8D - The Michigan Daily - New Student Edition - Fall 2005 ARTs ROCK OPERA GREEN DAY MATURES WITH POLITICIZED ALBUM EVAN McGARVEY By Joel Hoard SEPTEMBER 29, 2005 Daily Staff Writer MUSIC R EVIEW Beginning with album Kerplunk! in ing with Nimrod in 1997, Green Day spent the first half of their career perfecting the two- and-a-half-minute pop-punk song, while both reviving their breakthrough 1992 and culminat- Green Day American Idiot Reprise the punk genre and infusing it with a modern sense of irony and good-natured brattiness. But charm can only take you so far. There comes a time in the life of a punk band when musicianship and songcraft - =which Green Day has always had - have to take over. It began with the underrated and under- appreciated Warning in 2000, which proved the group can pull off subdued, mid-tempo rockers with the same skill that they showed on the punk blitzes that made them famous. The trend continues with the band's new "punk-rock opera" American Idiot, a full hour-long record even more diverse and sprawling than Warning. Like any rock opera, American Idiot is self-indulgent and overblown, but it works, because Green Day knows it's self-indulgent and overblown. They keep tongue planted firmly in cheek and infuse their songs with enough energy and hooks to keep it interesting. The story, featuring such colorful charac- ters as Jesus of Suburbia, St. Jimmy and Whatsername, is not what's important here. What's essential is that American Idiot plays as a cohesive and engaging record. It's the rock opera for the lost generation, those held down by "a red- neck agenda" and "the subliminal mind fuck America," as Billie Joe Armstrong explains in the title track. Appropriately, Green Day sounds less Clash and Sex Pistols and more Who on American Idiot. They pay ample tribute to the Gods of the Rock Opera through- out the album, copping Who-like melo- dies, harmonies, windmilled guitar riffs and thundering bass lines and refashion- ing them into Green Day originals. The Who influence is felt most prominently on the five-part mini-opera "Jesus of Suburbia" (one of two such operettas on the album), a full realization of the song- writing prowess that has been lingering below the surface for some time now. But the tributes don't end with The Who. On "Are We the Waiting," Green Day are dead ringers for Styx (who, of course, authored their own rock opera, Kilroy Was Here), churning out a puffed- up power ballad complete with five-part harmonies. And "Rock and Roll Girl- friend" would have been right at home in "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." More than anything, Green Day has proven on American Idiot that it is pos- sible for a modern punk act to age grace- fully. Their songwriting has reached full maturity, and even when they take the low road and opt for snotty humor, it doesn't seem out of place. But can they pull it off in another 10 years to come? There's no reason why they can't. JANUARY 19, 200$ Th lttle prince of rap: Kanyc West Green Day rocked Cobo Arena in Detroit on Nov. 6, 2004. G-nit mastermind delivers second LP 0 By Evan McGarvey MARCH 8,2005 Daily StaffWriter MUSIC REVllEW * With a past that includes multiple gunshot wounds to the mouth, various broken record contracts, an incredible New York mix-tape career and 11 mil- 50 Cent lion copies of Get The Massacre Rich or Die Tryin' sold, it's possible Shady/Aftermath to forgive 50 Cent's . occasional self-indulgence and self- aggrandizement on his second proper album, The Massacre. Crazy insane or insane crazy? After the past few months, it's hard to tell if 50 Cent is the next generation of the Rakim/ B.I.G./Jay-Z New York lineage or simply a man whose unprecedented success has rendered him paranoid and on the verge of self-destruction. 50's chameleon flow - part Queens roughneck, part injury-induced Southern drawl - keeps clich6d guns-and-ammo joints like "Outta Control" and "This Is 50" above water. Gangsta rap feeds on each artist's street credibility, so when he raps, "A lil' nigga hurt his arm, lettin off that Eagle;you know me / Black on black Bentley, big ol' black 9 /I'll clap your mon- key-ass, yeah black on black crime," well, you try and argue with him. According to the man himself, 50 Cent recorded a body of over 60 songs from which he chose the 22 that make up The Massacre. What's troubling about this 2Pac-like work ethic is that only about half of the album's tracks deserve to see the light of day. The first two singles, "Disco Inferno" and "Candy Shop," are both flac- cid crossover jams with requisite pithy string sections