Green Day - Holiday
*** (out of four)
I've got a pair of friends, both in their early 30s, who swear Green Day's American Idiot is "the best rock opera since Tommy." They also both went to a Green Day show a few months back and each declared it one of the three best concerts of their lives. Each favors bands like Weezer, Oasis, Pearl Jam and surprisingly better than you'd think Nada Surf, so I trust their recommendations in general.
But I haven't brought myself to purchase (or even significantly download) American Idiot - I'm still the kind of Green Day listener who's perfectly happy to pop Dookie in the CD player every six months or so and leave it at that. I like "Holiday," though, the song and video - and, you'd never guess it, but it turns out Billie Joe Armstrong and the boys are left-leaners, politically. I would have pegged them for Bush supporters myself, but we're here on this planet to learn, and learn I did.
Don't worry too much about the protest elements of the song. With the exception of a raspy, distorted bridge ("Pulverize the Eiffel Towers who criticize your government"), "Holiday" is pure catchy rock and roll, suitable for the AOR radio format. It could play in between Sheryl Crow and Hootie, and I know the members of Green Day would hold me down and beat me if they read that.
The video opens, none too subtlely, with fighter planes dropping a bomb bearing the band's name on some city, then Billie Joe & Co. spend the next two minutes or so riding around town in a manically moving convertible while the blue screen background flashes incongruent images.
All this is intercut with the band getting drunk in a bar and hitting on what appears to be a transvestite. (The transvestite represents that corporate whore Dick Cheney. Or Rumsfeld perhaps.) Eventually Billie Joe is flanked by four super-trashy dancers while images of more fighter planes grace yet another blue screen. A fun video, overall, and it's under three minutes long so it doesn't even have a chance to wear out its welcome.
I've got a pair of friends, both in their early 30s, who swear Green Day's American Idiot is "the best rock opera since Tommy." They also both went to a Green Day show a few months back and each declared it one of the three best concerts of their lives. Each favors bands like Weezer, Oasis, Pearl Jam and surprisingly better than you'd think Nada Surf, so I trust their recommendations in general.
But I haven't brought myself to purchase (or even significantly download) American Idiot - I'm still the kind of Green Day listener who's perfectly happy to pop Dookie in the CD player every six months or so and leave it at that. I like "Holiday," though, the song and video - and, you'd never guess it, but it turns out Billie Joe Armstrong and the boys are left-leaners, politically. I would have pegged them for Bush supporters myself, but we're here on this planet to learn, and learn I did.
Don't worry too much about the protest elements of the song. With the exception of a raspy, distorted bridge ("Pulverize the Eiffel Towers who criticize your government"), "Holiday" is pure catchy rock and roll, suitable for the AOR radio format. It could play in between Sheryl Crow and Hootie, and I know the members of Green Day would hold me down and beat me if they read that.
The video opens, none too subtlely, with fighter planes dropping a bomb bearing the band's name on some city, then Billie Joe & Co. spend the next two minutes or so riding around town in a manically moving convertible while the blue screen background flashes incongruent images.
All this is intercut with the band getting drunk in a bar and hitting on what appears to be a transvestite. (The transvestite represents that corporate whore Dick Cheney. Or Rumsfeld perhaps.) Eventually Billie Joe is flanked by four super-trashy dancers while images of more fighter planes grace yet another blue screen. A fun video, overall, and it's under three minutes long so it doesn't even have a chance to wear out its welcome.
posted by daytime at 5:18 AM
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