Those Liberal Punks are Mysterious

As I was flipping through the most recent issue of my favorite conservative “news” source, I found myself particularly moved by an article entitled “Green Day: A Basket Case of Commie Rage” by a Ms. Erin Gillespie. For those of you that missed it, Ms. Gillespie articulates her belief that Green Day should be banished to one of planet Earth’s few remaining communist countries, where she assumes, based on her incredibly detailed analysis of the band’s obvious communist sympathies, that they will find themselves right at home. While I do not agree with Ms. Gillespie’s opinion on the matter, I must admit that I am not a fan of Green Day. I dislike their music, lyrics, ethical decisions, and pretty much everything else about them. In spite of this, I’d like to offer an alternative opinion on the matter based on my own perceptions of the modern music scene.

I’ll start out by getting to the heart of the matter – Billie Joe and his cohorts. To understand my disdain for Green Day, one must examine their history. The band began innocently enough as a few high-school kids getting together and playing music. Heavily influenced by Berkeley’s respectable punk scene, the band became popular within their town and signed to the small independent label Lookout! Records. They stayed with Lookout! until 1993, when the success of their album Kerplunk garnered them recognition from a number of major corporate record labels. This is where Green Day went wrong, signing to Warner Bros. Records and openly turning their backs on the scene that fostered their early success, all in an effort to increase their own financial gains while sacrificing every ounce of integrity they once had. Since then, their albums have been a series of poorly pieced-together pop-punk bores, that is until they tapped into the goldmine of political rock with their latest album, American Idiot, the apparent scourge of conservatives everywhere. While their earlier corporate releases maintained at least some semblance to their original sound, it is safe to say that with American Idiot, the band chose to move in a completely consumer-oriented direction, thus making their music more appealing to Clear Channel radio stations, MTV, and the Grammy Awards.

For those of you unfamiliar with punk rock, it isn’t the commercialized garbage along the lines of the Sex Pistols or Taking Back Sunday that you might be thinking about, those who masquerade under some perverted pretense of MTV-land “punk” music. The punk rock that I’m talking about is a musical form that will never breach the barriers of mainstream music due to its fierce allegiance to the ethical ideals upon which it was built: the rejection of corporate music, the open defiance of social norms, and a do-it-yourself mentality that celebrates music as an art form and means of communication rather than a mere vehicle for profitable returns.

The appeal of Green Day’s new album is of no great surprise, despite what the Ms. Gillespie might lead you to believe. In all honestly, it’s a rather genius album in terms of target audience and subject matter, perfectly suited for the burgeoning legions of upper-middle class American teenagers who flock to bands like Green Day under the guise of social rebellion. What they fail to realize is that corporations like Warner Brothers Music spend millions of dollars promoting their band’s images, conjuring up things like the Rolling Stone cover mentioned in Ms. Gillespie’s article that claimed Billie Joe to be “The Defiant One.” In reality, there isn’t a single defiant bone in Billie Joe’s body – he’s just another cog in the corporate machine, a tool who sold his soul and is now the poster-child for an imaginary concept of corporate liberalism.

Does anyone honestly think that Green Day believes in their lyrics? They’re complete hypocrites – if they gave a damn about what the political and social injustices they preach about, they’d take the millions of dollars they’re making off the misguided youth of America and put it towards a good cause, like English anarchists Chumbawamba did with the profits from their hit album Tubthumber. Instead, they spend their money on the mansions and personal make-up artists Ms. Gillespie mentions. However, I don’t see this as any rational for banishing them from the country. In all honesty, they’re the pinnacle of the American Dream, as sad as it is to admit. They embody traditional American values of greed, hypocrisy, and treachery, all in the name of the dollar. As a result, realize that the blame for Green Day’s horrendous music cannot be merely attributed to Billie Joe, Mike, and Tre, but should be shared by America as a whole for creating the environment in which they thrive.

At this point, I’d like to take a moment to summarize the ideas I’ve articulated in the last few paragraphs for anyone who might be a little confused. Green Day, and pretty much any other popular artist that you don’t like, should not be blamed for the poor quality of their music, because while you might not like it, a hundred million other Americans do, and that’s why it sells. So for people like Ms. Gillespie, who think that Green Day are the scourge of Americans everywhere, please remember that every day when you flip on MTV, or turn on your FM radio (except to WSBF, we’re non-profit, non-Top 40), or go downtown to the thinly-veiled corporate music store, you’re contributing to the disgusting machine that will continue to produce bands like Green Day as long as Americans continue to throw money away for terrible music.

I guess what I’m really trying to say is that it’s important to approach issues in the musical world without a lot of preconceived notions. The inherent nature of the international music scene, particularly with the introduction of the Internet in the last decade, lends itself perfectly to the creation of an underground culture full of infighting and backstabbing, as opposed to the illusion of unity they strive to promote. As a result, it’s practically impossible to judge bands based on what you heard about them from a friend, or on the Internet, or in some campus newspaper. So why are you still listening to me? Go to their shows and ask them yourself.