and mediocre Indian flutes, respectively. Being the godfather of G- Unit doesn't seem to be helping his artistic output, either. While he's never quite the perfect gen- tleman, he gets downright nasty toward the women on the aptly named "Get in My Car" and makes some Sylvia Plath-esque death wishes on the murky "I'm Supposed To Die Tonight." For someone who wants so desperately to join the rap hall of fame, 50 has made The Massacre out to be the typical achievement of post-Golden Age rap: pockets of weak musical filler buff- ered by incandescent singles. As on Get Rich or Die Tryin', 50 reach- es musical peaks when he cuts loose and delivers unfettered blitzkriegs of..rage, party revelry or some combination of both. Though it may lead to death by mix tape roasting, he calls out both Jadakiss and Fat Joe for working with G-Unit/Shady archenemy Ja Rule on the relentless steel- drum and synth-fueled "Piggy Bank." As 50 launches hallucinogenic barb after barb and proposes death to Jada, Fat Joe, Shyne and Nas, the beat, seemingly fueled by pure malice and ecstasy, flies over listen- ers' heads like a squall of fighter jets. Worn-out Motown vocal loops on "Ski Mask Way" recall 50's earthy, delightfully villainous pre-Aftermath record days and help to salve the pain of the bloated subur- ban-raps of "So Amazing." Sometimes he strays from the autobio- K anye West. Last year at the State Theater in Detroit you kept the crowd waiting for more than two hours before you decided to stumble on stage and slur your way through your equally rank album. Even when you traipsed across stage you couldn't silence the pockets of fed-up and frustrated fans shouting, "Fuck Kanye! Fuck Kanye!", Now I know I'm pretty much alone in slandering your art, your performances and your general ethos. The College Dropout has become the year-end object of wor- ship for seemingly everyone from The New Yorker to record shop owners in Bed-Stuy. You've taken credit for bringing the following things "back into hip hop": intro- spection, collared shirts, humor, intelligence, cleverness and Jesus. With a chip roughly the size of K2 lodged firmly on your shoulder, you refuse to praise other producers and have drunkenly proclaimed yourself "the biggest producer in the game." Remember that? It was right before you started performing a song, for- got the words and demanded that we, the audience, sing it in your stead. For the record, Kanye, your sole production trick, speeding up vocal tracks until the vocals sound like helium-fed chipmunks, is a pithy rip off of DJ Premier's scratching tech- nique and Just Blaze's furious loops of sound. Okay, so "Stand Up" and "Guess Who's Back" buoyed Ludacris's and Scarface's albums respective- ly. Good job, you made a hit song. That's your job. In terms of sales performance and diversity of work, I'd place you somewhere behind Timbaland, the Neptunes, Dr.Dre, Swizz Beatz, Just Blaze, Hi-Tek, Lil' Jon, Red Spyda and Irv Gotti. It's been easy for you to get on the charts; you've worked with Jay- Z and other Roc-A-Fella stars for most of your career. Bad things generally happen when you stray from your comfort zone. That song you did with Brandy for her latest album, "Talk About Our-Love," how long did that stay in rotation? About three weeks? Thought so. Behind the boards your reputa- tion is a bit inflated. But the cruelest chatter flowing through the hip-hop world started up when you made the worst move of your young career: You started rapping. Honestly, it's not fair to completely ravage your flow. Not all of us are blessed with a Method Man or MF Doom caliber voice. But really Kanye, most of the time we can hear you gasping for air in the middle of your 16 bars. Com- mon and Talib blew you out of the water on your album and your take on reality involves folding shirts at the Gap and bitching about how you had to go to college. God has always been at the fore- front of rap. When B.I.G. raged against the mindless drug hustling who was he demanding answers from? When Scarface and Bushwick Bill were burdened with guilt and remorse, from whom did they seek solace? You aren't the first artist to rap about God. You're the first artist to yell his name 20 times in a song and call it innovation. Some ill- advised mix-tape appearances later and your complete lack of breath control, horrible syntax and childish self-involvement doomed the album before it even dropped. In truth, you got lucky. The blue chip magazines (Time, Entertain- ment Weekly, etc ...) piled on the rap bandwagon, and Dizzee Rascal and 50 Cent found themselves get- ting