As Cheryl so eloquently put it in her comment on the last post, the songs by the Foxboro Hot Tubs couldn’t be anything other than Green Day’s work because nothing else raises the hairs in the back of your neck like this. There’s the reference to a 1965 roadster in Highway 1, but all six of these songs have that feel of riding a lurching, powerful muscle car: on some it’s the low rumble of the idling engine, in others it’s a rush like gunning the engine on an open road.
Not that I love all the songs equally, but as a package they’re so evocative it’s almost like watching a movie that wraps you up and carries you off into its world of rumbling muscle cars and booze soaked late nights in smoky working class bars with sawdust on the floor and hard luck patrons who wear their hearts pinned and bleeding to their chests.
But like all of Green Day’s work, it’s rich with contradictions. This isn’t woe-is-life blues. It’s catchy and infectious, complete with poppy background vocals, 60s psychedelia, and wailing guitars that are both melancholy and kickass, soulful and electrifying. The characters in the songs too, are at once despairing and wounded but undefeated and resilient. Billie Joe’s recurring theme in so much of his work is the salvation that one may seek in the seductive abandon of booze and drugs, or the recklessness of driving too fast, but is ultimately found in the love of a strong woman and a devoted man. It’s that sweet, unwavering steadfastness that’s at the core of these songs.
One might wonder what a rock star who lives in a mansion knows about finding himself at the end of his rope in a dingy dive, but that would be missing the point: what’s inside someone is what they live. Our lives are not made up only of the everyday, but of what stirs and churns in our own minds and hearts. An artist knows how to bring that out for others to see, but it’s up to the recipients see that it applies to their own selves: who you are is what’s in you.
The songs’ lyrics, as people have been able to work them out, are on GDC. (You have to register.) Update: The lyrics, as worked out by fans, are now posted on GDA
December 12, 2007 at 12:08 am [ Category: Essay, Songs, Foxboro Hot Tubs ]
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