Fahrenheit 420
Green Day
American Idiot (Reprise)
by Joe O’Brien

Like much of the songs on American Idiot, the title track/prologue to the most unexpected(ly rousing most of the time) rock opera since Blueberry Boat won't be confused for Chomsky, or even Strummer, but dammit if it doesn't sum up The State of the House Divided Against Itself better than any cut-the-shit rock song to come out of the W administration.

Well… “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” staggers while straddling the emo fence- haunting Husker loneliness encumbered with distracting over-production. Then comes the shameless Bic-flicker “Are We the Waiting,” and I wonder if the echoing thuds I hear are Tre Cool’s drums or Billie Joe’s adolescent lyricism and arena-rock ambitions finally clunking to the floor.

Thankfully, “St. Jimmy,” “the son of a bitch and Edgar Allan Poe” interrupts, barging in “like a zipgun on parade,” and things are back on track. A series of respectable pop-punkers follow (“Give Me Novacaine,” “She’s a Rebel,” “Extraordinary Girl,” the powder keg call-to-action “Letterbomb,”), until “Wake Me Up When September Ends” drags the record to another halt. (“Here comes the rain again/falling from the sky/ drenched in my pain again”- I know we’re supposed to be reading the diary of a high school burnout, but sheesh…)

And yet again they redeem themselves with operetta no. 2, “Homecoming,” an even better Who impression where the narrative loses clarity (Wait, Jimmy committed suicide? Or is this Fight Club? And who’s the Tre Cool character that sounds like Dee Dee Ramone subbing for Meat Loaf in The Rocky Horror Picture Show?), but the song nevertheless builds to a battle-weary catharsis at once triumphant and vanquished- our hero lost the girl and failed to revolutionize the world, and he may be returning to his shit-hole town, but at least it’s the shit-hole town he calls home where he can get some rest and daydream about “Whatsername” in the epilogue.