Foxboro Hot Tubs - Stop Drop and Roll!!!
May 16th, 2008 | 7:00 pm est |
American Idiot did the unthinkable for Green Day: it made them respectable. Arriving at the mid-point of the 2000s, it was the quintessential big important rock protest record of the George W. Bush era, embraced by listeners who never bothered with the neo-punk trio before, listeners who now turned to the group as some kind of voice of a generation — an impression only heightened by their duet with U2, a veritable passing of the torch that raised expectations for the sequel to American Idiot. Sensible punks that they are, Green Day opened the escape hatch and bolted, creating a new identity as Foxboro Hot Tubs, an unabashed old-fashioned garage-rock band with a debut called Stop Drop and Roll!!! seemingly designed to play nonstop on Little Steven’s Underground Garage Radio for all of 2008.
Foxboro Hot Tubs are no run-of-the-mill ravers, bashing out the same three chords, pushing too hard with modern digital stomp boxes. True, Stop Drop and Roll!!! is a touch cleaner and punchier than the real relic, but the trio has the right swagger and sensibility, right down to how they brazenly lift the riffs and chords from classic after classic. Most of these classics all come from Britain, something that should be no surprise, as Billie Joe Armstrong has long sung with an affected Brit accent, while the Kinks fueled their transitional album, Warning, but the nifty thing about Foxboro Hot Tubs is that by laying bare their debt to the Kinks, the Yardbirds, and the Who they sound akin to such ’60s rockers as the Shadows of Knight, American bands who wanted to rock like the Brits.
And there’s no escaping that sense of history on Stop Drop and Roll!!!, not with its cleverly kitschy LP graphics bringing to mind any number of ’60s LPs (not to mention Sundazed’s excellent Garage Beat compilations), or how the band consciously rewrites classic after classic here, basing “Sally” on “I’m Not Your Stepping Stone,” “Alligator” on “You Really Got Me,” “Dark Side of Night” on “Heart Full of Soul,” “Red Tide” on “Tired of Waiting for You,” or opening “27th Ave. Shuffle” with the same blast of guitars and drums as the Who’s “Run Run Run.” These play as impish thievery, perhaps even a bit of a writing exercise to shake Green Day out of their doldrums, but the great thing about these tunes is that they’re not rip-offs, they’re genuinely new songs built upon familiar sounds, which is the essence of garage rock (or any traditional music, which is pretty much what garage is in 2008). Even better, every one of the 12 tracks here is genuinely terrific; they are the trickiest of songs, ones that sound exceedingly simple but only get better on repeated plays. And it’s easy to play Stop Drop and Roll!!! repeatedly, as its relentless march of under-three-minute songs is positively addictive. As sheer rock & roll, Green Day hasn’t been this much fun in years. Whether or not that makes Foxboro Hot Tubs’ Stop Drop and Roll!!! a “better” record than American Idiot is purely a matter of taste, whether you want to hear the most important band in the world or the coolest band in the world. But it is funny that this style of music, for not being “important,” somehow sounds just as good 40 years after its inception as it did at the moment of its birth.
wtf
I definitely disagree. Wrong.
I could not agree more with this review - this CD is a joy - a heck of a lot more fun to listen to than Green Daze.
i do love this album and i’ve been a green day fan since about ‘93 or so. although i like the fact that it borrows so well from other 60’s garage rock, my only (minor) complaint is that one of the songs (can’t remember the name off the top of my head-maybe track 3 or 4 on the disc) is a pretty blatant rip-off of green day’s own ‘hitchin a ride’. aside from that, it’s a really fun disc. it will be interesting to hear what the next actual green day album sounds like after something like this.
I totally agree.The CD is so much fun to listen to.
I like it just as well,as all their other album.
Great move to get some breathing space.
“whether you want to hear the most important band in the world or the coolest band in the world”
really steve?
Yes, this really is a great rock ‘n roll record. Even my father who’s obsessed with 60s rock loves this album. I’d say Green Day have done their job here.
It’s better than The Network, either way.
I loved the first two comments, by the way. Very informative.
Lets start from the top
“American Idiot did the unthinkable for Green Day: it made them respectable”
thats simply ridiculous. My mind is flooded with angry four letter words and terrible phrases.
What the fuck were they before American Idiot?
If being respectable means every 13 year old in the nation has your album in their i pod then yeah thats true. well even thats not fair seeing as how I’m sure that terrible waste of talent and time (American Idiot) was dwarfed by the mass earnings from the posters, stickers, messenger bags, etc. etc.
Rolling Stone magazine says whats good and you go along with it. In fact I’m sure if I looked hard enough I could find that in some Rolling Stone issue.
