Thoughts on Green Day and the Lonely Silence that Accompanies Music Blogging

It has been three months since my last blog. Forgive me readers, for I have let you down.

Here's the problem, though. To use the plural word, "readers", is to exaggerate the nature of my blog, which I suppose is partially what led me to not writing any entries. I kind of alluded to that in my last entry as well. Life is not sunshine and lollipops for musicians or budding music journalists.

So I stopped, which is something in my last entry that I said I wouldn't do. But what can you do? I've done a lot of things I said I wouldn't do. I remember thinking the high-and-mighty-colllege-graduate thought, "Ha! I'm so glad I'll never work at a restaurant ever again" as I left a part-time serving job to pursue substitute teaching full-time, on the road, to what I presumed to be a long and fruitful career as an educator. Fast forward a decade and I've been working at a restaurant longer than I have worked at any teaching job, or any other type of job for that matter. Oh well.

And then there was the whole swine flu scare (sorry, H1N1--although I find it a lot harder to channel my hypochondriac fear and anger toward the letters H and N and the number one, than when I could blame it all on pigs. The only imagery H1N1 brings to my mind is the game Battleship, which I have nothing but fond feelings for. Sigh!). I had been battling what was presumably bronchitis for quite sometime, but it wouldn't go away and I just wasn't feeling up to doing a lot. Just about the time I was ready to shrug it off as a particularly virulent cold, the whole bring-out-your-surgical-masks-and-bathe-in-purell-and-don't-watch-cable-news-channels-unless-you-want-to-be-convinced-that-you-are-going-to-die-a-horrible-black-death-esque-death-flu-scare came along. But it turns out I'm ok.

What's my point? I don't really have one. I'm basically justifying the life of a lazy writer. I mean, I don't get paid for this. I don't have a deadline. And readership is way down. Not that it was ever up. How does this relate to music? Bands are going through many of the same feelings of inadequacy and frustration. And maybe they are also going through bouts of hypochondria as well, but I don't have any solid evidence of it just yet.

What I do know is two things are clear with the music industry. One: There are too many bands vying for attention in a marketplace that isn't what it used to be. I can't imagine promising bands being able to realize their full potential, what with the lack of label support, the recession, and the millions of other factors that make it damn near impossible to make long term plans for your band's development.

Two: Bands with money, label support, and marketing campaigns are more visible, it's true, but seem just as clueless as the rest. I'm going to take Green Day as an example. Here is a band that's been around a long time. Who would have imagined this band that came out of the '90s post-punk pop-punk revival, along with the likes of The Offspring, Rancid, and Blink 182, would still be around to make a record called, "21st Century Breakdown".

I think the title is supposed to refer, at least partially, to the mess we are in as a country right now. But it would be an apt description of the music industry, as well. The money machine that was the record industry is broken and I don't think anyone knows yet the right way to fix it.

How has Green Day made it so long? Here's a band that once sang, "I've got no motivation". Seems like they've found a whole lot of it somewhere along the line. And indeed, they found the motivation to change their sound, which has given them the staying power to become veterans of the industry. Some would say they sold out, which, yeah, I think that would be somewhat fair to say. They always had pop sensibilities, but they gradually shed every ounce of punk street cred in favor of songs like "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" and the ultimate cringe-inducing radio hit, Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) (please, oh please, when I die, I really don't care what music people choose to play--well, ok, I kind of do--but I'm going to put it in writing for all to see right now: Do Not Under Any Circumstances Play That Song At My Funeral. Over the past decade, when someone dies, you get the inevitable montage of someone's life backed with that horrible song. That is not a tribute to that person! In fact, to me it shows a laziness towards respecting someone's memory that someone would choose a song, so generic-sounding, which really isn't that profound a statement on living or dying, rather than a song that has specific meaning to said departed person's life. Why don't you just play "My Way" while you're at it for God's sake!).

But whatever your opinion on Green Day's career decisions, they've done just fine for themselves and are still around--everywhere, yes EVERYWHERE--with their new album.

This is where the whole "visible, but still not knowing what's going on" thing comes into play. It's the philosophy in today's music industry to find clever ways to insert a band's music into people's lives since no one listens to the radio anymore and MTV hasn't played a video in probably 20 years. So you get music in commercials, on tv shows, in ringtone form...basically blaring at you from every direction. But does it help?

Somewhat I think. Feist was certainly helped with an iPod campaign. Iron and Wine, Joanna Newsome, and even Bob Dylan, have watched their sales jump a bit after a particularly memorable commercial (made memorable perhaps because of the music only). But here's my question: When is it too much?

This Green Day album has been shoved down people's throats for quite some time now, particularly the track, "Know the Enemy", which is a decent, kind of Clash-ish sounding track (it even contains one of those non-sensical noises that punk/ska is famous for--you now, along the lines of, "Oy,oy,oy!" or "Ay oh let's go". It sounds kind of like "oh yeah", but slurred so it comes out like "ahhyeawwwll" which makes me think of struggling to get a bit of phlegm out of your throat, or maybe the sound you make right before throwing your guts up. I'm not sure. I'll let you know when I find out for sure. It may be that it's an actual lyric. I'm too lazy to look up the lyrics), but one that I am now thoroughly sick of, before I even felt like it occured to me to buy it. Not only have they played it on the traditional late night circuit, but it's on Comcast On Demand, they played it constantly on ESPN last month to promote the NBA Playoffs, I think they have a deal with Verizon too. I'd say Green Day has found the motivation they lacked in the '90s.

I see what they are trying to do, and I don't know, I'm no expert, maybe it'll work. But is this what it has come to? Not having any other options to expose people to your music other than ramming it down their throats 24/7? To me it smells of desperation and a certain sense of cluelessness. Is that the best the music world can give us? God, I hope not.

As I said earlier, Green Day has already given up most of their punk credibility, but when a band is so over-exposed, it's hard to take them serious when they stand up for a belief like the one they expressed on their appearance on The Colbert Report. The band will not be selling their album at Wal-Mart because of the censoring the notoriously conservative big-box retailer would do to the album. I can respect that on the one hand, but on the other hand, you've let everyone and their second cousin use your song in every possible way. You're in a cell phone campaign. It almost seems a little silly trying to make a stand against big 'ol mean Wal-Mart when you've let your music become so corporate already.

But what's a band to do? Green Day has made it this long, so they must be doing something right. Maybe this is how it has to be done. Maybe our twitterized culture is so attention span-less and distracted by so many other things, that the only way artists can have a chance is by metaphorically smashing people in the head with their music until the public finally says, "Ok, ok I'll buy your damn song as long as you promise to make it stop!!!".

The song is pretty well smashed into my head, but I still don't have that much desire to buy it. I get the feeling that's what a lot of people are saying about it. "Know the Enemy"? The music industry is its own worst enemy right now.