SOUNDTRACK: GREEN DAY-21st Century Breakdown (2009).
Like most people who like Green Day, I’ve been a fan since Dookie. They were incredibly poppy (although they wrote great punk riffs) and they sang about weird, kind of subversive things. And they got huge really fast. Of course since then they have become one of the most commercially successful bands in America (including having their song picked for the ending scene of the Seinfeld montage–jeez).
And yet….
And yet, American Idiot, their previous album was one of the most anti-establishment records of the last twenty years. (True it’s not hard to be Anti-Bush if you’re a punk band, but wow.) And yet, it was a concept album and even a rock opera of sorts. And it still sold millions.
And now American Idiot has been made into a freaking Broadway Musical. And yet, how many Broadway shows (or top twenty albums for that matter) have lyrics like “The insurgency will rise when the blood’s been sacrificed. Don’t be blinded by the lies in your eyes”
And so Green Day confounds me. And yet, if I were younger and cared more about “keeping it real” I think they’d confuse me even more because although musically they have sold out (if you want to call it that), lyrically Billie Joe is still pretty true to his punk roots. And, of course, even the punkest bands seem to go commercial eventually (Combat Rock anyone?)
Of all the Green Day CD’s I think I like this least. And yet I really applaud them for writing an album that so easily translates to Broadway (not an easy feat in itself) (this disc would make better Broadway than American Idiot). I think I dislike this disc not because it’s so unpunk, but because I think musically it’s really obvious (and although I like musicals, I prefer classic musicals to contemporary ones). And yet, most of Green Day’s music is pretty obvious. I guess I prefer my obvious music to have a harder egde.
And yet Act III is full of some really great aggressive punk songs: “Horseshoes and Handgrenades” is just fantastic. And in Act II, “Peacemaker has a great construction, all spaghetti Western and whatnot. And in the first act, the title song has multiple parts that all work well together. It’s a pretty sophisticated song. And who can fault Billie Joe for expanding his songwriting skills? Like the Tin Pan Alleyesque opening of “¿Viva La Gloria? (Little Girl).”
In interviews, Billie Joe comes across as a maturing artist who is influenced by more diverse styles of music. I always wonder what the other two guys think. Should your name still be Tre Cool if you’re no longer writing songs about getting high and masturbating?
And yet…and yet…ad astra.
[READ: Week of June 18, 2010] Letters of Insurgents [Second Letters]
There’s been a lot of discussion over at Insurgent Summer (and here) about the first week’s reading. Very exciting! And with so much revealed and so many accusations flying this week, no doubt more will continue.
Many people have been wondering exactly what Yarostan could have meant in first letter when he said he barely remembered Sophia. When he replies in this letter, he claims that “I now remember you as if I had been with you only yesterday” (29). There are two ways to take this: first, as a positive; however, it can also be read as the way I take it: Oh, RIGHT, you’re THAT person, still. And this is pretty well confirmed by the second paragraph: “I admit that I once shared the illusion your letter celebrates” (29). (more…)
SOUNDTRACK: STEREOLAB-Transient Random Noise Bursts with Announcements (1993).
Stereolab are a bizarre band. They make bubbly electronic music, with all sorts of bleeps and whirls and buzzes. They even describe their music as space age pop. Their album cover art is overexposed or simply silk screened. (This is a hi-fi needle getting dropped on an LP). The back cover looks like it’s a hi-fi test record.
SOUNDTRACK: BEATLES-Rubber Soul (1965).
After the breakthrough of Help!, the Beatles followed up with their first proper album that is full of all original songs and which really pushes the envelope.
SOUNDTRACK: WALLER NOT WELLER blog.
WallerNotWeller 
SOUNDTRACK: BBC Sessions (various).
Many many bands that I like have recorded tracks for the BBC. And after several sessions, they tend to get released as BBC Live or BBC Sessions discs. In the last few years, I’ve gotten discs from the Cocteau Twins, Tindersticks, The Beautiful South, Belle and Sebastian and Therapy? One of the first ones I’d every gotten was The Smiths’ Hatful of Hollow. 
SOUNDTRACK: ALANIS MORISETTE-Jagged Little Pill (1995).
In this book, DFW considers himself to be absolutely useless when it comes to music. He doesn’t know anything at all. He says he listens to Bloomington country radio stations until he can’t take it anymore and then he switches over to the alt rock station. He’d never even heard of Nirvana until after Cobain’s suicide.
Oh, and by the way, I also grew up watching Alanis on “You Can’t Do That on Television,” so it was pretty exciting to see a child star that I knew make it big.
SOUNDTRACK: FUGAZI-Repeater + 3 Songs (1990).
This was Fugazi’s debut album and my first exposure to them. They’d put out some singles before this but I missed them. Listening to it now, it sounds great, but not revolutionary. And yet, I remember back then, this was a pretty mind-blowing album. It’s full of heavy chunky guitars and yet it is underscored by a punk vibe (that comes from the source: Minor Threat).
SOUNDTRACK: THE DEAD MILKMEN-Big Lizard in My Backyard (1985).
My friend Alison said the other day that she had “Bitchin’ Camaro” stuck in her head. And soon thereafter, so did I. So Philadelphia’s Dead Milkmen are a bratty punk band. They skewer all kinds of things: pop culture, racists, right wing pigeons, junkies and, quite possibly, music itself.
Sarah and I watched a bit of the third or fourth episode of this show when it aired on CBC. But jumping into the middle of this show is difficult. The characters are established pretty quickly, their quirks are all explained in the first episode, and it’s a bit hard to care about them without knowing their whole story.
And it has now given me a new favorite actor of the month: Sherry Miller who plays Mrs Jarlewski is just fantastic. She’s like an older, subtler version of perennial favorite Portia de Rossi.
SOUNDTRACK: BLUE ÖYSTER CULT-compilations and live releases (1978-2010).
For a band that had basically two hits (“Don’t Fear the Reaper” and “Burnin’ for You”) and maybe a half a dozen other songs that people might have heard of, BOC has an astonishing number of “greatest hits” collections.
This doesn’t include any of the “budget price” collections: E.T.I. Revisited, Tattoo Vampire, Super Hits, Then and Now, The Essential, Are You Ready To Rock?, Shooting Shark, Best of, and the 2010 release: Playlist: The Very Best of).
The lesson is that you evidently won’t lose money making a BOC collection.
And, although none of them have “Monsters” for the average person looking for some BOC, any disc is a good one.
Then, in 1994 we got Live 1976 as both CD and DVD (which spares us nothing, including Eric Bloom’s lengthy harangue about the unfairness of…the speed limit). It’s the most raw and unpolished on live sets. 2002 saw the release of A Long Day’s Night, a recording of a 2002 concert (also on DVD) which had Eric Bloom, Buck Dharma an Allan Lanier reunited.
They also have a number of might-be real live releases (fans debate the legitimacy of many of these). Picking a concert disc is tough if only because it depends on the era you like. ETLive is regarded as the best “real” live disc, although the reissued double disc set of Some Enchanted Evening is hard to pass up. Likewise, the 2002 recording is a good overview of their career, and includes some of their more recent work.
If you consider live albums best of’s (which many people do) I think it’s far to say that BOC has more best of’s than original discs. Fascinating. Many BOC fans believe that if they buy all the best of discs, it will convince Columbia to finally reissue the rest of the original discs (and there are a number of worthy contenders!) in deluxe packages. I don’t know if it will work, but I applaud the effort.
I Just Read About That... 