I think one member of the band said that the vastly overrated sitcom Seinfeld ruined the song “Good Riddance” by using it in the show’s final episode, but that’s another plaintive vocal from Armstrong, as are “Whatshername,” “Jesus of Suburbia” and “Holiday” from their enormously popular American Idiot in 2004. I didn’t go nuts over Green Day’s early records, and paid little attention until the hit “When I Come Around” played on the radio. It could’ve been a hit in the late-1950s (maybe Buddy Holly), the mid-1960s (Beach Boys or Hollies), late-1970s (Blondie) or even in a twist, the Cure in the mid-1980s, and maybe Jake Bugg in 2013. I thought about this the other day while listening-six or seven times-to the exceptional song “Mother Mary,” by the Green Day side project The Foxboro Hot Tubs ( Stop Drop and Roll!!!, 2008), since the song, and Billy Joe Armstrong’s always-unique adenoidal vocal, spans so many decades. And at Johns Hopkins, Ocean Rose, a mesmerizing band with a charismatic lead singer and soaring guitars, that in a more forgiving music industry would’ve signed a major record deal. I’ve also seen a lot of local acts, including the late Tom Pomposello, a blues musician who was a protégé and then collaborator with Mississippi Fred McDowell (the picture above-clues below for the year-was from a show at Huntington’s Heckscher Park a long time ago and on that clear, star-filled May night nearly all my closest high school friends were there) and, skipping to this century, some Baltimore concerts, most of which included Nicky on a pretty wicked guitar. tour, David Bowie, Randy Newman, Steve Stills, Talking Heads, Willie Dixon, the Ramones, Iggy Pop, Mars Volta, Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes (with Ronnie Spector opening backstage, after interviewing her, she gave me a kiss!), Elton John (in a private box at MSG, full bar unfortunately I went overboard with the whiskey and yakked in the john), The Smiths, Green Day, The O’Jays, Dan Deacon, The Spinners, Aretha, Joni Mitchell, Pharoah Sanders, Jerry Jeff Walker, David Bromberg, the Delfonics, Roxy Music ( Avalon-my favorite record of theirs-period), Stiff Little Fingers, Animal Collective, Billy Swan, the Everly Brothers (a nostalgia show I couldn’t pass up at the Royal Albert Hall in 1987), Graham Parker, Tom Paxton, the Allman Brothers (several months before Duane was killed), Bruce Springsteen, twice in ’75, the Runaways and on and on. Other concerts I’ve attended, in various states of mind, aren’t uncommon to someone my age: the Stones (Stevie Wonder opened) on their Exile on Main St. My son Nicky can, at will, sing a shanty with an almost-perfect brogue and made-up lyrics. And without Shane, it was still fun, but you know how all Irish songs, absent a dynamic singer/songwriter, essentially sound the same. show at the Verizon Center (the number of gray ponytails in the audience was even worse), but extraordinary at Madison Square Garden in ’75 Costello’s concerts, from 1978-83 were all great and the Pogues at Roseland in NYC in 1988 was one of the best, and made up for Shane MacGowan falling off his stool, dead-drunk, at 8X10 in Baltimore in ‘85, unable to continue. Let’s just say-as the now-forgotten Newt Gingrich commented in 1994 when asked if he’d ever smoked pot, “I was alive in the 1960s”-“lots.” Of the big acts, Bob Dylan, the Pogues and Elvis Costello top the list at four: Dylan was awful in 2012 when my two sons and I endured a D.C. There’s no calculator in my head-although as a student, I had a nose for math, despite zero enthusiasm-so it’s difficult to put a number on the amount of rock/folk/pop shows I’ve attended since 1968, when my brother Gary and I saw Van Morrison and the Byrds at Central Park, lawn seating for a buck.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |