An almost live parade and the greatness of Green Day

I woke up on Thanksgiving and watched a bit of Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. I noticed that all the performers that stopped to sing in front of Macy's were lip syncing terribly. Actual live vocals couldn't have possibly come across worse than these God awful performances. Live performances might have some blemishes, but why does everything need to be so bland, safe, and talentless. There was this band called the Click Five whose members all pretended to play their instruments. What a bunch of jokers. As they hammed it up and mugged for whoever the hell buys this crap, the actual drumming, which wasn't muted very well, could be heard over the tape.

After watching the parade, I had Green Day's Macy's Day Parade stuck in my head for the rest of the day. Damn, that's a great song. MTV never played it too much, which is a real shame because it's a great song and a great clip.

As a matter of fact, that whole album, Warning, is great. If you are one of the many people that forgot about Green Day between Dookie and American Idiot, I suggest picking it up. I read several articles written when Green Day was doing press for American Idiot where lazy journalists hyped American Idiot by saying Green Day had been in a rut with Warning. BULLSHIT. I'll be the first to admit that I never put a lot of hours in listening to Insomniac or Nimrod, but Warning is as good as anything Green Day has done. Macy's Day Parade, Church on Sunday, Castaway, Warning, Minority, and Waiting were all personal favorites. Every Green Day fan I know loves that album.

Downplaying that album might have made for an easy story angle, but it just isn't fair or accurate. The truth is that the album came out at the height of the whole rap rock thing, and it didn't get nearly the airplay it deserved at radio or MTV ( I never saw the videos for Waiting or Macy's Day Parade -both great songs - until I discovered them on the Internet). The truth is that considering the hostile music environment of the time it was released, if Warning had been half as weak as feature writers from Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, etc. are now saying it was, Green Day may have collapsed like many bands from the ninteties, or become irrelevant like the Offspring.

American Idiot is a great album, but let's not forget that it wasn't an album by a band on the rebound. It was an album by a great band that did great work through tough times, and luckily stuck around until mainstream audiences rediscovered them. Good for Green Day. Go out and get a copy of Warning and see for yourself.

The execution of all things

I can't exactly figure out why Rilo Kiley isn't huge. Like with any other band, part of me wants them to blow up (Hell, they deserve it), and part of me wants them to stay relatively small (I don't have to worry about them changing their formula to get on the radio, and they still play relatively small venues). Maybe there's some middle ground. I don't know, but here's a damn good song, The Execution of all Things.

I Will Follow You Into The Dark

Maybe I just need to give it more time, but I haven't gotten that into Death Cab For Cutie's new album, Plans. I loved their last album, Transatlanticism. I find myself skipping through the new one a lot of the time. I absolutely love the song I Will Follow You into the Dark, though. I've been playing it over and over when I skip the other songs. Damn, I need to give this album another chance.

Fields of Joy

I downloaded "Fields of Joy" by Lenny Kravitz last night and I've been listening to it over and over. Some things never change, I guess. I mean, Lenny Kravitz isn't exactly the hippest music any more. Was it ever? But, there was a time when Lenny's music meant everything to me -1991, just as I was turning 16.

I've always loved "Fields of Joy" in particular, and I've always been prone to listen to it over and over. Don't you just love it when you dig a song so much you have to listen to it over and over? I do. I remember first hearing that song in the summer of 1991. I has just spent a miserable month alone with my father in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. He was a man I didn't really know, and all I really learned about him that summer was that he hated my fucking guts. After the disaster of visiting my father, I was spending a week with my sister in Madison before I went back home to Wyoming. She had a cool little apartment in the city with her boyfriend, Alejandro. Best of all, Alejandro had a huge CD collection - crates and crates full. Who had so many CD's in 1991? I had just recently stopped collecting tapes. In fact, I doubt that today I have as many CD's as that guy had in 1991.

I remember that Alejandro was nice, or foolish, enough to let me run through his collection. He had a brand new copy of Lenny's Mama Said album, which easily gets my vote for being Lenny's best album, and "Fields of Joy" is the best thing on there. Funny, actually, since it was the one song Lenny didn't write, but I don't care. That song rules, and I'm not some Lenny Kravitz nutswinger. Lenny didn't seem corny when he sang about love. He seemed so idealistic, and so unpretentious. This was a guy that understood love, damn it. (I know his wife had just left him for banging chicks on the road, but at least he could talk the talk). That song is so quietly optimistic, and I sure needed that feeling that summer. Shit, I need some quiet optimism at this very moment. I remember sitting and staring out my sister's window listening to that damn song until my sister insisted I change it.

Unfortunatey, Lenny started to really suck on later albums, although he achieved much larger commercial success. His next album contained one of his biggest hits, "Are you gonna go my way," but the songs didn't drip with hope and soul like the songs on Mama Said. He was instead copping some seventies Led Zeppelin sound. He always did a better job of copping John Lennon and seventies soul, if you ask me. When Lenny moved on to the riff rock, his songs had absolutely no emotional power. Yuck. I can still enjoy a spin of his Greatest Hits disc, but none of those songs mean shit to me compared to "Fields of Joy."