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My iPod #347: Green Day – Extraordinary Girl

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Well, well, well. It has come to this. After a month and a few weeks, I have reached the end of the ‘E’ section of My iPod. It has been good fun. I hope I have encouraged you to listen to some of the songs I hear on a regular basis, even if I don’t use any technical language or various adjectives in any of my posts. I write with feeling, you know, so who needs those things?

And so to end it is “Extraordinary Girl”, a track from Green Day’s album “American Idiot” which will have existed on this planet for ten years this coming September. It’s not their best one, but I would say that it is definitely the band’s last great album. “21st Century Breakdown” was ehhhhh…. (some songs from it are cool, but as a whole it’s not brilliant) and the “Uno,Dos,Tre!” trilogy….. not a big fan, I’ll leave it at that.

So anyone who owns “American Idiot” will know that it’s a rock opera and there’s a whole story narrated throughout the tracks. Anyone who doesn’t can look it up for themselves because I can’t be bothered to go through it all now :D.

What I will tell you is that “Extraordinary Girl” comes at the point where the main character has found love in “Whatsername”, the female character in the story, and the track takes on an omniscient narration on how both characters are feeling at this point. It is not going too well, and (spoilers) by the next track the relationship is over. Very sad. I think you have to listen to the album to feel the emotion, ’cause I know I sound like I don’t care at all.

That’s the song story-wise. Musically, it’s very nice to listen to. It begins with some sort of Middle Eastern sounding tribal percussion which quietly gets the ball rolling for 40 seconds until Tré smacks the snare drum and the track properly starts. Billie Joe throws in some alveolar trills here and there, and that along with the high guitar riff that plays during the introduction and breaks makes the song sound a bit Spanish sometimes. With relaxing, simple chord progressions and a steady pace to it “Extraordinary Girl” is a track to chill out to after “She’s a Rebel” and also something to get you eased up before the roller-coaster “Letterbomb”. Real sweet one.

AND THAT’S IT. The E’s are finished. Probably won’t be hearing from me for a while. I will try and think of something to put on here. You know I hate to leave you, but I’ll be back again.

My iPod #321: Green Day – Emenius Sleepus

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This is “Ememius Sleepus”, a song by Green Day on their classic album “Dookie“. It’s one that has lyrics written by the band’s bassist Mike Dirnt, and according to their Rock Band contains some of the most difficult drumming in a Green Day song. Being part of those four under-two-minute tracks near the end of the album, the track may be overlooked and underestimated by some. I actually really like this song. I don’t even have “Basket Case” on my iPod, that’s how highly I regard this track.

The track is from the point of view of a person who sees a childhood friend after a period of not seeing them. They have changed…. for the worst. The narrator is disgusted by this, and wants to go home. I haven’t experienced this as of yet, but I get the feeling that when I’m much older I definitely will. In the end, the narrator ponders on whether anyone tried to help the friend, but forgets about it and decides to actually go home.

So, like every other song on “Dookie”, there is probably only four/five chords on this song. All very typical on punk albums like “Dookie”. I think all the magic is in the rhythm section. Tré Cool goes ape on the drums as per usual as you can see in that Rock Band video above (even though doesn’t really represent real drums), and Dirnt plays his trademark bass lines where he plays on the low strings before skipping to a higher one for a brief second before returning to the low ones again. His playing during the bridge section is quite nice too.

It is a short track, that is very true. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s just as important as all the other thirteen (fourteen?) tracks that accompany it on the album.

My iPod #309: Green Day – East Jesus Nowhere

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Watching the World Cup and then going on to do nothing but browse the Internet after almost made me forget that I had this to do. If you are watching the football, how’s your team doing? Both teams that I were supporting are both out now which smells, but I will of course carry on viewing the action.

So today’s song is “East Jesus Nowhere”, a track and a single from Green Day’s album “21st Century Breakdown”. Not my favourite of the band’s for reasons that have probably been covered in other reviews that you can read elsewhere. For me, the whole ‘concept’ is a bit too much; I still don’t really understand it now but I never tried to in the slightest. That’s just one thing; I won’t go much into the rest.

“East Jesus Nowhere” is an ‘anti-religion’ song inspired by Mike Dirnt’s displeasure on witnessing a baptism in a church filled with ‘hypocrisy and hatred’. Billie Joe himself said to The Sunday Times that “the never-ending hypocrisy of religion, all those snake-oil-salesman types, and that subliminal thing of threatening people and ripping away their individuality.” Can’t ask for more than that really.

It’s a track I don’t care for that much. Sounded good back in 2009, but now….. ehh. It’s alright.

My iPod #264: Green Day – Desensitized

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The hours have rushed by, haven’t they?

I am now back from my venture to Liverpool for the weekend, and it is time for the first of two posts.

First up is “Desensitized”, a song by Green Day which was recorded whilst the band were working on “Nimrod“. Apparently, they didn’t feel as if it was the best to come out of those sessions. It wasn’t released on the album, but as a B-side on the “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” single. However, Australians and the Japanese are fortunate to have it on their versions of the album. It later got released on the bands B-side compilation “Shenanigans” which came out in 2002.

I’d never listened to “Shenanigans” before and one day decided….. that I should. Out of the fourteen tracks on there, I only really like four of them including this one. It isn’t amazing. You can tell why they didn’t make it onto their albums they were recorded for. “Desensitized” had the potential more than most of the others.

Mike Dirnt, the band’s bassist, completely beats the crap out of a lot of things with a baseball bat for the first twenty seconds or so. I don’t really understand why, but the sounds of various items breaking upon the bat’s impact segues into the song’s main riff – one that alternates between G and C (I believe) starting and stopping to allow Billie Joe to fill the silences with the vocals. That’s just the verses though. Listen to the song, if you like it then you’re welcome.

My iPod #253: Green Day – Deadbeat Holiday

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“Deadbeat Holiday” is the seventh track on Green Day’s sixth album “Warning”, released in 2000. The album is one of Green Day’s ‘softer’ albums with less of a punk rock oriented sound and incorporating more acoustic elements (thank you Wikipedia). For this reason, it is not one of the band’s most acclaimed albums. But at a time when punk rock was not as big, it showed that the band were able to look in a new direction.

For myself, “Warning” was the last Green Day album I listened to. The Green Day:Rock Band had recently come out and the only albums of theirs I physically possessed (and still do) were “American Idiot“, “Dookie“, “Smoothed Out Slappy Hours” (which is quite a strange choice looking at it now) and the “International Superhits!” compilation, which I got way before realising that compilations are not the way to go. Buy original albums, people.

“Minority”, the title track, “Waiting” and “Macy’s Day Parade” were tracks that I had heard when I initially started listening to Green Day about ten years ago. They were singles, and their videos were available to watch on the band’s website. It was only the album tracks I had to go through now, and “Deadbeat Holiday” was another that was rather enjoyable. It’s about living an empty life and feeling miserable which isn’t so great, but the narrator’s knowledge that they are not alone in this situation is somewhat of a comforter. It is very poppy though, which does lighten the mood.