sell-out

I love my gym, for real, I do.  They had a series of contests recently in celebration of their 21st birthday and I won tickets to "American Idiot".  Not that it's something I've ever wanted to see, but hey, free tickets! Right?

Let me start this again.  I am not a huge Green Day fan.  I wouldn't say that I actively hate Green Day, but I've never bought an album, I've never jumped up and down at the prospect of seeing them in concert (even in high school when even though I never bought anything of theirs at least I thought they were good)...but how bad could it be? American Idiot, people seem to love it...it's been on Broadway forever...

I've never been so pissed off in my life.  Green Day, you wanna see suburban-raised angst? I got yours right here.  I've never been so insulted.  It more than mocked my entire teenage years and young adulthood, it trivialized it.  Yeah, I grew up in the 'burbs, I wore grunge clothes, and I listened to hardcore, alternative music, and I went to art school and then moved to the city with a big dream, and I may not be the huge artstar that I will be some day.  But I sure as hell didn't sell out in the process.  And neither did 99% of my friends.

The whole show follows 3 friends, who want to go off to the city and start a band...1 never leaves cause he knocks up his girlfriend, 1 gets to the city and hears the call of patriotism and joins the military, and the other left to his own devices becomes a smack head.  They never played a single song as a "band".  And in the end, they all give up and go home, one (who never left) without his new family cause his girlfriend and baby left him, the other angry and without a leg from the war, and the third, just a failure. And their other friends all show up in suites and tailored skirts because they've all sold out and joined the mainstream. And everyone reunites at home and makes up and is happy again.

Cause that's it, we're all losers, huh Green Day? We're all strung out failures at life? Forget your dreams, go back to you parents' basement and you'll still have music at least, right?  Fuck you.

I have no problem with rockstars making it big, getting famous, and making buckets of money.  That's the dream.  That's why we all want it- buckets of money.  I have a problem when after they've gotten famous, and made their fortunes, they then turn around and sell out by trivializing the people that got them there.  Sitting in an audience of people my parents' age as they clap along to this farce of my life.  How would they have felt if 'Hair' had come out in the 80s? 20 years after the actual cultural movement, trivialized, and basically called your entire generation nothing but burned out hippies that would never amount to anything?  This is how if feels to have your revolution pandered to tourists who don't even know better than to give a mindless show with mediocre singing a standing ovation.

In the end it was worth every penny.  And I have given Green Day exactly as much money as they deserved over the years.  You guys had better had made enough money to support your lifestyle for the rest of time, cause this is it.  Every fan that you had, that's seen this piece of shit, is one more fan that you just lost.  Enjoy it, who's the loser now?