A Dissertation of Warning by Green Day|| Neurotic Nihilism IV.3

Prior Note:

This is not a traditional dissertation per se— songs are expanded on based on necessary explanation and interpretation. What’s simply said is simply said; or the opposite depending on, as said, felt necessity. Green Day isn’t terribly hard to understand on a general listen; however aside catchy International Superhits there is possibility of music for the mind both aside and even within that. This is an analysis from the ears of Neurotic Nihilism’s broad thesis of thought experiments. 

Prelude.

2000 was the New Year, marking the culmination of a century on the Gregorian Calendar. The finale of the 20th century and moment of Limbo between Columbine before the nose-dive starting in the wake of 9/11… Things were still just as hyper-normalized in a sense; just as skeptical— neurotic and nihilistic: not quite off the tip of the buildings yet, but in a serene sense of false optimism on a wire in between them, so to say.  

On the third day of the tenth month of the centennial start, 13 numbers were given to public consumption as Green Day released their sixth studio album Warning. 

Met with some cringe to being a stylistic differentiation from their previous records, gaining praise for it just as well. Stepping away from the harshness of Insomniac, glittery Dookie, varying Nimrod for a direction more in tune to the likes of the Pixies; with more eloquent and ‘mature’ (for lack of a better word) prose; trappings later more prevalent on albums like 21st Century Breakdown or Revolution Radio. 

“There’s a sense of hope on this record, on a personal level for humanity in general. I don’t think there is anything on there that is too self-absorbed or dwells on the negative.”

— Billie Joe Armstrong, Frontman; ‘Green Day: American Idiots & The New Punk Explosion’ by Ben Myers

Uniquely, in the same sense as a slacker film, though the ‘worthless pessimist’ is notable throughout, there is a more optimistic reverence for the Limbo— in realizing ‘what it takes’ as the album declares on the final track Macy’s Day Parade, though, “the Knight of the living dead is on his way,” already, learning the hard way. 

1. Warning

Title-track opening as often happens, is the song Warning. “A public service announcement, not a test,” it sets up a common, but personally cynical tone following the listener throughout the album’s proceeding stages. 

With some exception, Warning is the first by Green Day to be so directly sociocultural. Taking aim at ideals of luxury; what  ‘really matters’ against simply getting “your philosophy from a bumper sticker.” To live without Warning, as a warning. 

2. Blood Sex & Booze

A nice commentary on S&M opening with the sound of a dominatrix beating the shit out of someone in studio— an event also filmed. Multifaceted in its scope, it’s as well insightful regarding certain chosen hobbies— as pointed out by underground artist Shane Bugbee, it is often easier and cheaper to see a prostitute than a therapist. 

Not daring to move, even though it hurts it feels so good. Predicaments gotten into; and wallowed in the results of for pleasure. What solipsism gets later explained in better detail on the song Misery on the supposed jouir in surrender of personal power to mundane extremes. 

3. Church On Sunday

    See: A Track Trinity || Neurotic Nihilism III.2

4. Fashion Victim

Dancing into the dog and pony show, Fashion Victim. 

Lyrically leveling bullets in an upbeat tune, it is Green Day’s equivalent to Marilyn Manson’s Get Your Gunn. A criticism of the Celebritarian culture of fashion and model-dom; as well as reaction to the shooting of the (slightly in)famous designer Gianni Versace. Owing inspiration from drummer Tré Cool wearing, “this t-shirt that Tre had on that had bullet holes in it and a slogan saying ‘Fashion Victim #1,’” noted Billie Joe in regards to the coagulating stimuli synthesized into the sonic number. Ironically, it being so groovy that it could be played on a catwalk, intentionally or all-the-while walkers oblivious to it’s levying vocabulary a critique rather than encouragement of their belonged institutions and influence. 

5. Castaway

Before there was Boulevard Of Broken Dreams, “a mission into destination unknown; an expedition onto desolation road,” is the song Castaway. Not a predecessor in the same regard as Black Eyeliner to Church On Sunday (and much later on  and under The Longshot, Kill Your Friends), rather a “sentimental journey into sight and sound.” The earlier song isn’t as heavy as the one later apart of their punk rock opera that is American Idiot. The idea is the same even though drastically and contextually different. What James Franco’s character in the comedic film The Interview said to be, ‘same-same, but different.’

