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The Top Five Rock Artists of the Decade (2000s): NUMBER FIVE is Green Day

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This is the first in a five part series dedicated to the top five rock artists of the decade, 2000-2009.  The criteria used to determine this list were: (1) Quality of Music, (2) Quantity of Released Material, (3) Diversity of Media, and (4) Roles of Artists/Band Members.  Look for new posts coming soon!

By Chris Moore:

The fifth entry on this list, Green Day is a strong candidate for top band of the decade, if only for their impressive return to the forefront of popular punk/rock music over the past ten years.  Even in their heyday, Green Day did not acheive the recognition that they have in the past six years. 

Who could have predicted that a trio of ostensible knuckleheads like Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, and Tre Cool would be headlining the concept album revival in the mid-2000’s, complete with a rock opera/musical adaptation set to the tunes of American Idiot?

[Is that the sound of crickets?]

PAST SUCCESS

Without argument, Green Day was one of the most successful bands of the nineties rock revival, carving out their reputation by way of the punk rock genre.  It was a bit of an exaggeration to have titled their best-of disc International Superhits!, but their music did appear on many different charts in many different nations over their first decade as a band. 

And, for better or for worse, if you turned on a radio in the nineties and listened long enough, you couldn’t avoid hearing songs like “When I Come Around” or especially “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life).”  The latter was the song that ER character Jeanie Boulet chose to sing at the funeral of a friend. 

When one of the most popular dramas of the decade chooses your song at the peak of their own popularity, that’s saying something…

WARNING AND A LOW POINT

Which brings us to THIS decade.  I would be hard-pressed to find another group from the nineties in their genre that have had such staying power as Green Day.  Bad Religion?  Not so much.  Chumbawamba?  A one hit wonder.  The Offspring and Rancid?  Well, they’re still around, but they certainly haven’t acheived the mainstream success that Green Day has. 

That is, if you discount Warning, their first studio album of the decade.

Any way you look at it, Warning is a low point in their career, failing to ascend the charts, make sales, and receive positive reviews in the characteristic manner that their previous albums had.  Two years after Warning, things weren’t looking any better with them supposedly “co-headlining” a concert tour with Blink 182, but actually opening each night. 

This all amounted to a great deal of evidence that Green Day had peaked and this was their descent into obscurity.

A SETBACK BECOMES A COMEBACK

As they returned to the studio to work on their next album, Cigarettes & Valentines, things weren’t looking any brighter.  Near the end of their sessions (according to Armstrong), the master tapes were stolen.  There weren’t even rough mixes remaining.

So, what does this band decide to do in a moment of crisis?

Start from scratch.

That’s right: Green Day decided to start from scratch.  Although a song or two from the aforementioned doomed album would make its way into live sets, the band started over, taking this as an opportunity to approach their new album from a different angle.  So, they broke out their guitars and began writing, working together in new and better ways than they had before. 

The result?  Only their most critically acclaimed, highest-selling album to date, American Idiot.

AMERICAN IDIOT & 21ST CENTURY BREAKDOWN: A CONCEPT ALBUM REVIVAL

Green Day’s mentality following the loss of their master tapes brings to mind Conan O’Brien’s final lines from his closing statement last month on The Tonight Show: “Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.”

You think?

I’ll just come out and say it: I’ve never been a big fan of American Idiot.  I think I’ve missed something in the translation of the lyrics, and I’ve been told that the at-times-boneheaded lyrics that I am turned off by are, in fact, purposefully constructed in order to make a statement about the average American.  Perhaps.  What makes me believe this is true, and what makes me nod my head in American Idiot‘s direction even if it won’t appear on my iPod any time soon, is that the album is so carefully constructed.  One flip through the CD booklet will reveal an overarching concept, artwork, and other notes that were cleverly compiled and arranged to create a whole that is stronger than the parts.  I won’t go comparing it to the first seven records of the Moody Blues — the industry standard for excellent concept albums — but I will say I have great respect for the band’s intentions.

Their follow-up album?  21st Century Breakdown is an even more expansive concept album that tackles the question: What will we do when our national slogan can no longer be “Change We Can Believe In,” and must instead be (hopefully) “Change That Has Already Taken Place and A Society That We Are Happy With”?  This is an interesting question indeed, particularly for those of my generation who defined their coming of age by being in opposition to all that George W. Bush’s presidency represented.  As we “graduate” into a different, potentially better society in 2012, what will we do to avoid the pitfalls of the previous presidency and its perspectives? 

A mere year into Barack Obama’s term in office, we have already begun tackling the question: How long is too long to wait for that change we believed in?  Some are patient, some are less so, but 21st Century Breakdown makes an interesting statement on these essential questions, particularly on an emotional/intuitive level.

SIDE PROJECTS AND ADAPTATIONS

Amidst all this standard studio album work, Green Day has also been able to thrive in a number of different ventures outside of traditional band output.  They have released a Billboard Top Ten live album, a platinum-status greatest hits compilation, a B-sides/rarities collection that broke the Billboard Top Thirty, and worked their way into the retro market by preparing a Green Day vinyl box set.

