So if anyone wants to know what meeting Billy Corgan is like I’ll be able to tell you tomorrow.
I’ll tell the full account of my day somewhere later, but wanted this down before I go to bed.
The Saviors tour is a double anniversary show, so the setlist plays through the entirety of Dookie and American Idiot with a few other songs as act breaks. Any album with Welcome to Paradise and She on it is great, that’s just math. American Idiot dropped when I was a teen, when I started listening to albums instead of just radio play. I haven’t really followed the band since, but with a free ticket of course I’ll see a big pyro-laden show in a historic venue.
As the American Idiot act went on I found myself singing along to lyrics I had forgotten, years melting away as I rediscovered there was always gold in there. The wound of overplay heals with two decades’ distance, and the best songs were never the singles anyhow. It all comes to a head in the closer, Whatsername, which has the feel of the last embers of a campfire. I’m seeing the boy I was as the man I am and recognizing him as real and valid and worthy of care as I set aside a little place in my heart just for him to stay. The moment feels profound. It’s healing; among tens of thousands of swaying arms.
Then they kick into some shit called Bobby Sox and it’s the worst bullshit song I’ve ever heard.
