Saturday, October 8, 2016

Will GREEN DAY be still around in 20+ years like Rolling Stones?

A few days ago, while driving, I heard from the radio that GREEN DAY were releasing a new album "Revolution Radio", their twelfth, on Oct. the 7th and the band is booked to play four gigs in Italy, the last of them being hosted at Mediulanum Forum in Milano on Jan. the 14th 2017.
This "breaking news", kind of, hehe..., got two thoughts coming up in my mind; the first one, that led myself down memory lane when back in September 1995 (the date should be Sept. the 15th) I went with a bunch of friends to see Green Day in Milano in the same venue, a sport arena, then simply called Forum. It wasn't a long show, they played for less than one hour, and the stage was looking definitely too big for these Californian punks, freshly rocketed into rock stardom, after the release of groundbreaking "Dookie", but, you know, being myself pretty young and being Green Day a band I dug a lot at the time I'd enjoyed this show alot and walked out of the venue feeling like I had just attended something I would be reminishing about over the years -yet I would never ever thought to be writing about it 21 years later either.

The second one has been actually pushed by another radio announcement about a 3-day rock festival being held this weekend, and the next one, in Indio, CA (Desert Trip festival), where the bill features the Rolling Stones, among some other dinosaur of rock pop music, and the news on the upcoming new record “Blue And Lonesome”, to drop on Dec. the 2nd, from English rock 'n' roll geriatric icons. After hearing the news I started thinking “Will Green Day still be around in 20+ years and play some rock music festival featuring Metallica, Pearl Jam, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nofx, Blink 182, Korn, Muse, Bring Me The Horizon?” -crazy bill, ins't it?

Bottomline, I'm not following Green Day anymore -from the trio I own only three records; Kerplunk (1992), Dookie (1994) and American Idiot (2004, which I bought for the special price deal a few years off its release) and I pretty much stopped keeping up with their works starting with Insomniac (1995) onward- and I get to hear/read about them from radio and big mags -these media reach everyone.
However, despite of many die-hard hardcore purists calling them out as sell-outs, and the true fact that these now grown up and filthy rich punks, parted ways with the underground / d.i.y. scene they burst out of and made their break through among the corporate mainstream, Green Day will always be a relevant name in punk rock music (that’s how I see it though I too don’t like what they become). But, there’s always a “but”, do we really need the older them still around in 20+ years’ time? I believe we won’t!
I indeed feel way better watching old concerts from the 90's or earlier than seeing them live acting their best Rolling Stones punk rendition.
What do you think?

Surfing the net I found a few clips of Green Day 1995's show in Milano -opening act were Chicago's Riverdales (punk rock outfit feat. Ben Weasel, Dan Vapid and Dan Panic of Screeching Weasel fame) . Here's the Green Day playing their hit "Basket Case" https://youtu.be/cafAay24IIM

No comments:

Post a Comment