
section, bassist Mike Dirnt, who generally seems very boring and comes across
as the complete opposite of Mr. Cool.
They’re both very good at their instruments, but without the man in the
middle there, guitarist and songwriter Billie Joe Armstrong, they’d be working
at an Orange Julius stand somewhere in
And, onto the reviews!
Pedro Andino (pedroandino@msn.com) writes:
hilarious reviews by man
child brad! green day started as your old school punk rockers who are so dumb
then they jam into a cbgb type place and scored with a deal with lookout
records! slappy hours was released and also kerplunk but that then did not
happen until the 90's with doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
let me tell you about the
great videos for the hits
1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours (1991)
Rating: 4
Best Song: “Going To
Pasalacqua”
Tossed together and re-titled from the band’s first independent album and couple of EP’s, this oddly titled hour of the same uninteresting song repeated almost twenty times is disturbingly easy to dismiss with a tiny review requiring no effort to write, and I will do nothing to refute that. There is exactly one song on here that does not qualify as a “speedy three-chord punker,” a generally odd, bouncy novelty tune with a piano and lots of people going “yee-ha!” called “Knowledge.” I should let you know right now that I generally don’t like when Green Day goes “goofy” or “novelty.” This song is no exception. Let’s move on.
From a purely musical standpoint, there is very little to separate this album from, say, Dookie or something, so if you’re letting it play in the background without paying attention, maybe you’ll think it sounds fine. Tre Cool isn’t on board yet and his predecessor, John Kiftmeyer, kinda blows in comparison due to his complete inability to do a fast and/or complicated fill without totally losing the beat (kinda like the Flaming Lips’ early drummer, but not as comically bad), but that’s pretty much the only difference. Green Day only knew of the existence of about five or six chords until they got to their fifth album, so no difference there. Maybe the production’s not as clean, but it’s not like Dookie is Dark Side of the Moon, so not a lot of difference there, either. Billie’s voice is a little less mature and more whiney than it would later become, but the band recorded most of this stuff when they were, what 18? 19? Young, in any case.
The age of
the bandmembers leads directly into my discussion of why this album blows,
ofcourse. When a bunch of immature guys
not even into their 20’s decide to make an album of snotty California punk
music with lyrics about getting high and “teenager love,” it should come as no
surprise when said album is a generic pile of boringness. You want know what a Green Day album without
any good songs sounds like? Great! Pick this one up. Very little of it is truly atrociously bad,
but except for a hookline here or a decent chord sequence there, you’ll find very little of value to discuss on this
record. Not only can you not see American Idiot ever coming from these
guys, you can barely see fucking Dookie
coming from them, notwithstanding my earlier comment about “nothing is
different from a musical standpoint” blah blah blah. I mean, Dookie
has a whole bunch of really good songs!
With catchy hooks and professional songcraft and everything! Half of it’s pretty much generic pop-punk,
and that’s the half you can see
coming from the band that recorded this album, but it’s hard to see these guys
writing “She” or “Welcome to
Whatever, it’s not awful. Certainly tolerable, or at least tolerable for 30-40 minutes (at an hour, the genericness really starts to grate). I suppose “Going to Pasalacqua” is OK, though not the “early classic” I’ve seen it made out to be in other places, and parts of “16” are somewhat interesting. I enjoy the chord sequence that opens up “Green Day,” but then Kiftmeyer tries all these hugely complicated fills during the chorus and completely fucks up. He’s barely even serviceable here. It’s tough. About 5 or 6 times Billie tries to break out these like speed-metal solo things, which is downright hilarious because he totally misses like half the notes and ends up sounding like an amateur buffoon. This record is just total amateur hour. If you’ve heard one song, you’ve heard everything else (except “Knowledge,” ofcourse). Musically and lyrically uninteresting. No good songs whatsoever. Roughly four or five chords used in total. For an hour. There is no reason for anyone to own this album. At all. Move it along…
Kerplunk (1992)
Rating: 5
Best Song: “Welcome
To
Another year, another album
easily dismissed by a review that, because I’ve been sick as a dog for four days,
I’m too dedicated to my job to bother to take a day off and avoid infecting the
kids I teach with my ebola-like virus, and I’m in no mood to spend 5,000 words
discussing a mediocre independent label pop-punk record from a bunch of
20-year-old naïve morons, will be thankfully short. Oh, sure, it’s better. Tre Cool is on drums now, so the band’s
rhythm section is pretty rock-solid instead of comically amateurish, so that’s
always good. There are actually a
handful of good songs, too, which is obviously an improvement on 1,069 Slappy Whores. That “best song” up there looks familiar,
no? Yup!
“Welcome to
This is
definitely a more interesting record
than the last one, and I surely don’t fall asleep listening to it too often,
even if the songwriting is still just taking baby steps. Instead of an hour of wayyy-too-similar sounding pop-punk with nothing else going for
it, we at least have a number of attempts to branch out into more diverse
territory, which is nice to see (plus, it’s just 40 minutes!). “
Commencing my discussion of the material I don’t get much enjoyment out of, “Dominated Love Slave” is an altogether retarted country hoedown joke track that Tre Cool actually wrote for some reason. “Words I Might Have Ate” sounds like a song off Warning, for christ sake, but minus the good. The last four songs on the album are atrociously bad, and make the material from 2,001/Slappy Space Odyssey sound like Mozart. Three of these are simply the worst, most horribly produced, general pop-punk I’ve ever heard. On the fourth, they try to cover “My Generation” but fuck it up in absolutely every way possible, from the horrendous guitar tone to the fact that Mike Dirnt is about as able to channel John Entwhistle as I am to channel Bill Bruford to that fact that BILLIE DOESN’T DO THE STUTTERS IN THE LYRICS! I mean, that was the whole point of the song, wasn’t it? That the singer was “medicated?” Blerf.
I don’t like reviewing these first two Green Day albums. I have absolutely nothing to say about them. They sound a lot like Dookie, except the production is weaker and the songwriting is much weaker. This one actually has some good songs, I suppose, and except for the last four tracks, it’s decidedly half-decent, but, I mean, who cares? If you’re not a diehard Green Day fan, do not buy either of these records. I know I’ve gotten into the habit of writing multi-page theses on a lot of records, but how can you do that if you have nothing to say? So mi dispiace. I’m gonna stop this review after a few-hundred words and pop a few Sudafed before I cough up my spleen.
Dookie (1994)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Basket
Case”
Christ, thank god we finally
have an album I can write a reasonably interesting, thoughtful, coherent review
about (and don’t think I’m not taking the shitty one I wrote about two years
ago when all my reviews sucked total ass and tossing it into the trash
bin. I roll with much more depth
now. I can’t support such bullshit). Disregarding the parenthesis I just typed,
however, I will reiterate what I said
last time about this album, that it is, and was, the perfect album for a 12 or 13-year-old moron in the early-mid
nineties filled with whatever passes for “angst” when you’re a pre-teen
suburbanite from
Anyhoo,
enough of my self-referential bullcrap.
