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GREEN DAY

posted February 25, 2007, 12:11 am | Log In To Post Comments | view comments (5)
Tags: Green Day, Green_Clash, The Clash, Joe Satriani, Zakk Wylde, Jimmy Page, Led Zeppelin, 39/Smooth, Kerplunk!, Warning, American Idiot, Guitar, My Life, Influences

Sychronized Dancing and Guitars Behind Heads

Me writing this gigantic essay was led up to by a few events that occured before today. As you may or may not know, I am the lead guitarist/semi-singer/semi-songwriter of a young ska/punk band from a town named after an inflammable material. So, we strive to make our live shows the most energetic and liveliest ones in the area. And it's nice to know that we do do this and that people enjoy our sound. A few weeks ago, we played in Allentown, PA and we thought it'd be the greatest show. Thirty minutes on stage to a crowd we've never played in front of before (so they wouldn't remember all of our terrible shows leading up to the good ones) was a dream to me. But, every bands set got cut in half because the downstairs stage (which we were told we would open) was shut down because there was no sound system. So, we got to go third in the lineup, and everyone was pissed obviously, but right before we went on, my boy Andy turns to me and tells us "We still gotta make this a great show". After the two Leftover Crack rejects played, we were up and people apparantly liked us (I don't know why, I thought we blew to be honest).

Well, the first big show we played as a band was our schools Battle of the Bands. This show was... terrible. We went up first and were "below average" with our three songs. The second band, who we will be facing off with again for this years BOTB, was the same. And the third band was a screamo band who's only member that was still in the school and not over the age of nineteen was the drummer. Anyway, we got third place out of three bands and have been pissed about that since then. So this year, we're confident that we can take the fifty dollar prize (think of what we could buy with that!). But we really just want to bring the pride back in the music in our town. Everyone raves on about the emo band and we're seen as the losers in a ska band who aren't fashionable and wear forty dollar shirts from Holister.

But on to the point, one of our horn players suggested that the horns should have sychncronized dance moves for this years BOTB, similar to Suburban Legends. We haven't done this yet, but a few of our horns went to the Suburban Legends show last night, and I was never really big into them. I went to their myspace and watched a video of them live. I now really want synchronized dancing! And all of my band members have always wanted me to play the guitar behind my head. I've tried it but it's a little hard. But thinking that dance moves and me playing guitar behind my head would be amazing, I went on the mission to master this technique. So today, I grabbed my copy of Bullet In A Bible and waited to see the part where Billie Joe Armstrong throws the guitar over his head and plays. I saw him do this before purchasing the live DVD. I stood there in the Philly hockey rink September 7th, 2005 watching in awe of Green Day's unprecendented live show. I watched the DVD to the point where he did this fancy manuever, which was the second song, Jesus of Suburbia. I was only going to watch up to this part, but I couldn't stop watching. Sitting there watching this, I realized how much Green Day affected my life and my upbringing as a musician and lover of music. I'm known to credit The Clash for my main influence, but looking back on my life, I can honestly say, without Green Day, I wouldn't be typing these words you see.

I Wanna Be The Minority!

I lived ten years without proper music. My brother basically chose what music I listened to. So, the only music I knew was the Backstreet Boys. And then my brother purchased the most amazing CD I had ever heard. Green Day's Warning blew my mind. I'd never heard anything like this and each song was a breath of fresh air to me. I'd never be the same. My brother and I went out and purchased everything by the band and loved every second of every minute of every song on every album they ever made. And I just realized something very cool. Back as a kid, when I listened to this CD's, I'd imagine me on stage with a guitar and belting out these awesome lyrics. To this day, I still imagine that while listening to music. When I could imagine this and feel my heart begin to race with the music, that was the greatest feeling on earth. So you can imagine how excited I was to go out on the first day and buy Green Day's new album American Idiot.

It was 2004 and I came back from having the worst year of my life. My 2003-2004 school year was like having bamboo shoots shoved up my finger nails while running away from rabid dogs chasing after the sausages up my bung-hole. Yeah, it was bad. Going out on the morning of this albums release and getting it was one of the best things that had happened to me in awhile. I listened to it and classified it as "good but not as good as their older stuff" like many did before me. But then I read the lyrics and embraced the sound and was shocked. After the album closed, I sat there looking a blank TV screen and was wondering what just went on. Back then, I used to listen to that album everyday, getting a frog in my throat each time. I suppose I liked it so much is because I could relate to it. Sure, I never did drugs or some of the other crazy crap the character in the story did, but I could definetly identify a piece of me in the music. I remember loving that album more than any album I had listened to at the time but I don't think I ever said it was my favorite Green Day album. I think it was because of the the band's new fan base

