It’s been a week since I made the long trip from the coast up to Johannesburg to catch a punk rock concert featuring Green Day and The Offspring.
It’s been six years since I last attended a concert this big. It’s also been 20 years since I last saw The Offspring in concert.
The concert was on Sunday, 19th January, the morning of which a ceasefire came into effect in Gaza. It was a day to be celebrated, and both bands ensured we did precisely that. I can’t really say how many fans attended, but I’ve never seen Johannesburg’s famous Calabash stadium this crowded before for a concert.
As the concert was scheduled a day before the US’s 47th president’s inauguration, I expected both bands to make at least a token traditional political statement in defiance of authority. The Offspring avoided making any political statement, which was disappointing, but I believe it’s normal for them to steer clear of politics. However, Green Day is undoubtedly more politically overt, as evidenced by the lyrics of many of their songs.
While they did not directly criticize Donald Trump, they did change the lyrics to the hit American Idiot to mock his obnoxious billionaire sidekick, Elon Musk, who’s an ex-South African. In the tradition of The Prodigy changing the lyrics of their hit song Smack My Bitch Up to make it less offensive, Green Day changed theirs to target someone mighty deserving of it.
The original line, “I’m not a part of a redneck agenda was changed to “I’m not part of the Elon agenda.”
Well, maybe I’m the faggot, America
I’m not a part of a redneck agenda
Now everybody, do the propaganda
And sing along to the age of paranoia
It’s not the first time lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong altered the lyrics to American Idiot. In a 2023 New Year’s Rockin’ Eve performance, he changed the lyrics to “I’m not a part of the MAGA agenda,” in an unmistakable denunciation of Trump and the Republican Party. Musk responded on his platform, X, as the egotistical oligarch is prone to do, with:
Green Day goes from raging against the machine to milquetoastedly raging for it.
In a brilliant retort, however, Green Days’ bassist Mike Dirnt shut Musk up with this beauty:
Elon Musk actually is the machine. I can’t take anything else from that. He’s not shy about saying stupid s**t on the internet. Whatever. The song’s twenty years old, and we’re Green Day. What did you expect?
Billie Joe did not just take aim at Musk, however. Towards the end of the concert, he targeted the whole cabal of wealthy, corrupt oligarchs who have clung to Trump’s coattails in recent times, waiting for opportunities to expand their greed and hunger for power. During one of the closing sets, he remarked on “selfish billionaires and their poisonous algorithms,” in an apparent reference to Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and others.
Green Day closed their performance with the hit Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life), a song that some say references Billie Joe’s breakup with an ex-girlfriend. If the first week of Trump’s absurd policy changes and lunatic pronouncements are anything to go by, I’m guessing a lot of Americans can’t wait to say good riddance permanently to him and the repulsive bunch of plutocrats in his deranged orbit.
lenny unencumbered 