The Green Day rock opera recalls a time long gone by (over a decade ago!) when politics were simpler, but still enraging.

Green Day came to Fairfax with an arsenal of stadium-ready tricks of the trade. It was an entertaining and well-curated show, but the greatest moment was almost purely spontaneous.

Republicans in Congress just haven’t been nice to the District lately — they delayed a vote on the voting rights bill by adding a rider to end D.C.’s handgun ban, and now they’re preventing a free concert from being held near the Capitol on July 7. The concert was to be part of Al Gore’s Live Earth series of concerts to raise environmental awareness and was to feature some combination of acts like the Police,…

The Washington Post reports today that Congress is set to vote on a landmark resolution to allow the likes of Snoop, Green Day, Kylie Minogue, and scores of other popular musicians to perform on the Capitol grounds for Live Earth, Al Gore’s series of global-warming awareness concerts. Concurrent Resolution 17 was introduced in the Senate yesterday by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine). Live Earth, which is scheduled for July 7th,…

The 6 Points Music Festival kicked off yesterday, appropriately on the 6th of the month, with shows at three locations around the D.C. area: Staccato in Adams Morgan, Austin Grill in Silver Spring, and a three band line-up that DCist caught last night at Clarendon Grill in Arlington. Having never seen a show at this venue, I was pleasantly surprised by the atmosphere, but frustrated by a sound issue that persisted throughout the night, which…

In 2005, The Hold Steady were the right band, with the right album, at just the right time. In an indie marketplace dominated by the self-absorbed strains of emo nation and a never-ending supply of post-punk outfits pimping ‘80s nostalgia, The Hold Steady stood out with a record both decidedly Midwestern and defiantly unconcerned with anything pertaining to hipness. What Green Day’s American Idiot does in exploring the political landscape, that disc, Separation Sunday, does…

So, the unofficial close of summer has come and gone in a spectacularly gorgeous weekend. Agree? But we all know that living in the District not only means our dog days linger longer than August, but also that the best of 2005 is yet to come, with fall weather making its slow and graceful entrance in the next few weeks. Our thoughts this past week have been preoccupied with the devastation in the Gulf Coast….

In last Sunday’s Post Magazine, the newspaper’s retiring rock critic David Segal described what he called the “great Live Concert moment.” He wrote: It’s about music, but it’s also about an experience that’s ephemeral and communal, that you share for a couple of hours with a bunch of strangers who, at some level, you feel like you know because they have the same idiotic glint in their eye when the lights come up. It’s…