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Live Review
by SashaS
3-2-2003
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| Joel Madden of Good Charlotte pop-punks |
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Live: Good Charlotte
Mean Fiddler, London
Sunday, February 2, 2003
Good Charlotte, the punk-upstarts rock!
Punk rock or punk-rock? What’s your diet? Some of you might have thought that the modernized genre was already overcrowded but don’t worry, rejoice! There is more and the next one to entertain is Good Charlotte, from Maryland (near Washington DC), USA. Good looking and with songs to match, attitude and enterprising enough to have embarked upon building business interests before departing teenagehood. (But, that’s beside a point and that’s where we’ll leave it. Still, for further info, surf to the News section.)
Good Charlotte have already shifted enough (1 million) albums in their homeland to be proud owners of a first of their platinum discs. It is for their second album, ‘The Young And The Hopeless’, while the first, self-titled debut remains unreleased in Europe despite having earned gold disc (1/2 million sales) back home. Led by twins Joel and Benji Madden, this combo looks the part and certainly sounds it. The audience’s response is moshingly mad even for the songs from the old album but the ceiling has a problem remaining in one piece when the band hits the stride with ‘Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous’.
There are dynamics, moves, angst, poses, proclamations, furious riffing, sentiments, general ‘revolt’ and bonhomie but nothing to move any posts. Good Charlotte is a band that celebrates the validated, the kind the critics love-to-hate because it infringes on their youth’s soundtrack without actually sounding anything similar. Good Charlotte play punk-rock for their generation (that appears to be nearer a single-digit age than teenagehood) with a show that’s a very confident and solid affair.
If Green Day, Blink I82 and Sum 41 fit the bill in your mind, then this is it. If you happen to think that The Sex Pistols were the deal, than this is no-way hardline. Us, old-skolars, usually refer to this as ‘pop-punk’. No, nothing wrong with it but it just isn’t bona fide. It simply doesn’t evoke the same emotions in these bones and giving it a cred of punk isn’t really doing them a favour, is it?
Despite the second part of the current album’s title, this is great fun.
SashaS
3-2-2003
Good Charlotte’s album ‘The Young And The Hopeless’ is available now on Epic
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