Outside of the band, Armstrong, Dirnt, and Cool have formed such side projects as The Network and the Foxboro Hot Tubs, both successful to different degrees and certainly indicative of a band hungry to record, produce, and play new music in a prolific manner. 

Then there is the rock opera/musical based on the story told through American Idiot, certainly a unique addition to any band’s list of tributes.

And so, at decade’s end, Green Day has reasserted themselves in what can only be described as an impressive manner.  It took me until 21st Century Breakdown to really appreciate their work, and I can only hope that the coming decade will be every bit as successful in terms of not only popularity but also quality!

“New Pony” (Bob Dylan / Dead Weather Cover)

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For Bob Dylan / Dead Weather chords & lyrics, CLICK HERE!

By Chris Moore:

Hello and welcome to yet another delay for the “double header” I promised last week or (technically) two weeks ago.  But I have a good reason for holding off!  Tonight, I’ve recorded “New Pony,” one of my least favorite Bob Dylan songs, because a brand new cover version was released on last week’s Dead Weather debut album.

First, I’ll give a little background on the original version of the song.  “New Pony” was first released on Bob Dylan’s 1978 album Street Legal.  To give you a little context here, Dylan had recently released Blood on the Tracks and Desire, arguably two of his best albums.  The year 1975 found him fully engaged in the Rolling Thunder Revue along with such artists as Joan Baez, Roger McGuinn of the Byrds, poet Allen Ginsberg, and others.  Although he temporarily revived a different incarnation of the Revue in 1976, this phase of Dylan’s musical career was pretty much over by 1977.

This is not to say that life wasn’t busy for him.  This was right around the time that his marriage to Sara Dylan was breaking down and the divorce proceedings began.  A lot — perhaps too much — has been written about these personal aspects. 

Street Legal was the product of a few weeks of sessions involving a select group of musicians that Dylan had recently worked with.  Although his past two albums had met with critical success and his subsequent album, 1979’s Slow Train Coming, would earn him his first Grammy award, Street Legal has generally been lost in the valley between these two peaks.

Personally, I have always liked this album.  Sure, the female background singers come across as a bit cheesy at times (have you heard “Baby, Stop Crying”?) and the instrumentation can be a bit much at times, but there are some great songs.  “Changing of the Guards” is one of my favorite album openers and boasts a rare fade-in.  “Is Your Love in Vain?” and “True Love Tends to Forget” are fantastic Dylan deep cuts.  And “Senor (Tales of Yankee Power)” is a narrative wrapped in the best, darkest mood you’ve ever felt.  (Jerry Garcia recorded a great version of the latter.)

As for “New Pony”?  Well, it generally ranks as one of my least favorite Dylan recordings of all time, and certainly on this record.  In fact, it’s the very rare track that I may occasionally skip when listening to the album.  Why it was placed in the number 2 slot, I’ll never know.

That being said, let’s flash forward to 2009.  Last week, the Dead Weather released their debut album, Horehound.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with this group, this is a side project band composed of the White Stripes’ Jack White (drums, some vocals, acoustic guitar on one track), the Kills’ Alison Mosshart (lead vocals), Queens of the Stone Age’s Dead Fertita (guitar, etc.), and Jack Lawrence (bass, etc.).  I really liked last year’s Raconteurs album (Jack White and Jack Lawrence’s other side project band), so I figured I would give this one a shot as well.

Long review short, I was not as impressed as I had hoped to be.  (My one-sentence review is coming shortly!)  That being said, the album certainly has its moments, and for me, one of the best moments is track seven when they cover Dylan’s “New Pony.”

This is an excellent example of a band you wouldn’t necessarily think of as being heavily influenced by Bob Dylan turning around and pulling off a stand-up interpretation of one of his songs.  After hearing it, I thought that this song fit better on this album than it did on Street Legal.  In that sense, I was happy to assign “New Pony” to a better place in my estimation of Dylan’s catalog of songs.

So, without further ado, I submit to you my acoustic rendition of the song as a send-up to the 1978 Dylan version and a tip of the hat to the brand-new 2009 version by the Dead Weather.  I found that I was psyched to learn this ridiculously easy (at least chord-wise) song.  Anyone who visits the Laptop Sessions on any regular basis knows that I’m no stranger to a Bob Dylan cover song, but I never thought I’d be recording this one.

Well, at least not until I ran out of all the other ones in 2045 or so…

I hope you enjoy this, and be sure to stop back tomorrow for Jim Fusco’s Tuesday post, a couple days later for Jeff Copperthite’s Thumpin’ Thursday, and later this week for at least one more post from your truly.  (I’ve got so much to say about other music and non-music related topics, but I think this is quite enough for one post!)

See you next session!