Just because this record was absolutely 100% perfect for its place and
time doesn’t mean that’s all it
was. It wouldn’t have sold 65 million
copies and created a legacy that took Green Day another full decade to live
down if it wasn’t any good. It’s not great, ofcourse. It’s short and a bit thin on real solid
material and, except for the midtempo “Pulling Teeth” (underrated, and it still sounds like the Stone Temple
Pilots to me) and “When I Come Around” (awesome!), it’s basically a one-trick
pony that sounds exactly like the band’s first two albums, only with good
production and good songs. And the songs
are generally good enough to make the album still hold up to a degree after a
decade, too. If the last few tunes were
good at all (two years removed from
my original review, and I still hate them), I’d still consider giving it an
8. I mean, how many singles did this
thing have? Let’s count! “
But, goddammit, Green Day’s flaws are so fucking obvious it’s ridiculous. Except for the singles and “Pulling Teeth,” every song sounds exactly the same. They may have better melodies and fuller production than 1,039 and Kerplunk, but Billie’s singing is still weak as fuck, they still display no variety whatsoever (there’s actually more diversity on Kerplunk than there is here), and the band still has a knowledge of about six total chords. So there is very little to separate “Burnout” from “Chump” from Coming Clean” from “Having a Blast” from “Sassafras Roots” from…christ, nearly every damn song here. The guitar tone does not change at all. Once. And no, I don’t count the acoustic intro part to the closer “F.O.D.” as a new guitar tone, because it’s bullshit. The only reason it’s acoustic is because it’s the last song on the album, so it has to be profound, and any song, no matter what is, whether it’s about blowing up a fucking bridge or anything else, is profound if it’s just played on an acoustic guitar, right? Bullshit! It’s just a shitty pop-punk song played on a quiet acoustic guitar, taking the still excellent rhythm section out of the equation and excising all possible real rock power, therefore making the song suck even more than it would have otherwise. It’s obvious the band just ran out of ideas at the end, too. Most of the generic album tracks at the beginning and middle of the record are fine and dandy to me, but what happens at the end is embarrassing. The chorus to “Emenius Sleepius” has nearly the exact same melody as the chorus to “Sassafras Roots,” which was a grand total of three songs ago. “In the End” fiddles around for about a minute not knowing what to so with itself before simply going “fuck it” and copying the bass/rolling tom section that marks the segue between “Chump” and “Longview,” only with shit for brains. Then “F.O.D.,” which I’ve already torn apart, closes it out in theory, although that hidden track thing (because every fucking CD released in the mid-nineties just HAD to have a hidden track on it) is the actual closer. I still find the hidden track hilarious, by the way. Possibly more so now than ten years ago, too. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve ever actually progressed beyond the age of thirteen. Sure, I can read ancient Greek at sight now, but that doesn’t require any emotional maturity, now, does it?
The reason
this review at times devolved into more of a meditative reflection on my own
emotional development then an actual piece of music criticism is that, even if
you haven’t heard it, I don’t need to tell you how this album sounds. Dookie
is THE singular influence on every emo-pop-punk band that has “come around”
(ha! Oh, I’m so clever…) in the last ten
years. If you’re familiar with the work
of every fucking hack shit band you see on MTV and Fuse, you’re familiar with Dookie.
Just picture songs that don’t suck with a vocalist from
And Good Charlotte is still THE WORST BAND IN THE WORLD.
Insomniac (1995)
Rating: 5
Best Song: “Brain Stew”
An attempted step forward that ends up being
a disappointing step backward, Insomniac is a great example of one of
the cardinal sins in music: making an album for others, especially some
nebulous, hard-to-define “scene,” instead of yourself. When Dookie went and sold 8
megawajillion copies and the band became superstars overnight, the “punk”
community reacted in the way everyone should have expected: they turned up
their nose at the group like they were an unusually pungent load of santorum. Punk had basically been an underground
phenomenon since the explosion in the late seventies wore off, so when a
California punk band from an indie label signs with a “fascist” major label,
makes a really, really, really poppy album, gets their videos played all
over MTV next to TLC and Boyz II Men, and has a drummer named “Tre Cool,” it
will generally not go over too well.
Naturally, Green Day reacted by trying to prove their punk “cred,”
attempting to write a punishing, intentionally depressing, less openly
commercial followup full of songs about being fucked-up and hating the world.
But there was a problem with
that. GREEN DAY WAS ALWAYS
COMMERCIAL. Their first three albums all
had songs about farting in class and missing your stupid little girlfriend and
other things douchebag mallrats in
Thankfully, major label producers
were still on board to make sure it sold to all the kiddies, so it actually
doesn’t sound all that different from Dookie. The guitars are just louder and a bit grimier
(which is almost the only good part…the guitar tone here is actually very nice,
full, and thick) and the lyrics attempt to display actual frustration and anger
instead of little-mallrat-douche-kid frustration and anger. The tempos are basically the same, and the
vocals are delivered in a marginally better fashion than the half-assed
barely-there singing on Dookie.
Everything is well-produced and played, and the rhythm section keeps
getting better every album. It’s just so
much less melodic and interesting than its predecessor, like in their attempts
to be more “punk” they simply abandoned anything that sounded too poppy to them
and made the guitars louder. They
released four or five singles from the thing like they did off Dookie,
but, outside of “Brain Stew,” do you remember hearing them all that much on the
radio? The fuck you do. Despite sounding nice and loud and punchy,
their songwriting is so plodding, uniform, and unmelodic here. I know “Geek Stink Breath” (wow, really
mature title there…) and “Walking Contradiction” were singles, but I find
little to separate them from the unremarkably decent samey-sounding album
tracks scattered around Dookie.
And “Brain Stew,” the only unqualified good song on the album, is ripped
from
Again, though, like the Green Day’s
early albums, flaws in songwriting are somewhat counteracted by a generally
agreeable sound and little in the way of material that out-and-out sucks. The album is just mediocre, uninspired, and
somewhat boring, i.e. the exact definition of what should receive a 5. It’s actually funny to hear Billie’s trying
to be a super-angry punk when the best he can come up with is lyrics like “I
got no pride!” and “I must insist on being a pessimist!” and “but now it’s all
fucked up!” He’s still in his early
twenties, and while some bands can come up with life-changing material at that
tender age, Green Day is clearly not one of these bands. Except for “Brain Stew,” there is no
absolutely no variety whatsoever in either tempo or chords used. Fans cite “Jaded” (always played back to back
with “Brain Stew,” if only because “Jaded” is like a minute long and totally
unable to stand on itself) as some sort of example of Green Day’s face-melting
power when kicking it full strength (Wow!
