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Posted: 3/15/06
February Green Day Report
It hasn't been a super busy month for Green Day, but it's definitely been an INTERESTING month. It was Billy Joe's 34th birthday, which he must have celebrated in relative peace as they are no front-page scandals to report. It was also the month when Mechanical Man - the song Billie Joe recorded for "Live Freaky, Die Freaky," was released as a single, leading out-of-the-loopoes to suspect that he was started a solo career, which is just patently false.
February has been kind of like the split second after the crest of a wave for the Green Day guys. The wave, that is, the success of "American Idiot," is still all big and wet and wonderful, but like anything that's greater-than-great, that's maybe just a little TOO well-done, there's going to be some backlash, some ennui, that inevitable undertow dragging everything back to the bottom of the sea from whence all life came and to which it will all inevitably return.
The Good, Foamy, Frothing Green Monster Stuff:
Green Day is still raking in the awards and honors. Of course, they got that Grammy for Record of the Year back at the beginning of the month, which was great, if you wish Green Day all the best no matter what. But it could also have been bad if you don't like to see your favorite band drowning in a sea of mainstream recognition.
If you're someone from the second category, there were a few more twists of the knife this month. If you're an unconditional fan, there were a few more feathers to add to the already heavily plumed cap.
The Brit Awards
At the 2006 Brit Awards, Green Day won all the awards they were nominated for. They won Best International Group and Best International Album for "American Idiot. The awards were presented by Paris Hilton and Kelly Osbourne, the latter of which might have made for a nice little reunion had the guys showed up, as they worked with Kelly on "Live Freaky, Die Freaky."
Sadly, GD hungry fans got no live action. They did, however, get a very nice video from Green Day apologizing for their absence and saying how very pleased they were with the awards. Those boys are just so thoughtful, aren't they?
No Shows at TRL Awards
Later in the month, Green Day was awarded the dubious Roc Da Mic honor at the Fourth Annual TRL awards on MTV. For those who fail to watch MTV with the appropriate religiosity, extensive research should reveal that the Roc Da Mic award has something to do with the best TRL performance of the year, which it was, so hopefully you didn't miss it.
Green Day was also up for the award for Best Group That Plays Their Own Instruments, but they lost to My Chemical Romance. As usual, fans are divided on the issue. For some, a win for MCR is just as good as a win for Green Day. For others, the idea that MCR should ever beat Green Day at anything is nothing short of a total fucking burn.
Green Day made no effort to make an appearance at the TRL awards. After all, they're sooooo famous, they get sooooo many awards, can they really be expected to show up at every lame-ass awards show that tons of their fans helped them win and hope to see them at? Well…again, it's all a matter of opinion.
Coming Up in Australia
It was also announced in February that Green Day have a few more cheesy cheersies on the way in coming months. In April, the guys will be up for three Australian Music Video Awards. The nominations are for Best Group, Best Rock Video ( Wake Me Up When September Ends ), and Video of the Year ( Wake Me Up When September Ends ).
It will be interesting to see if Green Day shows up for this award ceremony, as they have so many huge fans in Australia. The two concerts they played in Sydney and Melbourne in December were fucking incredible. Everybody who went said they were the most rock-ass shows ever. You can hardly find GD fans more enthusiastic than the Aussies these days, so hopefully the award show will be well-attended by…whoever.
Hometown Heroes
On March 19th, the San Francisco chapter of the Recording Academy will bestow upon Green Day the 2006 Recording Academy Honors, which "celebrate outstanding individuals whose work embodies excellence and integrity and who have improved the environment for the creative community."
Green Day will be receiving the honor alongside jazz music legends Dave Brubeck and George Duke, as well as the San Francisco Blues Festival. That Green Day should elevate punk music to the greatness status of genres like jazz and blues is a matter of both pride and contention within the punk community.
This is where the trouble starts:
This month, Forbes Magazine, quite possibly the least punk, or even rocknroll publication of all time, listed Green Day as the fourth highest-earning band of the year. They made 99 million bucks. That's a lot of fucking green.