The political songs "American Idiot" and "Holiday" weren't the controversial thing about the album. It was the new look of the band that had older fans up in arms. The band wore black, red, and eyeliner. Thirteen year old girls in fish-net stockings were talking about how they hated George W. Bush and how Green Day was the best new band out there. My hatred toward them esculated into wanting to write a book about the significance of Green Day and how the poseur kids don't get it. This is what kept me from saying it was the best Green Day album out, I didn't want to turn into those people who saw "Boulevard Of Broken Dreams" on MTV and instantly named them the best band ever. I even felt skeptical saying that I could relate to American Idiot because I criticized people for saying this back in the day. I was an idiot, I suppose, cause I've learned that a fan's a fan. But looking back on the album, that was my favorite Green Day album. And talking about the political songs, I'm a Democrat and I like good political songs, but Green Day didn't change my views. They just continued what I had been listening to. At this point, I had gotten into The Clash and enjoyed punk music. But Green Day brought a social awarness of suburban life that I hadn't heard before. They did this through there older songs like "Christie Road" but nothing what they did on American Idiot. With this incredible album they brought an equally incredible live show. That was the best two and half hours of my life...

Billie Joe Armstrong Vs. Joe Satriani?

What I can't stand more is to hear people say that Billie Joe is a bad guitarist. They're excuses for this are: he plays power chords and he sucks. These people honestly make me sick. Open up a copy of Guitar World and choose any metal shredder in there, I'm sure Billie Joe is better than any of them. And why you ask? He doesn't play his solos fast and he doesn't even play them live? This is why Billie Joe's better, anyone can play a guitar fast. Anyone can make a guitar solo. Anyone can shred. Shredding is basically playing random notes as fast as possible. Also, every band plays power chords. They're chords like any other chords. And like any other chords, you can make some real terrible music with these chords. That's why I believe Billie Joe Armstrong is a great guitarist. He can make incredible music with just power chords and that goes for his solos also. I'll hear Michale Angelo Batio play a two neck guitar and I'm not impressed. It sounds like someone playing the guitar fast and fast does not equal good. I'm more impressed with the riffs and chord proggresions Billie Joe comes up with. "When I Come Around", "Basketcase", "Good Riddance", and "Wake Me Up When September Ends" are more impressive than any track by Yngwie Malmsteen (in my honorable opinion) because they're timeless riffs that are good on any occasion.

I like to use Jimmy Page's solos for an example of why Billie Joe using power chords is fine. Jimmy Page always uses the minor penatonic scale, which is the most commonly used scale to solo in. But Mr. Page made himself a legend by just using this scale, similar to how Billie Joe became famous by using power and barre chords most of the time. Anyone can play the minor penatonic scale and anyone can play power chords, but the real challenge is to create something great from these simple tactics. And also, with riff making. A scale has seven notes but these seven notes repeat in different ways. There are seven main chords but they're many more variations on these chords. And for Billie Joe's solos, I find them great. They may be simple but they do a fantastic job of conveying feelings in the songs through the guitar and they feel fresh and new. I get the same chills from the solo in "Wake Me Up When September Ends" as I would from Slash's solo in "Sweet Child 'O Mine". I don't feel anything from solos by Joe Satriani or Zakk Wylde.

And I also respect Mr. Armstrong for not getting rid of his old Stratocaster. He may use Gibsons for his new songs and his favorite guitar may be a Sunburst Gibson Les Paul Junior with P-90 pickups, but he plays his Strat live with his old songs. This is how I feel about my guitar. I say my guitar sucks and that I want a new one but I don't have the money, but really, I love my guitar. It's what I learned on and I still believe it's one of the best sounding Squires out there. You see, I've got a Green Fender Squire Strat but it sounds fine. I've heard a lot of Squires and they all sounded like dirt, but the one I have sounds great. And it's the only green one I've found. It's actually not even mine. My brother got it hoping to become a god, but he knew his place was in baseball so he quit. That's when I moved in and started learning. So, I got my brother wherever I go. I got this story about my strings. The strings on my guitar where there for about two years because neither I nor my brother played it for a while. So, I learned how to play guitar on rusted strings. But when I realized that guitar strings shouldn't be on for that long, I took my guitar and some plyers and was ready to snap these things off. But for some reason I felt I couldn't. I still don't know why but I had some type of compassion for this very old strings. But I got them off and it sounded like an entirely different guitar (which I wasn't happy about).