They’ve never played this fast before!) without acknowledging the
facts that subsequent songs in the Green Day catalog do the exact same thing
while actually being interesting and that “Jaded” uses like one total
chord in the whole fucking song. The
songs are so stop-start and underdeveloped it’s retarted (for fuck’s sake, we
don’t get a song over 2:20 until track 7…guys, you’re not Minor Threat,
OK?). Except for the fact that it’s the
only major-label Green Day album I don’t get much enjoyment out of, I don’t dislike
the thing. It’s just so bland and short
and unappealing that I’ve never been able to give a shit about it at all, and I
don’t see that changing any time soon.
Nimrod (1997)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Nice Guys Finish Last”
So Insomniac was basically a
failure. Not only did it sell much worse
than Dookie and relegate Green Day to second-tier status commercial
(behind wannabe hacks like Blink fucking 182) until their stunning,
wildly successful comeback in 2004, it also did absolutely nothing to
give Green Day the punk “cred” that had been the whole reason Insomniac
sucked so hard in the first place. So
not only did the punk community not give a fuck what Green Day was gonna put
out next, now the mainstream didn’t either.
Fine.
Thankfully, Green Day reacted by
doing what absolutely no one outside of maybe Billie’s ugly-ass wife
(seriously, have you seen their Behind the Music?) expected and
began to mature as artists, and Nimrod presents the first steps in that
direction. Sure, there are plenty of
stereotypical Green Day pop-punk tracks here, like the excellent opener
“Nice Guys Finish Last,” whose sole intent was obviously to tell fans that
Green Day still knew how to write really fucking catchy songs and Insomniac
was just a misguided screw-up. There’s
nothing about the song Green Day didn’t already do on Dookie, but, hell,
it’s nearly as good as “Basket Case,” so I’m always a happy camper when it’s
playing. “Uptight” and “Reject” are
other standout Dookie-type tracks that show that Insomniac was
the fluke, not Dookie, something I wouldn’t have been completely sure
about had I actually given a shit about Green Day in 1997 and had any idea this
album was coming out before it did.
Like I said, though, this is the
first album where we see that maybe, just maybe, Green Day could someday be
capable of writing excellent, varied rock music instead of just catchy,
immature three-chord pop-punk numbers.
The album has no focus whatsoever and its bloated 18 tracks play like a
band simply trying out all sorts of “stuff” and seeing what will stick, but the
good moments show that Green Day has both songwriting and arranging talent no
one should have expected out of these guys at the time. The half-shuffly/half-metal “Hitchin’ a Ride”
is the first real chance the rhythm section guys have ever taken (sure, they’ve
always been rock-solid…but they’ve been rock-solid at doing the same thing
over and over again), and the song is a definite winner, as is the
following “The Grouch” (which sounds EXACTLY like the entire first side of Warning). “Redundant” is the first time Green Day have
ever tried to write what amounts to “pretty power-pop,” with a slower tempo,
mournful lyrics and noticeable lack of any attempt to “rock” in lieu of lovely,
harmonious pop sounds. Hell, there’s
jangly guitars and Billy overdubs and his voice and sadly sings “I’m lost for
words…” in the chorus instead of yelling out “we’re all fucked up!” or whatever
he did throughout the entirety of Insomniac. And it’s good! Really!
No self-respecting punk band actually stays a punk band for more than a
few albums, anyway. Even Blink 182 is
“branching out” now, though the songs they’re writing still suck balls, so they
might need to work on that.
It’s not like this is some great
“stylistic experiment” record or anything, ofcourse. While it’s playing it basically sounds like a
stereotypical Green Day album, but every third track you’ll hear something
“new” or “different,” like the strange, relaxed instrumental “Last Ride In”
that many like to describe as “surf rock,” but I choose to leave undescribed,
or the poppy “Walking Alone,” which actually sounds exactly like “Redundant”
and even has the same melody in its chorus, thus becoming a piss-poor song and
illustrating Green Day’s annoying habit of only being able to come up with five
or six actual different melodies, and then just recycling and recombining them
(I even think I’ve heard the melody from “Nice Guys Finish Last” on one of
their records before, but the song’s energetic enough that I don’t mind). Everyone’s official prom song of both 1997
and 1998, “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” is here too, ofcourse, and I like
it fine, though the level of hit that it became confuddled me at the time and
continues to confuddle me now. “Worry
Rock” is another one of those power-poppy numbers, and it’s actually one of my
favorite tunes here. Just a lovely
melody! But good god are there too many
songs here, and it goes without saying that not all the experiments work. I don’t know why Billie uglies up his vocals
so much in “Take Back,” especially considering it’s the only song in the entire
Green Day catalog where he does something other than his trademark
“snotty faux-British” thing. “King For a
Day” is their attempt at ska, but it ends up sounding WAYYYYY too much like the
Mighty Mighty Bosstones to be any good.
Those carnival horns at the beginning simply sound like crap. Not a good idea there. I could keep going, since there are plenty of
other enjoyable moments I haven’t mentioned yet (for instance, “Platypus (I
Hate You)” does the overly-speedy thing much better than “Jaded” could ever
dream of), but there are entirely too many songs on this album, and it has
about as much coherence as Sean Hannity might if no one fed him a list of
talking points before his show.
I probably get more pure enjoyment out of this album than any other Green Day album bar, obviously, American Idiot. The other two possible #2 choices (Dookie and Warning) are basically one-trick ponies, even if most people probably like them more than this one. Although Nimrod makes little to no sense while it’s playing, it’s sure a fun, yet obviously flawed, ride. Too little cohesion, too many failed experiments, and not enough real top-shelf material to make it anything more than a solid 7, but coming after Insomniac, that’s fine by me, and at least they finally figured out how to use more than five different chords. Until recently, I never expected anything more than this from Green Day anyway.
Warning (2000)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Minority”
From a purely objective point of view, I suppose I should probably nominate this as Green Day second-best record. Dookie is too immature and skimpy, Nimrod is too unfocused and messy, and 1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours, Kerplunk, and Insomniac suck ass. If I were a snob, I’d probably do that just that, since this record shows Green Day consciously (I might say too consciously) moving far, far away from the juvenile pop-punk that used to be their calling card and instead opting for bouncy, melodic, Kinks-ish pop with all sorts of light, sunny guitar tones, occasionally interesting instrumentation, mature arrangements, and melodic depth. You will not come within a mile of another “Basket Case” or “Nice Guys Finish Last” on this album. It’s plenty good, ofcourse, but I can’t help but feel it’s become a little overrated by apologists who won’t admit that American Idiot came from practically nowhere. Because here’s the thing: Green Day is a rock band. Not a pop band. This album, with one admittedly pretty big exception, does not rock. At all. Sure, “Basket Case” and “Nice Guys Finish Last” and all their other big three-chord pop-punk hits are some of the poppiest, most melodic things you were likely to hear on the radio when they came out, but they also, you know, kicked some ass. It’s like in their search to become mature artists and write more serious, thoughtful pop music, Green Day forgot that they could rock pretty good too. And so I get much less enjoyment out of this record than I probably should, considering its admitted melodic goodness.