Forbes did reveal the interesting disestablishmentarian fact that Green Day's massive tour profits ($34.8 million) allowed them to turn down several corporate gig offers for a million bucks a pop, which was pretty pro of them, At least we didn't have to see Green Day playing to promote Wal-Mart or McDonald's or some shit like that.
Unfortunately, no matter how anti-corporate Green Day tries to be, it can't change the fact that they are number four on a list that surrounds them with the likes of top teners Kenny Chesney, Celine Dionne, Paul McCartney, Elton John, and U2. Sigh.
The truth of the matter is that the brains of many have gotten more than a little supersaturated by Green Day. Not only have they been on the radio constantly for the last year or more, but they have a ridiculously huge popular fan base now.
If you want to talk about Green Day on a message board these days, you will likely have to contend with an overwhelming majority of superfans committed to an in-depth analysis of Billie Joe's current hair style, or to speculation on the potential greatness of a Billie Joe-Mike, Billie Joe-Tre, Mike-Tre, or Billie Joe-Mike-Tre naked make-out party.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
It's just that the whole scene has become generally symptomatic of a certain over-kill-ness that has been illustrated in great detail due to the big Green Day scandal of the month:
Punk's not Dead, it's Just Old and Grumpy
Green Day has been making enough noise at of late to stir some of the punk old-timers out of their nursing home slumber. Punk godfathers have been reappearing in the public eye this month just long enough to make a crotchety fuss about those trouble-making new young punks on the block.
(Eds. note: Yes, we know that Green Day has been around for 15 years, but try reasoning with punk bands that have been around for 30+).
It all started earlier this month when Sex Pistols front man Johnny Lydon, a.k.a. Johnny Rotten, started bashing Green Day for being phony bandwagon jumpers. Rotten says that Green Day's anything but punk, because punk is politics and back in his heyday, oh, that's when some real political shit was going down.
In the interview, Rotten sounded like nothing so much as an old war veteran going all, "War? Don't tell me about war. You kids today wouldn't know what to do if a real war came along." (Shifts false teeth around thoughtfully and spits.)
Then, a bit later this month, Steve Diggle, the guitarist from the Buzzcocks, is all talking shit, too, saying that Green Day is SO unoriginal, and that the Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks, and the Clash started punk, and if other people want to make music, they should come up with their own style.
Like any of these guys ever did a truly original thing in their lives.
By the time any sound, or any idea, hits anything approaching the mainstream, it's already been ripped off and copied so many times that the real originators are either dead or don't recognize their own work.
One-time Sex Pistol Glen Matlock came to the defense of Green Day recently, saying that the most important thing is that musicians entertain people. He said he had recently been to a Green Day show with his son, and that the guys put on an awesome performance.
Rotten's problem with Green Day is probably that they are speaking to the new generation, many of whom are like 'What's a sex pistol?" The fact is that Rotten is notorious for criticizing everything, and everybody. He didn't mind going off about how great Green Day was in 1996 when they were still starry-eyed acolytes worshiping the wonderfulness of the Sex Pistols, but now that they are legends in their own right, Rotten's all pissed off.
A grouchy old man that hates the world because he's being replaced as its undisputed center? What a huge fucking shock. Rotten and Diggle are all like, "Did I ever tell you about the time when I was a punk rocker?" And all the kids roll their eyes, "Yes Grandpa!"
In any case, whether or not the old punks are right about the new, or slightly-less-old-punks, there's no doubt that Green Day's massive fame is being answered by a similarly massive backlash. That's the price of success, as they say.
Hoping to Ride the Waves Again
In a recent Rolling Stone interview, Billie Joe said, "I dont know if our next record is going to be as big as this one. Its just a matter of having a great stock of songs and sticking together, riding the wave with it."
The fact is that there's almost no chance that Green Day will ever have as big a record as "American Idiot" again. Most bands go their entire careers never having a hit of this magnitude. So that means that when the next album comes out, everybody's going to say, "oh, Green Day's lost it," "oh, they were a flash in the pan." Again, there's that price, the terrible price of fame and fortune.
But do not fear, freakazoids, Green Day's been up before, and they've been down. They know how to handle it, and with no tour, but also no end it sight, all we can do is hope that the guys don't wind up similarly bitter old men fifteen years from now when Blink 182 puts out an awesome album.
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