6. Misery

Onto desolation road, a ride is hitched to Misery. When Warning is referred to as Green Day’s experimental record (far prior to 2020’s Father Of All Motherfuckers), it is due to tracks such as this; a sardonically bitter sonic groove in relation to other works. The beginning sounds like that of an 8-bit organ from some retro-spooky haunted house pixelated analogue arcade game. What could be characterized as the horror of mundane reality one can liminally exist within. 

“And we’re gonna get high, high, high

 When we’re low, low, low

 And she screamed, ‘why, oh why?’

 I said, ‘I don’t know’

 The catastrophic hymns from yesterday

 Of Misery…”

Although not a concept record like American Idiot or to some extent that of 21st Century Breakdown, in being on an aforementioned “journey into sight and sound,” into desolation road from Castaway; the road is almost innately a liminal stretch of land; for leisure or, well, Misery in its ongoing listlessness. 

A parallel exists here and in Lord Of The Rings, wherein Bilbo Baggins leaving his hole sings: ‘the road goes ever on…’, scenery  bleeding through itself until the mind needs a relief. Escaping the normal through escapism of the normal. 

Like in Blood, Sex & Booze, it is not so black and white and the lines of mild mundane and miserable moping blur often, “panhandling Misery”— longing for its pleasure; even if it’s meaningless. Or on the reverse of this flimsily (somewhat self-) constructed tale it could be an escape from that Misery into meaninglessness. After all, to relay to Marilyn Manson: ‘we love the abuse because it makes us feel like we are needed,’ as the line in the song I Want To Disappear off the album Mechanical Animals goes. 

Misery is to get by. Like in Stephen King’s book The Long Walk when the character Parker bluntly stated the biological imperative in life to Ray Garraty: ‘it’s all a bunch of phony crap that passes the time. But don’t shit me. The bottom line is you still want to live,’ even in the ‘cosmic joke’ that suffering absurdly exists… because we love to hate it. 

An Ouroboros, but not so dualistic. 

7. Deadbeat Holiday

Green Day is a band that makes anthemic scores, notably as mentioned before American Idiot or the latest album Saviors with its arm pumping prose. Within Warning’s middle lies an anthem not given as much due as the former mentioned in spite of it being on the same level of track as Minority later on the album, if not somewhat more monumental in its tune. 

Deadbeat Holiday, taking much from the previously played parts of the LP and synthesizing them in a way that the title track grasps with whispers of but only encapsulating a fraction. To ‘live without Warning’ as the title track suggests to the listener, a state of revelry.

“Deadbeat Holiday

 Celebrate your own decay

 There’s a vacant sign that’s hanging high

 on a noose over your home…”

Warning is the anthem neurotically, albeit passively in presentation, proclaiming itself and Deadbeat Holiday is the neurotically logical conclusion to, “piss it all away.” But it’s all okay as to tie it back to the mutual faith of Church On Sunday, in that last chance, “at least you’re not alone,” ideally. 

Where Misery winds up, Deadbeat Holiday responds, “when all you wanna do,” is to, “not give up,” despite that being what would be necessary sustenance for a bruised ego…

8. Hold On 

The sentimental journey rounding back to misery, ideally in the Deadbeat Holiday it’s not alone. However setting the stage is the reality of it. Stepping onto and edge beyond a shadow of doubt: 

“When you’ve lost all hope

 And excuses

 And the cheapskates and the losers

 Nothing’s left to cling onto

 You’ve gotta hold on

 Hold onto yourself.”

Survival in a nutshell: people on similar streams of suffering serve simply to feed off one another. So with that it’s a cry, pleading for peace. Like John Flory in Burmese Days longing for the late life he supposedly led at one imaginary point, it’s truth laying from the lost treasures of youth. Moments of memory made to temporary energy, feeding on Misery. 

“as I hold to the break of Day…”

9. Jackass 

Harkonning back a lingering moment with Hold On; the touted line mentioning the futility of, “the cheapskates and the losers,” proceeding on Warning  is Jackass delivering its own delegation; on what can really be described as the advent of Misery, to go back on the road a tad further. 