Until we
get to the last three songs, I honestly find very little that’s special about
this thing at all. The best song they
toss out before we get there is the opener “Warning,” but haven’t we heard this
song before? Yes! Because it’s basically the instrumental track
to “Picture Book” by the Kinks with a different vocal melody on top. I don’t mind ripoffs to a degree in
music. They’re unavoidable. I’m sure nearly every chord sequence on Green
Day’s first three albums was nicked from a late-seventies British punk band
and/or the Ramones. But this is
ridiculous. It’s THE SAME SONG!!!! It’s such a unique, bouncy, plucky guitar
riff that the theft simply could not be by accident. I refuse to believe that. I’ll buy that maybe the “Brain Stew” lifting
from
Following that, the next four songs might as well be the same tune, and here’s where the proponents of this record start losing me. The songs here aren’t unique. They just picked a new kind of “generic song.” Instead of the heavy punk three-chord riff and thick, full guitar tone, they toss song after song with a bouncy pop three-chord riff and a light, bouncy guitar tone. If the band had been able to successfully combine these two types of songs on one album (which they already did on Nimrod, albeit only half-successfully since the album was such a mess), then fine, but can’t they write more than one type of song per album? And all these songs are good, too! It’s not like I don’t like them. They just all sound the same, and I only “like” them. I don’t love them. I don’t get any really “great” reactions to this record until it’s almost done. I suppose “Fashion Victim” is probably the best one here, but whatever. I can never tell these things apart. “Blood, Sex, and Booze” could use some more energy and both “Church and Sunday” and “Cast Away,” despite being almost annoyingly catchy at times, are also repetitive and occasionally just annoying. But I give all these tunes a thumbs-up, despite their basically being one 7-level song repeated four times. I just wish the album would give me something different, and no, I do not mean “Misery,” which might be the most annoying song Green Day had yet to do in their career. It’s psychotic dark polka music! From Green Day!!! Now, recall that I don’t like “Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar)” from the Doors’ debut album, and that’s basically the exact same genre of music. If I don’t like psychotic dark polka music when the Doors do it, what are the odds I’m gonna like it when Green Day does it? Green Day should not under any circumstances write strange carnival music of any kind. Ever.
So until now, the album has been consistently good, but not great, and with one awful exception. However, once side 2 starts the half-assed songs start coming fast and furious (the songs on side 1 may be disturbingly similar, but they’re certainly very well-developed melodically). “Deadbeat Holiday” takes the exact same guitar tone that was on every single song on side 1 but neglects to actually write a song any different from the generic pre-Warning Green Day tune and actually ends up self-stealing its melody from “Nice Guys Finish Last,” which would be fine if the song had any rock power at all, but, if you’ll recall, this album doesn’t. “Nice Guys Finish Last” wouldn’t work as a bouncy pop number with a light guitar tone, so it’s safe to say a song of that genre that rips off its melody doesn’t work either. “Hold On” uses an acoustic guitar and harmonica and sets Tre Cool’s drum kit to “BOUNCY!!!” but fails to do anything interesting lyrically or melodically, and “Jackass” tries to distract you from the fact that it’s not any good by inserting a saxophone solo that makes you think “now what the hell is a saxophone doing there?” and forget everything else about the song. This record, after starting out semi-promisingly in its melodic poppiness, is quickly and alarmingly losing steam…
But then come the singles, the three best songs on the album (including possibly Green Day’s best song to this point in their career) and the only reasons I actually consider this record on roughly equal terms with Dookie and Nimrod. “Waiting” isn’t really any different than anything here. It just does this album’s schtick better than the tunes on side 1, even including a few remarkably original ideas in its tastiness (the “WAKE UP!!!” thing, the snare drum fill, the two-second string fill at the end that is just so money). Just a wonderful radio single all around. The closer, “Macy’s Day Parade,” is a total winner too, a fully-developed, dramatic, string-laden, tasteful ballad that I probably like better than either of the power ballads on American Idiot. Like if “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” was a demo tape, “Macy’s Day Parade” is the final, fleshed-out, fully arranged product. The song between the two I’ve just mentioned, however, is the real winner, and the only song in the Green Day catalog that points directly to the power and politics of American Idiot, and that is “Minority.” The guitar tone is still relatively light, and there are all these bouncy parts with harmonicas and shit in there, so it’s not like it’s a musical departure from the rest of the album. But it KICKS FUCKING ASS. The “Down with the moral majority! ‘Cus I wanna be the minority!” refrain is pulse-pounding, and the quick little “FUCK ‘EM ALL!” line in one of the verses carries more rock power than the rest of this record combined. I don’t love American Idiot just because I agree with its politics. I love it because it expresses the anger and frustration of the half of this country with their heads out of their asses more eloquently and powerfully than anything else I’ve been able to hear. Real emotion and anger leads to real rock power, and “Minority” is the first time you can ever sense that kind of focused anger and power coming from Green Day. They’d simply never shown they were capable of it before. Not even on “Armatage Shanks!”
In trying to prove they were mature men (they were nearly 30 by the time this record came out), Green Day unfortunately end up slightly boring me for most of the album (as well as actively pissing me off when they try to write dark polka music). However, the one time they let their guard down and show what they’re really feeling, they show more rock power than they’ve ever shown in their career, and a tiny speck of a notion that maybe, just maybe, they were capable of something bigger and better. But first we need to sit through a 30-minute outtakes compilation no one needs.
Shenanigans (2002)
Rating: 6
Best Song:
“Suffocate”
And thus I review the perfunctory B-sides/covers/outtakes compilation that is usually released alongside the perfunctory greatest hits compilation (in this case International Superhits!, all the songs on which I’ve probably mentioned at one point or another in these reviews) during a time when the band was going through an unusually long period between albums. As a bunch of random songs Green Day didn’t even deem worthy of inclusion on regular albums, it’s pretty decent, and actually decidedly close to receiving a 7, something it’d probably get if it didn’t totally fall apart and turn into shit the moment it hits side 2, but I guess we can’t have ‘em all, can we?
