Green Day live at the Starland Ballroom in New Jersey; Photo: YouTube
‘No racism. No racism. No racism in this fucking room,” Billie Joe Armstrong told a New Jersey crowd at a recent Green Day tour stop at the Starland Ballroom pushing October 7’s Revolution Radio.
Part of a tirade against Donald Trump, the American Idiot creator broke apart the marching bass fill on “Holiday” to lambast the Presidential candidate, alluding to myriad bigotries Trump has vomited all over the place this year, asking the crowd if they’ve been watching the news lately, before declaring the room racism free, backing it up with a white supremacy attack, as well.
“There is no white supremacy in this fucking room right now. We are coming together tonight. Tonight here in New Jersey, to call bullshit on all the politicians tonight,” Armstrong barked.
Not stopping there, Armstrong tweaked the last verse of “Holiday,” an already fierce statement from the Bush-era about the dangers of citizen political passivity, swapping out a California representative for a Jersey one and the ‘Eiffel tower’ line for Trump’s notorious phallic buildings that dot American cities:
‘The representative from New Jersey has the floor’/Sieg Heil to the president Gasman/Bombs away is your punishment/Pulverize the Trump towers/Who criticize your government/Bang bang goes the broken glass and/Kill all the fags that don’t agree/Trials by fire, setting fire/Is not a way that’s meant for me/Just cause, just cause, because we’re outlaws yeah!
For as much self-serving crap as Armstrong and the rest of the band put out with the ¡Uno!, ¡Dos!, ¡Tre! trilogy, and Armstrong’s battle with his own demons, their watering down of the punk ethos, American Idiot still stands as an active, creative statement.
Goon on you, Green Day. No pandering, either, in this room tonight.