Jackass is an impersonal mirror which the stagnation becoming apparent and known— “I guess I just can’t listen to this one-sided conversation again.”

Stasis is often in the synapses, embedded and causing neuroplasticity difficulty in recovery of mind. Grandiosely being bitter at being, “the center of attention got an honorable mention once again.”

There’s an old platitude stating that even a broken clock is right at least once (if not twice) a day, going endlessly on to that fixed point. Aside from the rhythm in music, time being relative is but a human measurement and with that:

“No one ever said that life was fair

 everybody loves a joke but no one likes a fool

 And you’re always cracking the same old lines again

 You’re well-rehearsed on every verse

 and that was stayed clear

 But no one understands your verity”

Verity as defined in the Webster’s New World Dictionary & Thesaurus denotes something of actuality—a principle taken to be fundamentally true that is. And with that round again it is back to Misery in the way Emil Cioran elucidated it in his seminal Short History Of Decay; the essence of his writing of the concept that in the apparent or supposed severity humans imbue events in life (as well as life itself) with such a grandiosity, it becomes solipsistic; believing that essentially no one has suffered more so much as to even comprehend it. We are solipsistic in suffering on set loops, in essence. 

Like Uncle Rico in Napoleon Dynamite… [see Neurotic Nihilism II.3: Exemplary Jackass]

10. Waiting

Undoubtedly the most optimistic and upbeat song in terms of lyricism and melody enters Waiting. A spectacular flash-mob celebration, if only you could just “wake up” from the aforementioned Misery and have some fun. Whether that moment of satisfaction is achieved can be debated:

“Dumbstruck

 Colour me stupid

 good luck

 You’re gonna need it 

 Where I’m going if I get there 

 at all”

Not a matter of when the arrival at destination unknown could be, moreso, “close enough to taste it, almost […] embrace this feeling […] on the tip of my tongue” as the verse triumphantly declares. 

‘Don’t get cocky!’ the captain of the Millennium Falcon in Star Wars Han Solo once sharply exclaimed, as though it’s too late to go back, “ready or not at all…”

So: “wake up!”

11. Minority

Inarguably the most played tune off the album, political in a newer poppy light that would be seen most acutely in similar form on 21st Century Breakdown. All that sensory revelry in anticipation from holding on, beyond the cheapskates and losers, mightfully aligning with “the minority.”

Thematically, in the structure of the album its declaration could be likened to Ayn Rand’s thought that ‘the individual is the smallest minority in the world’ in its cynical streak. Green Day out of the East Bay pink scene with their own politics apparent, do inherently diverge from the epistemologist of Objectivism on most everything else; do however fit together on some puzzle pieces. 

“I pledge allegiance to the underworld 

 One nation under dog 

 There of which I stand alone

 A face in the crowd 

 Unsung, against the mold

 Without a doubt,

 Singled out

 The only way I know…”

An instance of iconoclasm for the Pledge of Allegiance; and likening it to another concept it’s essentially the idea of Tuning In and Dropping Out of mob rule; naturally or by nurtured observation and experience. The conclusion being, “a free for all, fuck ‘em all, you are your own sight…”

12. Macy’s Day Parade

Existentially egressing from the lonesome end of the journey into sight and sound is a ballad infused with wisdom of understanding and longing. Closing Warning greets weary ears of fellow travelers to chords of contemplation and an ideal for supposed assimilation. 

Acceptance?

Taking heed from Warning (in terms of the title track) and running from it, neurosis ensues on some level; while fickle sadomasochistic direct participation is, the banality is longed for. 

Moments of Might in states of resting silent salience. Serenading the sound is an odd optimism within the saudadic lyricism denoting innate aspirations:

“Give me something that I need

 Satisfaction guaranteed

 Because I’m thinking about 

 a brand new hope

 the one I’ve never known

 ‘Cause now I know

 It’s all that I wanted…”

Unfortunately as “the knight of the living dead is on his way, with the credit report,” for finally figuring out the differences, or so one would seemingly falsely assume, and leaving the Jackass’ behind. Learning the hardest way…

Neurotic. Nihilistic. End of the day.