Oh well. The opener “Suffocate” is actually one of the band’s best generic three-chord punkers and probably could’ve been a big hit single had it been stuck on Nimrod or whatever album they were making when they recorded it. It beats the hell out of anything on A Great Cure for Insomniacs, in any case, so if they made it while they were recording that one, that’d just prove once and for all their complete idiocy and pandering to others at that time (Oooo! Too poppy! Better leave it off the album! Don’t want to actually sell records, now, do we?). “Desensitized” is almost as good, too, and “You Lied” is no slouch as a slower, more metallic number. You know, Billie really always was a good songwriter. Just not a consistent one. Stupid “albums” with their “flaws” and “crappy songs” and “things that prevent me from giving any of them a rating higher than 7.” I like this band more than these pre-American Idiot ratings indicate. I enjoy listening to Dookie, and Nimrod, and Warning a good bit. They’re fun albums. But oh, that silly objectivity…
Anyway, after the first three tracks is where the covers, novelty songs, and general oddities characteristic of these types of compilations start making themselves known. The Ramones cover (“Outside”) is pretty kick-ass, but the Kinks cover (“Tired of Waiting For You”) is unfortunately pretty goddamn weak (by the way, Ramones and Kinks covers? Most. Predictable. Covers. Band. Ever.). There’s a third cover here by a songwriting duo listed on the All Music guide as “Flynn/McBride” (“I Want to be on TV”), but clicking on these people’s names on the All Music Guide website leads me absolutely nowhere, so I am at a loss as to who these people actually are. If they are an obscure hardcore band that I really should know about because I’m a web reviewer and therefore I should automatically have Prindle’s knowledge of indie hardcore bands from the eighties, I’m a preppy white moron from Boston who just finished college last year and I grew up listening to Nirvana and the Toadies, so give me a break.
God, there’s some random stuff here. Why is there soundtrack music to a spy movie (“Espionage”)? Why are half of these songs over in less than two minutes? I know it’s an outtakes compilation, and therefore these songs are “outtakes,” but couldn’t you have written a second verse? A bunch left are pretty good, though. “Don’t Wanna Fall in Love” is all super-fast and tom drum fills and high-pitched speed riffing and chock full of some serious energy. “Scumbag” is one of the more melodic punkers the band has turned out, and “Rotting” hearkens back in a good way to the mournful pop material on Nimrod (“Redundant,” etc.). See, this is why I always want to give this album a 7. There really are a fair number of good-to-very-good tracks! But the whole thing is so skimpy it makes Dookie look like All Things Must Pass, and good lord does it start to suck total ballsack near the end. The unidentified third cover is a piece of horseshit, for instance, and when the generisongs (“Sick of Me,” the horrendous “Do Da Da”) start coming around I just about completely lose interest. I don’t know what the band was attempting when they squelched out “On the Wagon Again,” but it may be the worst song they’ve ever written, and the token “new” song, “Ha Ha You’re Dead,” was so clearly written in 30 seconds just to have something new to make people buy this thing. You can tell when Green Day doesn’t try because they start cannibalizing themselves. I don’t think there’s a second of this song I haven’t heard somewhere else in the Green Day catalog. That’s like the third or fourth time they’ve used one of those vocal melodies by now. Part of the chord sequence sounds just like one of the tracks from American Idiot, like they were halfway through writing it when they had to come up with this stupid tune to sell this compilation. Whatever. Poo. Big, smelly poo.
Outside of the five or six strong tracks, there’s really no reason to get this. If you’re a Green Day fanatic, it’s an interesting listen, with all the covers and spy music and general eclecticism of the thing, but if you are a fanatic, you probably already have it, and have probably stopped reading this page by now anyway because I haven’t given a single record of theirs a rating higher than Yes’ Tormato yet. There’s some interesting stuff here, and it’s surely a fuckload better than Insomniac or either of their first two albums, but I can’t give a record a 7 when it’s half an hour long and only half of that half-hour is any good. Just too skimpy. But it’s a randomly tossed together compilation, so I guess we should expect that.
American Idiot (2004)
Rating: 10
Best Song: “American
Idiot”
I guess it goes without saying
that I wouldn’t be reviewing this band at all if they hadn’t released this
record last fall. Not that they weren’t
any good before they put it out. It’s
just that I didn’t give a flying fuck about them. I didn’t even have Nimrod or Warning.
I just had my burned copy of Dookie
sitting 30 pages back in one of my innumerable CD wallets that take up like a
third of the shelf space in my thimble-sized apartment, and I was quite content
with having written a god-awful review of it two years before and not having
any other Green Day albums. But then,
out of fucking nowhere, they release this, an hour-long punk rock protest
opera concept album with more variety, interesting musical ideas, songwriting
prowess, lyrical heft and flat-out massive
hard rock power than the entire rest of their catalog combined, bookended by two nine-minute mini-suites modeled directly
after the Who’s “A Quick One,” one of which is about 100 times better and more
entertaining than its model. Needless to
say, this was unexpected, and anyone who says otherwise is either a liar or
Billie Joe Armstrong’s mother. I debated
a long time about whether I would
break out the 10 for it, mainly because I wasn’t sure exactly how much of my
love for this record was based on the music and how much was based on its
politics, but, in the end, I figured it’s my site, right? So maybe it’s more like a high 9 that I’m
giving a 10 because it happens to be so socially spot-on and relevant and I
happen to be an incredibly frustrated liberal living amongst rich conservative
snobs on the north
This album, obviously, is inexorably linked to the time and place in which it was released, but so is every album that contains such strong (at times even harsh and vitriolic) political commentary. Some of these albums hold up, however, and some don’t, because once the political climate of the time goes away you’re left only with the music. This one will hold up. The quantum leap Green Day has made in every facet of their musical game here is almost beyond belief. While a few songs (the title track, “St. Jimmy,” “Letterbomb”) don’t break any new stylistic ground for the band, these songs show such a mastery of the kind of speedy, 3-minute pop-punk single they’ve always been writing it’s almost hard to believe Insomniac EVER came from this band, and nearly all of the material here is stuff Green Day has just never tried before. Besides the “generic Green Day song,” what had they done with total success? Between Nimrod and Warning, maybe they’d tried a fair number of new pop styles and ballads with strings and remarkably shitty attempts at ska and polka, but Green Day never sounded at home in anything other than their trademark style. Warning sounds like an overly labored genre experiment at times, like they’re trying so hard to not be “Green Day” they end up forgetting they’re supposed to be a rock band, and that’s why I think it fails to a degree. Here, though, they’re a new band, a band who can do almost anything, do it well, and rock as hard as anyone doing it. “Are We the Waiting” is total slow rock bombast, all crushing tom hits, echoey guitar lines, and massively overdubbed mob choruses, the kind of thing on a concept album that really should get crushed under the weight of its own self-importance, but instead does the complete opposite. The utterly unexpected and nasty segue into the fastest, most energetic song they’ve ever done (“St. Jimmy”) doesn’t hurt either. “Give Me Novacaine” alternates absolutely gorgeous, light, acoustic sections with ferocious guitar entrances that really shouldn’t be in the same song, but the way they’re tied together (“drain the pressure from the swelling…”) is just genius. “Extraordinary Girl” is vaguely eastern, especially in its intro, but the decidedly non-eastern “she’s all alone again…” sections are what always get me. Just wonderful. I mean, christ, they even try two power ballads, and they both work! What the hell? And the title track, despite being the most stereotypical “Green Day” song on the entire album, is not just my pick for best track on the album, but also my pick for song of the year. Green Day will never do better in their traditional style. Ever. This album, and this song specifically, is the first time since the Clash turned to shit and then broke up that I have heard the spirit of Joe Strummer channeled so successfully. So perfectly. The anger and emotion in this song is absolutely overpowering. It makes “Minority” sound like a Dookie outtake by comparison. It’s fucking awesome.
