Dan Aquilante of the New York Post gets it wrong

Many years ago I was sitting one row above New York Post Pop muic beat writer Dan Aquilante at the Lauryn Hill “Misadventures’ concert. The seats weren’t great but they weren’t terrible either, center stage in the 200s at The Theatre At MSG, and this pussy made such a fuss I wanted to punch him. Now obviously you can’t tell much about a bloke after seeing (not even meeting him) once in an adverse situation.

But I have never much cared for his taste in music and yesterday his review of Green Day was insipid.

Here is an excerpt: “GREEN Day should be ashamed. AT Madison Square Garden Monday night, the Grammy-winning punk band — famous for leftist politics hitched to mainstream pop — presented what was essentially the same production they did four years ago at a September 2005 Giants Stadium show.
It came rushing back at you like a hot kiss at the end of a wet fist. Just like last time, a guy in a pink bunny suit roused the crowd with mock drunk antics and led the soldout house through a few lame verses of the Village People classic “YMCA.” And yeah, it was as queer (and not in the gay way) on Monday as it was four years ago.
Lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong engaged the crowd with call- andresponse, fireworks and flames were “1812 Overture”- style percussion notes and Armstrong even plucked kids out of the crowd to sing and play instruments with the band — all just like last time.
While fun the first time out of the box, it insults the audience when a band, touted as brilliant sociopolitical commentators, doesn’t think we’d notice the recycling.”

Well, I saw Green Day with Velvet Revolver in 2005 and they played it straight up so I don’t understand it. However, let’s give Aquilante the benefit of the doubt: so what? Smokey Robinson, who has more integrity in his little finger then most people have in their family tree, has been doing the girls vs boys singalong for at least 20 years. James Brown had done the fake leaving the stage since the mid-60s till the end of his career. Punk credibility? Over half the concert was new material, what recycling.

New york post should make Mary Huhn their head writer.