Billie Joe Armstrong – Basketcase?
So Uno! is just around the corner and it has many people quite excited. Well, i guess not if you work the set schedule for iHeartRadio. Billie went absolutely Rock Star Diva when his set was cut short due to scheduling overlap. He went on a rant about how he has been here since 1988 ,”I’m not fucking Justin Beiber you motherfuckers!” and continues on for the minute they were allotted. (I enjoyed every nano-second of this rant!)
As a long time Green Day fan I know just how much this band loves their set times. Early 2000s during the Pop Disaster tour they were co-headlining with Blink 182 and Billie did all he could to make sure they extended their set each show. Admittedly I was at those shows to see Blink182 and was a bit frustrated that they were deliberately going over their set time, but hey that’s rock and roll right? This band plays with the crowd and Billy is an all around showman. So when Usher’s set ran over you can imagine how pissed Billy was to find that their set had been cut. You can’t? Well watch this video. Oh and bravo to Gibson, it took 5 swings to decapitate one of their guitars. Can you say craftsmanship?
Thoughts of….”Oh Love” Music Video
Attention Rock Stars and even Rap stars for that matter:
Music + Scantily clad females does not a music video make!
Okay so I have been listening to Green Day’s single all week, mainly because my local rock station likes to beat new songs into our heads by over playing them between Nirvana and Sublime songs which are wonderful, but lose something when played on the hour every hour. Sorry for the negativity, lets move on…
Oh Love is Green Day’s newest single which we covered a month or so back . I love being able to hear the evolution in a band’s sound. Green Day’s sound feels close to their Warning album, but perhaps with a dash of Ritalin. Listen to their second single “Kill the DJ” to hear what I mean.
Okay back to the topic at hand; “oh love”‘s music video:
The video opens like a bad makeup ad; you have vapid models hanging out in the GD rehearsal area while these boys sing about their struggles with keeping emotions intact while their hearts war with their loins.
I think that with such a basic song like this the band could have pulled out a better music video. These women seem like mannequins and barely even convey that they are enjoying the music. Don’t get me wrong, in a song like this where lust is a big part of it beautiful women are essential. Just give me live women, not mindless shells. How is your heart getting confused when all you are staring at lies between her neck and belly button?
Towards the end of the video there are a few shots of the guys enjoying themselves drinking and laughing with these beautiful girls, but I just don’t see the tension building conflict of the song.
This is a rookie music video! Why? IMHO When a band is new and not comfortable with the theatrical aspect of shooting a music video they play the song and usually the label just throws some females and Gibson guitars in for good measure. (Replace Gibson guitars with whoever the band is endorsing in the video). I suppose I expect more from a veteran band.
Am I wrong? Please watch the video above and leave me a comment. Art is always up for discussion, even if it seems as empty as this video is.
Uno! Dos! and Tre! news
Green Day is really gearing up for their most ambitious project yet. As we reported last month they have already been releasing Teasers. Their trilogy of albums so named: Uno! Dos! & Tre! are set to be released between September and January. When asked what their motivation was they related their a-ha moment:
“The songs just kept coming, kept coming. I’d go, ‘Maybe a double album? No, that’s too much nowadays.’ Then more songs kept coming. And one day, I sprung it on the others: ‘Instead of Van Halen I, II and III, what if it’s Green Day I, II and III and we all have our faces on each cover?'”
They are not stopping with music though, they are also releasing two documentaries to go along with them. When asked what these docs were about Billy said:
“It’s not going to be the sitting down, head shot of me going, ‘We started out blah blah blah’,” Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong told Billboard. “We wanted to get into lifestyles of rock & roll and playing rock & roll and letting the story kind of tell itself rather than create revisionist [history].”
Uno! is set to be released on September 25th of this year, but if that is not soon enough for you the first single “Oh Love” will be available on July 16th.