But it’s not just the songwriting that makes this album so incredible. Green Day has never sounded this comfortable, this effortless, this confident in what they were doing. The band has never gotten their guitar tone this thick and full and awe-inspiringly perfect. The rhythm section has always been above-average, but here they are absolutely locked-in and solid like they’ve never been before. The massive power of this album owes a huge debt to them. Billie’s vocals are by far the best they’ve ever been, too. The passion he has for this record and this material is apparent in every note he sings, and the production, sequencing, and packaging of the whole thing shows the same kind of feeling. Like how the middle of the record always balances newer-sounding, more bombastic material like “Are We the Waiting” and “Extraordinary Girl” with faster, more fun tracks like “She’s a Rebel” and “Letterbomb” so the album never gets lost in the monotony that hurts every other record Green Day released prior to this one. And the little things, too, the little touches that you might not notice the first time. They’re wonderful. Like how everything stops and Tre yells out “1! 2! 3! 4!” in a barely audible voice from behind his drumkit in “St. Jimmy” and the little microphone squeak noise before Billie delivers his “Sieg Heil to the president gasman!” line in “Holiday.” And especially the segues between tracks, which, when they’re employed, are just expertly done. And hell, I haven’t even mentioned the two nine-minute suite things yet! Christ, there’s so much good stuff on this record. “Jesus of Suburbia” is the one at the beginning, and it is brilliant, cycling through four or five genius little melodies, from piano pop to punk to massive hard rock, that could all have been hit singles back in the day in a nearly perfect nine-minute soufflé of ROCK AND ROLL POWER. I especially love the line about “doing someone else’s cocaaaiiiine!” Billie nails that one. As I’ve mentioned before, the whole concept and structure of the song is taken from the Who (as well as that of this album in general…I mean, the main character is named Jimmy, for christ sake. That’s what the main character in Quadrophenia is named! Couldn’t you come up with a new name?), but while “A Quick One” is awkward and stilted, “Jesus of Suburbia” is both massively powerful and nearly flawless. By contrast, however, the second suite, “Homecoming,” is unfortunately weak and really the only flaw on the record. It has its moments, ofcourse, especially the “Jimmy died today!!” shout and Tre Cool’s 30-second fifties snippet “Rock and Roll Girlfriend” (which I adore), but the whole thing is disorganized and massively annoying. The entire “get me the fuck right out of here!” section was a horrid idea, and the fact that the final, climactic moment of the entire record (“We’re Coming Home Again”) is a direct lifting from a doofy but enjoyable novelty tune off the Police’s debut album (“Born in the ‘50’s”) unfortunately continues that disturbing Green Day tradition and is more than a little bit fucktarted. I really don’t like this song very much, and it’s very, very long, which makes its badness all the more disappointing. If there were a 9 up there instead of a 10, this’d be why, but there are enough worthwhile moments in there, and the rest of the album is powerful and awesome enough, that I’m gonna go ahead and let it slide.
As I said
earlier in this by now entirely too long review, this is a record that will
stand the test of time. There is nothing
else out there that conveys the anger, frustration, and overwhelming “what the
fuck can I do???” feeling that the
politically aware and active left of this country feels now and has felt for
several years. America is being run by a
cadre of intelligent yet morally deficient individuals who have perfected the
art of keeping the under-informed majority of its electorate ignorant enough to
not realize what they’re actually doing, frightened enough to not bother to
ask, and shallow and materialistic enough to not even care. No one seemed to bat an eyebrow over the fact
that the president of our country is and was buddies with the CEO of Enron, yet
Janet Jackson’s flashing her tittie on TV for half a second generated a
national outcry. Tom DeLay’s conduct
continues to go relatively unpunished and underreported (Why is he still in
Congress? Shouldn’t he have resigned by
now?) while E! runs nightly reenactments of the goddamn Michael Jackson child
molestation trial. American Idiot may have a storyline about some dude named Jimmy and
some chick named Whatsername, and the names of the characters may pop in and
out of most of the songs, but I can’t follow it. The general themes of the record are more
important, and, except for “
Every day I encounter something new
that makes me want to give up.
Rathergate. Vietnam War Veterans
for “Truth.” The “nuclear option.” John Bolton.
Everything that happens at my
fucking school. Did you know Sean Hannity’s son goes to where I
teach? Seriously! Sean fucking Hannity! And that every day I have to deal with
12-year-olds mindlessly spouting the conservative drivel their rich parents
drill into their heads every day? How do
you talk politics with pre-teen Bushies from millionaire families? Especially knowing that all three branches of
government are currently controlled by people exactly like their fucking rich
conservative socialite idiot parents?
It’s enough to make a man become violently angry, then become
frustrated, then give up and move to
mtlhead@mchsi.com writes:
Oh Brad, Brad, Brad. Come on man, what’s the
deal! You gave a ten to American Idiot. Wait, let me rephrase that: You gave a
ten to a Green Day album? Come on, you have got to be letting your political
views get in the way (you should become a libertarian like me). This album is
really generic and stupid, and the stuff that’s original is so pretentious I
can hardly listen to it. This gets a high 6 or a low 7. Now if you’ll excuse
me, I’m going to go listen to the Wall.
megatug@gmail.com writes:
Thank you, Brad, for having
the balls for giving American idiot a 10, I applaud that knowing there are tons
of people who see it as sub par or whatever, but I agree with you, it's a great,
catchy record with so much musical variation and creativity, not to
mention the fantastic lyrics and overall tone and message that the album
conveys. It's an album for the masses that criticizes the masses, but somehow I
think the message falls on deaf ears. :/
mtlhead@mchsi.com writes:
All right, that’s it, I can’t fucking let this go, and I’m not going to let this go until I really speak my mind. First off, “The message of this record falls on deaf ears?” If I actually thought there was a message in this meaningless and over-pretentious pile of shit, maybe I’d pay attention to it. Secondly, being neither a Republican nor a Democrat, I can say I see both sides of the issue, and ultra-liberals piss me off just as much as ultra-conservatives. And maybe the kids you teach are rich, conservative little pricks, but who are you to decide their political views are wrong? They’re just as frustrating as a bunch of poor liberal hippies who want everybody else to do their dirty work for them. Why can’t everybody find some middle ground and look at what’s going on through unbiased eyes? I think Dubya isn’t a good president, but if you think Kerry would have been better, you’re crazy! And what the hell is with all these modern punk bands (all of which suck by the way) backing the Democratic Party in every single song they do. When punk first came around wasn’t it about rebellion against authority, and not about supporting the lesser of two evils? Why does modern music SUCK SO BAD! In the old days, protest songs were about protesting the government, not about protesting the Republicans!
