DO U KNW THE ENMY?

I don't think many of my peers would argue with me when I say that Green Day has lost their touch. I feel like anyone that isn't an aging rock critic or musically-naive, "rock and roll"-loving listener that came of age with American Idiot and The Black Parade pretty much agrees. The problem with Green Day now is, after the success of American Idiot, they've quit coming up with new ideas. I mean, maybe this is the position they were in during the mid-90s, feeling stuck finding three chords and penning another poetic ode to drug addiction/masturbation/being a desperate loser. But then there was Warning a FUCKING GREAT record, Green Day "growing up" and using acoustic guitars for the greater good (simple songs, not coffee shop drivel,) and writing Ray Davies-esque stories about your average masochist or paradegoer or loner or whatever. For some reason, they couldn't figure out how to continue in this vein... Maybe in the four years they spent working on a follow-up, during which they had all their demos stolen, they no longer felt relevant? Did they think Warning was too low-key? I don't think they wanted to be relegated to the backburner yet, but THEY SHOULD HAVE LET IT HAPPEN. Green Day could have went on as a great little cult-y club band, making GREAT records with regularity and consistency and touring mid-size venues every year. THEY WERE FUCKING OPENING FOR BLINK 182 IN 2002. American Idiot probably started off as a really fun experiment to, I guess from what I gather, rework their songwriting process. They were still writing story songs; just, they now had a political bent too average for the Bush era, and they were nine fucking minutes long. Even when it came out, it was a great listen. I don't think any of us minded, these songs were catchy. The ballads even were a nice touch. But somehow, the masses, the preteen, MTV (post-music video MTV) weened, middle school angst ridden masses and their dads too, latched on. My sister and I noticed a huge shift during Green Day's tour for Idiot. We saw them shortly after the album's release in late September at the Liacouras center. The place seats maybe 8,000 people and if it was sold out, it was only just. The crowd on the floor were the punx from way back, us who grew up with Y100 and our older siblings Green Day CDs. There was a circle pit. There was crowd surfing. Green Day's set showcased the new songs in a pretty low key way while the old songs were given top billing, pretty much filling the late half of the set and all the encore. When we saw them a few months later in Atlantic City, once again on the floor, there was a markedly different feeling, feelings that I pick up at shows more and more each month actually. The crowd was uptight preteens and their parents and their dumb boyfriends and Green Day pulled out all the stops for the new songs and I think "Wake Me Up When September Ends" was the first song of the first Encore. We couldn't start a circle pit because there wasn't enough support to shut up the whining of the too-delicate children in attendance. Very little fun was had that night. But I think Green Day wanted to cash in on this no fun thing because once again they're realeasing a bloated fucking "concept album" that says huge things about the society we live in today and makes sweeping statements about religion and the machine and the dogs that run it and its protagonists are CHRISTIAN and GLORIA FOR CHRIST'S SAKE. When did they get so sincere? It's hard not to think that the Green Day of 1994 would be making fun of the Green Day of 2009, the eyeliner donning blonde hair dyed charicatures of themselves that are making shit "art" out of dumb overdone concepts. I don't even think the shitty preteens are listening anymore, just the old rock critics judging by the reviews from newspapers and AllMusic, the ultimate proprietors of musical medocrity.