American Idiot simply capitalized from an idea instilled in preteen youth caused by overheard statements from parents and bias news media.
Almost no person who had the misfortune of being force fed that album got the political statement. largely because there was none. Its all about capitalism boys and girls. thats it. its cool to dislike Bush. American Idiot was criticized for being anti-American. when in reality its super American. its American in all the wrong ways. American in all the ways REAL political bands make a statement about.
You wanna listen to some political music?
Rage Against the Machine, System of a Down, Dead Kennedys, Sex Pistols, The Clash but please, don’t stop there. There is a myriad of punk and alternative bands with a political message. or fuck political, just a message period.
At least this move toward 60’s style music is here with foxboro hot tubs. a movement to a time when songs were actually political and musicians were actually about the music.
… Kayos and johnbuck. Did you guys read the review?
“..every one of the 12 tracks here is genuinely terrific; they are the trickiest of songs, ones that sound exceedingly simple but only get better on repeated plays.”
Please don’t trash the review if you don’t even know what the writer’s opinion is. Maybe you guys would have been better off just repeating the first comment by sy.
Green Day is not the most important band in the world. Not by a long shot. I’m surprised by this review. Foxboro is kinda cool, sure. But I simply have to agree with ian’s short post, above.
Green Day stepped right up to cash in on Bush-bashing long after it had gotten tiresome for bands to do so. Kudos for trying, but it’s only slightly more ‘punk’ than Good Charlotte or Simple Plan doing the same thing; think about it.
There is nothing dangerous or counter-culture-ish about Green Day. Alot of American idiots bought American Idiot.
I thought ‘Warning’ made them “respectable” for me. (And to a lesser more underrated extent, ‘Nimrod’) This album isn’t too far away from that record, either.
“Whether or not that makes Foxboro Hot Tubs’ Stop Drop and Roll!!! a “better” record than American Idiot is purely a matter of taste, whether you want to hear the most important band in the world or the coolest band in the world.”
It’s a figure of speech. He’s not saying they’re the most important band in the world. He’s saying whether you prefer a band who wants to sound ‘important’ or a band who wants to sound ‘cool’. At least that’s what I got out of it.
I used to love Greenday, and then I went off them just before American Idiot, and to be honest that album never did it for me either, however I appreciate why people do indeed like that album.
I popped into the local HMV today and saw this album, but did not know it was the Greenday boys hiding behind a new moniker else I may have added it to the new Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and Scarlet Johanssen albums I bought :)
I may have to go back later…
Tony,
While I generally agree with what you’ve said about bands with a message (although RATM, though fierce anti-capitalists were signed to one of the biggest corporations in the world and accepted on-stage advertisments for their last tour, and the Sex Pistols were the original assembled boy band) I think it’s important to recognize American Idiot for what it was, or is.
Sure, that record wasn’t dangerous, or challenging, or, in my opinion, any good, but I think there is something worthwhile in attempting to get young kids to think about their place in the world and the ways that nation states interact with one another.
Nothing wrong with challenging hegemony.
Hey everybody, thanks for the comments.
Clearly, I mangled the conclusion a bit, probably due to choosing “important” and “coolest” as the points of comparison. JD picked up on what I was trying to say, whether you want to listen to a band for message — i.e., important — or how it sounds. And I picked “coolest band in the world” as a callback to the Little Steven Underground Garage — which, now that I think about it, is a pretty obscure reference (but that probably reveals how much I listen to the station when I’m in the car).
As far as “important” goes, that was more about the perception of the band these days — JD (again!) is right that GD started to move toward sounding “respectable” with Nimrod and Warning (the heavy Kinks influence of that record points toward FHT, for sure), as they’re maturing musically there, but the protest-rock of American Idiot did make some older listeners — who previously dismissed them as snotty adolescent punks — take the group seriously; Eric is also right that it quite possibly got younger listeners to start thinking too. Now, this doesn’t make them political on the same level as Dead Kennedys or the Clash — and they’re not as musically ambitious as System of a Down, either — but by being big and kind of political, they can seem like an heir to ’60s political rock (which is why they got back on the cover of Rolling Stone).
Again, what I like about Foxboro Hot Tubs is that it picks up on the flipside of 60s rock, the trashy good times of garage bands, and I like that Green Day would DO a move like this, which Good Charlotte or Simple Plan would not as they don’t have the pop chops (and probably not the worldview, either). Tim, you’re right that it’s not counter-culture — either with American Idiot or Stop Drop & Roll — but as music, it’s good stuff. Especially this FHT LP, at least to my ears.
Thanks again everybody for reading and contributing.
I like this record because it sounds like the third album The Wonders from That Thing You Do would have cut had they stayed together.