God
that felt good to write. Ok, I’m a huge fan of your site and I really respect
you, even if I don’t agree with your political views. But man did it feel good
to blow off that steam. In my opinion, very few politicians are in touch enough
with average people to do a good job governing them, but just remember there
are two extremes. Oh, wait, I was supposed to talk about music on your music
review site wasn’t I. Oops.
nikus80@hotmail.com writes:
Could Green Day really
progress from being an ok but
unoriginal and inconsistant band to be a great band? Weird... To tell you
the truth I turned my back on this band since I discovered both the Ramones
and "25 or 6 to 4" (which has killer horn interplay). I heard both
"American
Idiot" and "Boulevard Of Broken Dreams" and to tell you the
truth I was
unimpressed, although "Boulevard" is a fine song (and has a weird
chord
secuence at the end which is really good). But I'm intrigued. I will look
for this record and I'll tell you what I think.
Oh and Macy's Day Parade is a fine song, but the chord secuence is lifted
from the classic "Stand by me". In the Lennon version, if you hear
the part
of the acoustic strumming, is identical to "Macy's Day Parade", the
only
difference is that the last chord has an extra note (a minor 7th) in
"Stand
By Me".
Mike Noto (thepublicimage79@hotmail.com) writes:
You have a great site, and
this was one of your best reviews. The bitching
about pre-teen Bush voters is sadly accurate, as I've met a couple, and have
found myself entertaining thoughts of egging their McMansions, at the very,
very least, while I speak to them. I'm not here to whine about Bush, though.
I am here to discuss this album, which I disagree with you about quite a
bit.
It's a good album, but not great. The "Jesus" suites are indulgent at
times,
and Billie Joe's manner of delivering the songs can be egregious. He
continually makes like he's got some great insights into the political
arena, when most of the time what he's got is what some kid in 10th grade
would know. Plus, "Wake Me Up When September Ends" is a downright
amateurish
suck-a-thon. That rudimentary acoustic riff never gets hypnotic, and it
isn't even powerful when it slaps down with distortion; it sounds like the
Monkees trying for social commentary. And no, I don't think it has that
whole "what the fuck can I do?" vibe down. I would go for Husker Du's
intensely melodic punk masterpiece "Zen Arcade" for that, which is far
better than this album, but it's also something that I think might have had
an influence on "American Idiot" and it's greater propensity for
melody;
although the Who influence is completely unmistakable, as you again pointed
out.
But there are some really great songs, easily outclassing anything else the
band's ever done: "American Idiot" was probably in the Top 3 best
singles of
2004, an absolutely brilliant and exuberantly nasty pop-rocker, though not
nearly as angry or emotional as you say it is, and "Holiday" is
nearly as
good. And, even though the "Jesus" suites are indulgent, they are
certainly
quite creative, and very, very good. I also enjoy "St. Jimmy" quite a
lot.
I wouldn't rate this as highly as you did, but I would give it a high 7 or a
low 8; it is an admirable effort, and there was a lot of time, effort, and
creativity put into it. But I really would recommend "Zen Arcade,"
because
even though it was made during the Reagan era, it really nails the tenor of
the times that we have right now (as in: the world is going to hell in a
handbasket and we feel like we can't do anything about it); plus, it does it
with ten times the bile, ten times the anger, ten times the melodicism, and
ten times the passion. Really, trust me on this one. Please. That album is
truly a masterpiece, while this album is merely quite good with a couple of
flaws. But I did love your review. Keep it going - it makes for very
entertaining reading.
Pedro Andino (pedroandino@msn.com) writes:
fuck this cocksucker up his
gay ass! we are not talking about bush! mtlhead is one retard who can't
shut up! anyway before I get slammed by cocksucking rap emo loving faggots, let
me just say american underwear rules!!!!!!!! sorry I just cannot help it! oh
yeah great job on how fucked up and crappy the new decade was! jacko is a dumb
fuck pedophile! janet popped a TIT! conservatives are running amock! bush
sending people to die! WHAT THE FUCK KINDA DEACADE IS THIS?! anyway green day
are not bad good charlotte now that is a turd in your pool!
ddickson@rice.edu writes:
I've only heard roughly half
this album; it was on a freak occurence where
the local Clear-Channel-controlled alternative station unexpectedly showed a
streak of independence and when all AOR on our asses, playing the album
American Idiot in its entirety (with one commercial break) the week it came
out. Apparently this was due to the out-of-nowhere hit appeal of
"Boulevard
of Broken Dreams" and the fact that Green Day hadn't been around for 4
years. But what I heard was very, very good. "St. Jimmy"
dropped my jaw to
the floor. These guys can play that fast??!!
But the real reason for this e-mail: Other reviewers should read this damn
review. Your comment at the end about 12-year-old girls
requesting "Boulevard" on TRL is the exact reason why soooo many
people are
refusing to give this album (and others that sell above platinum) a chance--
it's commercially successful, therefore it must suck or some bullshit.
One
thing I am sick sick sick of is folks lambasting anything even remotely
popular in today's music as inherently generic generic genrierc erenric
egeirucncn and so on. Tell Prindle (bless his heart) to give it a chance.
He listens to you. Granted, the majority of good music IS in the
underground, but then again, so is the majority of bad music.
"American
Idiot"'s a darn catchy tune. I must buy this album someday.
Andrew Kenyon (kenyon330@gmail.com) writes:
You know, for American
Idiot? Absolutely brilliant. It's so nice to see someone who doesn't give
a shit about what other people think and acknowledge it as the modern
classic that it is!
