Working titles:
Keep your politics out of my punk rock.
The best worst show I ever saw.

September 25th 2005, SBC park in San Francisco, I had the mostly pleasurable experience of seeing Green Day play with Jimmy Eat World and Flogging Molly. It was a good show, I may even venture to say it was a great show, it’s just been my experience that all Green Day shows are pretty great.

The main difference about this show was the sheer number of people there, 42,000 to be precise. Seeing as how Billy Joe made a few references to being a punk rock band, I might as well tell you what was going on that was in no way punk.

SBC park is an amazingly clean park, a little too clean if you ask me. Clean in appearance, and clean in population, if you get my drift. Gone were all the tattooed gum chewing freaks I am used to seeing, replaced by forty-something accountants and their wives. I mean literally, if you could get past the smell of pre-pubescent vaginal wetness, you were left with nothing else but their parents. How they got past taking a break from a glass of wine over Mozart is beyond me. Wait, I forgot, they were selling wine at the show. At some point, someone in marketing had to figure out what the age dynamic was going to be, know there would be demand for wine at a punk show, and sign away any chance of it really being punk, but I digress.

There was an immediate dominant theme to the show, being “Fuck Bush”, something that was loudly reiterated throughout the performance. It was after this first political injection that I decided I no longer liked Green Day as much as I used to.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not so much the message, but how it is being preached. To shout out “Fuck Bush” is just so easy, so taking the simple road. Of course, the entire forty some odd thousand fans screamed in agreement, sans a few very subtle boo’s. My issue is that nowhere, not in interviews let alone album inserts is any reason why one would hate Bush. There is nothing to engage a person to be able to form a educated opinion on their own.

When you yell “Fuck Bush” to an audience that is more than half filled with 15 year olds, are you really helping the situation? They will not be able to vote within the remaining term Bush has in office. You are preaching to a choir that can’t even sing. Maybe a better approach would be to make them aware of things to look out for, so when it is time to vote, they can use that knowledge to their advantage.

I know, this is hard to pull off on a album or on a tour. To me, there is just no excuse, you have a website, you have millions of people checking it out every month. Sounds to me like a perfect place to start education people intelligently. Shouting “Fuck Bush” repeatedly is in no way intelligent, and will never inspire healthy debate.

I did not see a single audience member perk up to the pre-show audio of Operation Ivy’s Unity. A song which, while not perfect, does a heck of a better job to raise awareness than a curt “Fuck Bush”.

I am going to jump a little forward here to my ride home, where I was listening to the after show radio commentary. Numerous people called in to extol what a great show it was. At the top of the list, random band on stage, cover songs, and audience interaction.

This is the ringer, what gives it away, that Green Day is no longer a band with a cult following. There are those who know of them from American Idiot, and those who do not. The ratio is 100:1. I go back to the days of Gilman Street, where I have seen Green Day, to the tune of a couple bucks to help the Gilman Street Project. Hell, Billy Joe had long hippie hair no less. Yeah, it was bound to happen, they moved on from those small club days to larger venues.

With those larger venues came the well known “aaaay-oooohh” calls of Billie Joe and the rest of the stage antics I have seen them perform for ages. It’s not really a bad thing, it’s more akin to smart marketing than anything else. Every caller to the radio show thought for sure they were given a unique show. Aside from the fireworks, yes, fireworks!, one may say it is actually damn fine marketing. Making someone feel special, that the show was custom tailored just for them, created passion in the viewer, and in the end, that passion spreads like my friends 16 year old girlfriend’s legs.

For the record, Green Day has been bringing on three audience members to play the same Operation Ivy cover song for as long as I can remember. It is a three chord progression that damn near anyone who has toiled with a guitar can pick up. It was all pretty standard fare for me. I have seen that, the cover songs, and the rest many times before. Nothing new here, if the “fans” stick around for the next show, they will learn they were not so special after all.

Meanwhile, back at the concert, I am getting annoyed with the two fourteen year old kids singing along so loudly I can not hear anything. Oh, there was a third, a ten year old dressed to the floor like a street whore. It just strikes me as strange, no, wrong, to see kids so young singing along to songs about meth and cocaine. The fucked part about it, I think I am the only one bothered, certainly their parents weren’t, as they were right there singing along with their kids.

So here we have a band, with thousands of extremely young people who are eager and easy to impress, being shoved a massively liberal message. That message is be liberal for the sake of it, because Billy Joe tells you to. Forget thinking for yourself, cause Green Day has figured out the hard stuff, all you have to remember is “Fuck Bush”. Don’t worry about the why, no one will ever ask, and if by chance they do, mutter something about being anti-war and you are in the safety zone.

Green Day, if there is any chance you read this, be careful with your new found political agenda. Just because you think it is a good idea, does not mean everyone else should, at least, not without being explained the pro’s and con’s of both sides of the deal. 42,000 people being inspired to learn is a great thing, 42,000 people playing follow the leader, lets just say I can smell the jews burning as I type.

If there was one chance Billy Joe had to reel me back in, it was his closing comments. I can not remember exactly what he said, but it is something I am adamant about. Whatever you do, do not allow the government to take away your civil liberties. I can not quote it, as it’s not dead on, but that was by and large, the final sentiment he left us with. And yes, there were some cheers, but not as many as there were for “Fuck Bush”.

If this is not telling, I do not know what is. Mention civil liberties and you are going to lose the attention span of your mostly non voting age audience. use the word fuck in any sentence, you are bound to get some applause. What you forget mister Billy Joe, is that in some regards, these wars we wage do end up offering protection from dictators, in the end, affording you the ability to say fuck to 42,000 people.

If it is so important to you, why as a band, would you allow the venue to pat search every single person who enters. This is clear violation of my personal civil liberties. The implication is that I am a terrorist, or at least that everyone is a potential terrorist. And there you are, preaching about civil rights 45 minutes after I was just raped at the ticket door.

You are walking a dangerous line. I used to be right there beside you, as a fan of your music, able to overlook the fact that it does not mesh 100% with my politics. I always felt it was a good thing, opposing views inspire debate, and debate is healthy. Green Day no longer wants to allow anyone to have an opposing opinion, at least not if they are a fan. If you push liberal ideas, you have to be liberal in all regards, not just those that are convenient to your cause. Until you change they ways in which you push politics on those too young to acutely develop opinions in general, you do indeed, “Walk Alone”.