The crazy thing is, without Green Day, I wouldn't have a guitar because me brother wouldn't want a guitar cause that's why he started and I started because of Green Day too (though I usually say it was The Clash, it really was Green Day). And even when I started playing, I still needed Green Day to teach me how to play. I had a great guitar teacher who was flexible and knew what he was talking about. But he also encouraged me to continue what I was doing, learning tabs off the internet and become familiar with chord patterns. He tought me how to read music, open chords, and techniques like hammer-ons and bends while I learned songs by ear and off the internet. And I believe I became better faster by actually liking the guitar. I played piano for four or so years and though I liked it at the beginning, I lost interest in it and quit. With the guitar, I played it for fun. I think all those things helped me be able to play the "Stairway to Heaven" solo three months into my lessons.

But, I think the tabs were starting to wear thin after a while. I just learned Ramones songs which are arguably the easiest songs to learn on the guitar. But then I picked up the "American Idiot" tab book and this is what made me understand the guitar more than I already had. Barre chords were my main problem from the get go. I couldn't do it and I didn't understand them. So, when I saw more than three frets in a chord, I wouldn't learn the song. But with the tab book, I learned what Billie Joe was playing and these simple but effective techniques he was playing probably helped me the most. I memorized every guitar section on that album and I've played with that album many times, and it's fun. So, yes, learning Green Day songs helped me better than learning the solo to "Stairway to Heaven". And I'm the one making blogs about bad guitar players. And by the way, I was just thinking of this. America is to focused on guitar and vocals. What about bass and drums. Mike Dirnt and Tre Cool are amazing, but no one seems to care. You can see this on the DVD when Mike goes up to begin playing the infamous riff to "Longview". A few people scream, but the crowd goes uprorious (is that a word?) when Mr. Armstrong comes out. And I don't blame him, I blame TV and hair-metal.

Billie Joe Armstrong Vs. Bob Dylan?

People say Kurt Cobain was the best songwriter for this generation and beyond, but I truly think Billie Joe and company get no credit for their contributions to music. For sixteen years they've been making great music and in that sixteen years, they've made countless classics. It was apparant from the beginning that Billie Joe was a fantastic songwriter. And though they're was some great stuff on 39/Smooth and it's various EP's, Kerplunk! is where Billie Joe showed how talented he really was. "Welcome to Paradise" was an obvious one but others like "Christie Road", "No One Knows" (which I still like better than that Queen's of the Stone Age song), "Words I Might Have Ate", and my favorite, "Who Wrote Holden Caufield". These songs proved you didn't need to play extremely fast or have a great voice to make some unbelievably awesome music. The band continued this process through songs like "Longview", "Hitchin' A Ride", and "Walking Contradiction". The lyrics are a strong point for this band. These songs can be understood completely, read phenomenoly, and be sung out loud (still the best way to enjoy Green Day). But people didn't start paying attention until the band's biggest hit to date, "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life). Now at every graduation, instead of Vitamin C's "Graduation", you get Green Day. Even if you don't like the song that's a sweet deal (cause no on in their right mind like's "Graduation").

After "Good Riddance", the band had the creative liscence to do what they wanted. The result, 2000's Warning. The album contained obvious singles ("Warning", "Minority") but it also contained one of my all-time favorite Green Day track that no one heard. "Misery" is a darkly strange story and it's one statisfying five minutes. But, "Warning" wasn't received well. Though the songwriting was better in most cases, people didn't care. But, as they say, most geniouses are misunderstood. This continued with Green Day's best songwriting experience to date, American Idiot. The lyrics are fantastic (Billie Joe's best) and they convey the rock opera story seemlesly. And songs like "Homecoming" just shows off the skill of the band so much.

Now all these songs has created a greedy little jerk out of me. In my job description for my band, I said I was the lead guitarist/semi-singer/semi-songwriter. We followed this rule in the begininning of the band that I learned from The Clash which is if you right a song, you can sing it. This is the thing, unless your voice is terrible or you hate singing, then why not sing the words to your song. You wrote them, they reflect your feelings, so why not show the world they are your words. But this has become hard for me because all the alternative singers in the band just gave their singing priveleges to Mr. Andy because he's the main singer of the band. I even was thinking about quiting singing and just letting Andy sing. But I wrote a song that I've always wanted to write. Since my musical develop was heavily based on political bands, I've always wanted to created political music. I was excited about the band because the first song we created had a little political edge to it, and this new song I wrote also has a political edge. It's a little diddy about war and when I stand there singing my song that I created, I feel like I'm on top of the world (though we've played it once). I've been told that I have a unique voice but not bad unique, good unique. And I'm greedy and want to be the center of attention while on stage so I can't help but not quit singing. I would be disapointing all my idols if I did (all my idols play guitar and sing). Green Day is the band I can relate to the most and it's that band I've always wanted to be apart of.