Bullet In A Bible (2005)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Jesus Of
Suburbia”
So imagine my surprise when I opened up Pitchfork one day to find a review of a new Green Day album! “Fwaaaahhhhhh??” I remarked quite un-silently to myself, not considering the middle school youngsters milling around the hallway outside my beloved “Latin room.” Still confused, I clicked on the link to find out exactly what this particular record-album was, and discovered it was, in fact, a CD/DVD live release package from Green Day’s wildly successful American Idiot tour, “conveniently released just in time for the holiday season!” sarcastically joked whichever sidechop-toting poseur had written this particular review, including but not limited to that guy in the Harvard Classics department with me who never showered and always wore tight hoodies with interesting logos and currently writes the most ridiculous reviews found there (ofcourse, unnamed Pitchfork poseur did have a point). Anyway, after unnamed Pitchfork poseur was done with his typical Pitchfork sarcasto-shots at any band not named Radiohead that has ever achieved worldwide success, I decided I probably didn’t need this thing at all, and I surely wasn’t gonna buy the whole double-disc package, but were I able to download the CD part of the album for free, I would review it on my website posthaste! And so thus I have done in the style of my famous Salival half-review on the Tool page, and if you want to buy the thing know it comes packaged with a DVD that’s probably of a live show from the same tour (which most likely KICKS!). But I don’t have that half of it so who cares.
Let me state straight-out that I saw Green Day on the tour from which this concert is taken, so the level of my surprise at the setlist and track selection was somewhere between the number of times Dick Cheney has actually gone into combat and the number of times Tom DeLay has actually done something morally upright. You can hear the times the band lets loose the pyrotechnics and such, and they happen to match up exactly with the times the pyrotechnics were let loose at my show, ofcourse. Even Billy’s stage patter is identical! Turns out they rehearsed every “YEAH!!” and “COME ON, YOU MOTHERFUCKERS!!!” and “WOOOOO!!!” and all that fun stuff, which probably shouldn’t surprise me either, but it’s a little disappointing to hear Billy go “ENGLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAND!!!!!!!” at the exact same moments in the exact same songs he yelled “MASSACHUUUUSEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEETS!!!!!!” at my show at lovely Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, MA. The only things missing for me when I listen to this bad boy are the five hot dogs and seven beers in my stomach, Jimmy Eat World getting the crowd to go gonzo during “Sweetness” and “The Middle” and then the crowd consequently leaving to go to the bathroom when they played anything from their new album, the random mosh pits started two feet to my left and right at the same time by complete idiots from Quincy or Saugus or something, and the drunk father yelling “Hey, fuck you! Don’t you fucking curse at my fucking daughter, you fucking faggot! I’ll fucking fight you right now, you fucking pussy piece of shit! Fuck you and your fucking gay necklace!” at the dude standing in front of me before yanking off his necklace while his whored-up pre-teen daughter looked on mortified. Needless to say, it was a good time.
Anyway, like I said, it’s the exact same setlist in the exact same order as the show I saw, so being able to re-listen to it like this provides me with a way to objectively judge the musical merits of the show without being swayed by the fact that DUDE, IT’S FUCKING GREEN DAY!!! FUCKING RAWWWWWWWKKKK!!!! As such, the predictability of the setlist (play roughly the first half of American Idiot in order leaving out only “Boulevard,” then play a bunch of hit singles from the past before closing with “Wake Me Up When September Ends,” “Minority,” “Boulevard” and “Good Riddance,” the final two in an encore with a bunch of shit blowing up) is slightly startling, although the inclusion of a cover of “Shout” is a nice surprise (and was when I saw them, too), although attaching it to the end of “King for a Day” (which is a SHITTY ska song that SUCKS and shouldn’t have been included on the regular setlist) is more than slightly retarted. Elsewhere, you’ve got your “Longview” and your “Basket Case” and your “Brain Stew/Jaded” and your “Hitchin’ a Ride” (which TOTALLY rules here, by the way), and the whole thing, on CD, is over in a tidy hour, although the actual show went on for two to allow for Billy to drag audience members up on stage to play the band’s instruments (which was awesome), but not before faux-masturbating for no reason at all (which was not awesome).
What I took away from the concert I saw was that Billie Joe is probably one of the best guys in the business at commanding the stage. He was playing a goddamn open-air football stadium that seats like 60,000 people and it felt like he was the only guy in the place. He’s that good. Also, the whole band had energy to burn, and they do here also. The atmosphere of the evening was enough to cover up any musical fuck-ups (I sure didn’t notice any), and I went home saying it was the best concert I’d ever seen that did not involve Radiohead (a claim I still maintain). However, take the experience of being there out of the equation and it’s just a real good show. Some of the American Idiot material suffers a tad from the fact that, while the band members are all extremely energetic dudes, it’s not like they’re Yes. There are clear fuck-ups a number of places, which would be fine if this is a shit club, but this is a stadium show where even the stage banter is pre-planned, so totally losing the rhythm during Billy’s “LET EVERY FUCKING REDNECK IN AMERICA HEAR YOU!!!!” monologue in “American Idiot” is inexcusable, and the time Tre completely fucks up during one of the transitions in “Jesus of Suburbia” is unacceptable (although, since the thing is 9 minutes long and kicks ass, I’m naming it “best track” anyway). Bar possibly “Hitchin’ a Ride” and “Brain Stew,” I can’t say I enjoy any of the live tracks here more than their studio equivalents (and I still HATE “King for a Day.” You should have seen me at the concert when they broke into that; I was livid). I mean, I certainly enjoy listening to this record a lot, but I can’t think of an instance where I’d actually want to do it again once I finish writing this review. Taking the American Idiot songs out of context and in slightly inferior versions ain’t really my cup o’ tea, you see. Also, along with the absolutely horrible video the band made for a criminally-shortened “Jesus of Suburbia” (Seriously, have you seen that piece of shit? I wanted to punch the dude playing Jimmy after about two seconds. It’s one of the worst videos I’ve ever seen), Green Day has been so overexposed the last year or so that they’re almost becoming a cliché. I stand by my claim that American Idiot is, currently, the second-best record I’ve heard released this millennium (trailing only Kid A), but this whole “we’re punk-rockers!” thing starts to lose a little weight after your fifty-seventh appearance on a shitty awards show next to Beyonce or whorish set on MTV. Fuckdammit, I’m turning into Pitchfork.
OK, to sum up. This is a really good live album and certainly better than any Green Day studio album prior to American Idiot. The DVD obviously rules, too, since I’ve seen them, they ruled, and the DVD will probably have like the exact same show I saw, just in a different location. However, it’s a polished, rehearsed, arena-rock show through and through, and the only really interesting thing you’ll hear is the cockney British accent on the crowd when they chant “1, 2, 1, 2, 3 4!” So, I guess your enjoyment of it will be determined by some kind of cross-section of your tolerance for such polished sheen and your current enthusiasm for Green Day. Either way, it’s certainly worth an illegal download.