I remember being 14 years old and sneaking into some club somehow back when the Randburg Waterfront still had fish and actual water. It was the first time I’d been into an over-18s joint and seen shit like that in the flesh – people crammed together sphincter-tight, heaving and jumping and screaming and making out to these crazy tunes that were playing out at absurd volumes.
Now, remember, this was around the time when ‘classics’ such as Short Dick Man and Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle) – look it up if you don’t know what I’m referring to! – were doing the rounds, so to hear guitars, brash-ass drums and manic, shouty vocals was pretty frikkin’ novel. I lapped it up that night. The next day I sourced those songs, without Google, nor Last.fm, nor iTunes nor whatever-the-tech peeps have at their disposal today. I had to record them to cassette but, by God, I had ‘em and I played ‘em till they went all slow and warpy and weird. One of the songs was Self Esteem by the Offspring, the other was Basket Case by Green Day. I’d been given a single night’s course in some of the most classic punk rock to emerge from the 90’s.
Fast forward many years, the Offspring fell off the horse somewhere along the way, got old and irrelevant but Green Day are still here, still whipping ass. Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tre Cool are all pushing 40 but they’ve managed to surf atop the flotsam of the music industry and keep pushing out material that grabs the attention of millions around the globe. In a career spanning almost 25 years, they’ve put out 8 albums, won 5 Grammys from a staggering 19 nominations and have performed what Kerrang magazine has entitled ‘The Best Show on Earth’ at the Milton Keyes National Bowl in the UK.
These are not insignificant claims to fame and, for a punk rock band, can easily be considered genre-defining. The band is also one of the only mainstream alternative acts that can boast having a friggin’ Broadway musical and a computer game based solely on their successes. The musical is a supposedly searing show based on the album American Idiot, which itself was an acclaimed outing that debuted at number 1 on the Billboard charts. The computer game, Rock Band: Green Day, is only the second Rock Band game to specifically focus on a single act, the other one being based on the Beatles catalogue!
And now Green Day have bestowed upon us their latest offering – a packed-to-the-brim Live recording – that seeks to document their last world tour down to its minutiae. On the back of their Grammy award-winning album 21st Century Breakdown, they spent a large part of 2009 through 2010 touring the globe, recording every single show both visually and sonically so that the package could be compiled into a veritable tome, documenting the powerhouse that Green Day live has proved to be time and again. The band don’t mince their words and they certainly understand the impact they have had on popular culture, hence, Green Day decided to call this release Awesome as F**k. None too subtle, sure, but it’s good to know that they are still living the punk rock ethos that condones and even encourages that kind of self-aggrandisement.
So we have a CD, wall to wall Green Day goodness, 17 tracks large, culled from what must be hundreds of hours of performances, showcasing the band at their finest. Accompanying it is a DVD of live video, which is a single show in its entirety, recorded in Tokyo, Japan. One reviewer, who was fortunate enough to catch the band live said this, “Anyone doubting that the band’s jump to arena-rock superstars might’ve compromised its ability to deliver the pure adrenaline-laced goods would’ve been pleasantly surprised. These guys have only gotten better.”
Written By : James Rose-Mathew
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