No Man Can Eat 50 Eggs!

I think live shows are best understood by people that have actually played live (which means me). Standing around for ten minutes and waiting to get on stage and be watched by many, many people is one of the most nerveracking moments. You're nervous, but you try not to be nervous and this makes you even more nervous. You feel like you're missing a piece of equipment but really you're just paranoid. And then when you're own the stage setting everything up, you notice your amp isn't making noises. These are the moments that make me feel like defocating in my pants. Seems like Mike Dirnt feels the same way as I do. He said on the Bullet In A Bible DVD that he get's very nervous before a show. And me and him hate the same thing, when someone tells you you'll do fine. How do you know? But, though I hate to admit it, it's better for me to be nervous instead of being totally calm. See, when I'm nervous, I break a sweat before the show and I just want to perform real good and get off the stage. But at the end of the show, you want to stay on there for an encore. But, I've played shows where I'm not nervous and this results in terrible shows. One show we played, I was nervous... until half the people went outside and waited for us to be done...

But the most rewarding feeling is when you play an incredible show and everyone loves you. You feel like you're on top of the world. Billie Joe talked about this and I totally agree. I've had some bad days in my life, and some of these days fell on show dates. I'll feel like crap the whole day but when I play an amazing show, I just feel like I could take on the world. But then there are times when you play a bad show and you want to disappear from the world. You could have the best day of your life but once you play a bad show, it becomes the worst day of your life. But, you must learn from your mistakes. Face it, your first few shows are going to be terrible. I don't care who you are, it's gonna suck. But once you get passed a few of these humiliating shows, then you begin having great ones.

I respect bands that can play great live. It's a difficult feat. You first play good songs and you must play them well. Then, you have to use every ounce of energy in your body and move as much as possible while not looking like an idiot (an idiot on crack however works like a charm). And one very hard thing to do is get a crowd pumped, because first, you must identify if this crowds on your side. If they absolutely hate you and don't know your words, don't attempt to get them to sing along to anything you say. You can tell one of these crowds every word to sing, they just won't care. That's why, for relatively unknown bands, you first need to convince them that you're good and that you're on their side. If not, why would they listen to you. Basically, if a crowd is yelling explicit language at you and walking out, DO NOT try to interact with them. You'll just look like an moron. And this brings me to something else. Seeing other bands live.

I've seen a good number of bands live and I've analyzed these shows in my mind. I've seen the whole pumping up the crowd thing go horribly wrong. I strive not to make that mistake. I strive not to stand in place for more than five seconds. I strive to make my band's live show I can. While it isn't, I still am trying to get up to that level. I'm sure this is how Green Day felt starting out. They got up to the level of playing good live shows and the crowd started memorizing their lines are respecting them. So they went from playing in basements where twenty or so people knew the lyrics to his songs to playing in Milton Keynes to sixty-five thousand on lookers who knew his words. Not too shabby. And when he plays now, all he has to do is play his E-string to get the whole place to yell.

I've heard people put down the show because Green Day has songs about cross-dressing and political songs. They think the band sold out because instead of songs about nothing, they made songs about suburban life and the pain of losing a girl. Well they always did this you pricks. Have you ever noticed that "When I Come Around" is in fact not about having sex with donkeys (wasn't that Blink 182? Lame)? But that's what life is really. You have to take advantage of those moments in life where you're happy and nothing is making you want to hang yourself. But when those moments come by, that's when you act serious. No ones life is a depressing every second of the clock. Unless you have no friends, have no interests whatsoever, and you've just had a terrible life since you were born, then this doesn't apply to you. But everyone laughs and everyone cries and sometimes they happen at the same time (like the ending to Kill Bill).

Good Riddance

When I go on music message boards and read about why Green Day is such an overrated band, it really hurts. This band has earned their place in music and I've learned everything from them. Like I said, they're the band I've always wanted to be in. But I've learned over the years that you have to take your influences, take your orgin, and create something new that people can take influence from. I've had a lot of dreams in my life. I've got your generic "I want to go on tour, and make records, and be praised by everyone, and be the biggest band in the world", but soon after learning the full story of The Clash and a few months into playing guitar and writing music, I've realized what my dream is. I just want to influence someone the way Green Day influenced me.

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