shout outs in The New Yorker. Your album was released on third base and you think you hit a triple. If anyone had made an album as middle-brow, pseudo intellectual and self-congratulatory as yours, they probably would have reaped the lion's share of the praise. Instead, most critics seemed content to over- look Ghostface and MF Doom and gush over a young black man who was so daring to talk about college. And that, Kanye, is your most frustrating sin. In inane skits and the loose "concept" of College Drop- out, the recurring characters are garish stereotypes of college-age black youth. You claim that you are just making sure that colleges don't "use" black students, but what do you mean? You claim that college doesn't really improve the socio-economic status of young men and women but what do you know about practical knowledge? You're the spoiled son of a university professor mother and college educated-father who used his free ride through college to study piano. You're. a hypocrite and fraud who claims that a wardrobe of Ralph Lauren sweaters and deluxe leather backpacks makes you less.material- istic than the Rolex flaunting men at Cash Money. You misrepresent your generation, your peer group and you presume to give life lessons that you yourself have yet to learn. You may fool the public, but his- tory and art are not so easily swayed. The sand foundation of stolen ideas and limp rap ability on which you have built your home will collapse and then Kanye, you will be as stranded and forgotten as the fans you neglect at each show. Evan secretly wishes that he were a tenth of the rapper Kanye West is. Exchange fetish pieces from your Kanye shrines with him by e-mailing evanbmcg @umich.edu. 0 "You are so dead, nobody scuffs my loafers." graphical and taps into emotional narra- tives. Unfortunately, he only does it once on The Massacre, and "A Baltimore Love Thing" might be too oblique for the listen- ers expecting boilerplate verses. The week of The Massacre's release, G-Unit rookie and Dr. Dre prot6g6 The Game, who coincidently has a multi-plati- num debut album at the top of the Billboard charts, bashed 50 Cent on-air before 50 subsequently ex-communicated him from G-Unit. Later that week, members of The Game's clique launched shootings at two venues where 50 was reportedly present. Even for a man raised on death and seemingly unafraid of the afterlife, 50 Cent's approach to mortality is down- right shocking. For all of Eminem's beef-squashing diplomacy on "Like Toy Soldiers," a single from his own recent album, Encore, 50 just seems to fear destruction that much less. He's turning on everyone in sight, seem- ing to mock mentor Eminem on "My Toy Soldier" and picking fights with whomever he wants. As with most neo-gangsta rap, 50 preaches a lifestyle he really doesn't live anymore. But he sure seems willing to start a war. Here's hoping The Massacre will become a middling, if not completely solid, entry into 50's catalogue and not his death warrant. II-~ ~iI 1918 by Horton Foote A poignant tale ofa young family facing WWIand an equally deadly disease at home. Trueblood Theatre " Oct. 6 - 16, 2005 Dept. of Theatre & Drama The Boys from Syracuse by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors in a brilliant musical setting. Mendelssohn Theatre " Oct. 13 - 16, 2005 Musical Theatre Dept. The Coronation of Poppea by Claudio Monteverdi Beauty, greed, seduction - a woman must use all her resources when usurping a throne. Sung in Italian with English translations. Power Center * Nov. 10 - 13, 2005 School of Music Opera Theatre The Laramie Project By Moisds Kaufman The deeply moving tale ofa small town's varied reactions to a hate crime. The 2005-06111M School of Music sesnprmss uebentertainment!l Student tickets are only $9 with ID 45% off the regular price! Get yours now at the League Ticket Office in the Michigan League. f Vw~ S 5 C, Ott .'*4 44 Dance to the Music Choreography by guests Doug Varone y5 and Matthew Rose, and faculty An evening of modern dance set to music byUt Composers. Jackie 0 By Michael Daugherty A pop opera about sixties icons Warhol, Callas, and Jackie Kennedy Onassis. Sung in English. Mendelssohn Theatre Mar. 23 - 26, 2006 School of Music Opera Theatre The Burial at Thebes by Seamus Heaney A new adaptation of Sophocle's Antigone by the esteemed Irish poet. Trueblood Theatre Mar. 30 - Apr. 9, 2006 Dept. of Theatre & Drama Seussical by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty The stories of Dr. Seuss come alive in this fantastic musical. Power Center Apr. 13 - 16, 2006 Musical Theatre Dept. m