“Passing Friend” by the Beach Boys – Chords, Tabs, & How to Play

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To see how this cover song is played, CLICK HERE!

“Passing Friend”
Beach Boys – Written by Culture Club’s George O’Dowd & Roy Hay

Intro: Gm – F  (x4)

F                    Eb                             Bb
Well, there’s nothing worse than a passing friend
Bb          Eb                        Bb
Who will die on you till the bitter end.
Bb          Eb                            Bb
There’s nothing worse than a burning heart
Bb    Eb                          Bb                                             Gm – F (x2)
Or a past that tears the world apart.

F              Gm                             F
I’ve been thinking about my situation,
Nothing ventured, nothing left to lose.
When it’s easier to just say nothing,
I had thought about what I might lose.

F                        Cm7
But through the child’s eyes,
Cm7
There were feelings
Dm7
Touching my violet skin.
Dm7         Cm7
When the love games start appealing,
Dm7
You better get out and move on in…

‘Cause there’s nothing worse than a passing friend
Or a pioneer of a dying trend,
Nothing worse than a silent ghost
Or to lose your head at the starting post.

Ain’t it always just a short vacation?
When it’s love it always has to end.
Under the sheets of life it’s just frustration,
While the body goes in search again.

But through the child’s eyes,
There were feelings
Touching my violet skin.
When the love games start appealing,
You better get out and move on in…

‘Cause there’s nothing worse than a passing friend
Who will die on you till the bitter end.
There’s nothing worse than a burning heart
Or a past that tears the world apart.

Eb                Dm7                Cm7                               Bb
Why do you love someone who wants to break your heart?
Why do you need someone who wants to tear your world apart?
No; no, not again…

SOLO

I was packing up my life in cases
For a hundred years or maybe more.
I’ve been talking to a million people,
Don’t you think I should have known the score?

But in the child’s eyes,
There were feelings
Touching my violet skin.
When the love games start appealing,
You better get out and move on in…

‘Cause there’s nothing worse than a passing friend
Who will die on you till the bitter end.
There’s nothing worse than a burning heart
Or a past that tears the world apart.

‘Cause there’s nothing worse than a passing friend
Or a pioneer of a dying trend,
Nothing worse than a silent ghost
Or to lose your head at the starting post.

No; no, not again…

** These chords and lyrics are interpretations and transcriptions, respectively, and are the sole property of the copyright holder(s). They are posted on this website free of charge for no profit for the purpose of study and commentary, as allowed for under the “fair use” provision of U.S. copyright law, and should only be used for such personal and/or academic work. **

“New Year’s Eve” (Tom Waits Cover music video)

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For CHORDS, click HERE!

By Chris Moore:

Just in the nick of time, here I am for my very first true Laptop Session of 2011…  and with a whole seven hours to spare!  This year, I’ve been busy and my attention has been directed elsewhere: to my long-overdue album, The 2010 Project, and to coursework toward my graduate degree, to name a couple of the largest commitments that have kept me away from the blog.  I’ve even been behind in my duty as resident music reviewer, though I’ve begun to make good on that this past week, and I’m looking forward to the end of the year “best of” lists (already being compiled!) that I’ll release over the next couple weeks.

It dawned on me this morning, as I was working on writing reviews, that there is actually a brand new song this year called “New Year’s Eve” and that it would be a shame to pass on that opportunity, particularly in a year when I have only recorded Original Wednesday music video performances.

So, I give you “New Year’s Eve,” the closing track off Tom Wait’s excellent 2011 album Bad As Me.  This is the first album — and I’ve listened to a range of his music — that has instantly captivated me, both lyrically and musically.  There are some cool, if subtly handled, guest performances, including Keith Richards and Red Hot Chili Pepper bassist Flea on several tracks, as well as the lesser known Augie Meyers.  Meyers, best known to this Dylan fan for his work on 2001’s Love & Theft, contributes vox organ, piano, and accordion across Bad As Me, adding to its beautifully textured feel, one not entirely dissimilar to the aural sensibilities of Dylan’s own masterpiece.

It’s a beautiful, haunting track, and (somehow) the first Tom Waits cover ever done here at the Laptop Sessions acoustic cover song blog.  I figured, if we’re going to maintain our reputation as the best one of its kind in the universe, I’d better, with a respectful nod, add a Tom Waits notch to our belts.  He is, to say the least, a brilliant songwriter, truly inimitable, yet isn’t that one of the goals of this site: to interpret our favorite artists, and to stretch our own abilities and perspectives with their best songs?  I’ve always thought of this site in that way, and I must say that the hour and a half I spent with “New Year’s Eve” today was among the most relaxing hours spent alone of my week off.

The first Tom Waits Laptop Session.  My first cover song music video of the old year.  The eve of the new year.

Quite a moment.

I wish you and yours a safe and relaxing New Year’s Eve; I hope you enjoy this song and that you’ll stop back soon for all the new material headed your way in 2012.

See you next session (hopefully that’ll be in less than a year)!