Green Day’s chart-topping new album has all the trappings of a rock opera: big ideas, star-crossed characters and an epic song cycle. But the art form pioneered by The Who and The Kinks is notoriously uneven. In another Soundcheck Smackdown, we debate rock operas. Later: Cardigans frontwoman Nina Persson joins us to play live with her band A Camp.
Guests:
A Camp
Rock Operas: Brilliant or Bloated?
Forty years ago, The Who set the tone for rock operas with the album "Tommy." Everyone from Queensrÿche to The Decemberists have attempted this rite of passage, with varying levels of success. Now, Green Day is topping the charts with 21st Century Breakdown, an album about two characters and their ...
A Camp
Nina Persson fronted Swedish popsters The Cardigans and scored a hit with the ridiculously catchy "Lovefool." With her main band on hiatus, she joins us to perform live with A Camp, her side project with husband and Shudder to Think guitarist Nathan Larson.
Rock opera - I know it when I see it. I think...
Rock has become so good at grand, anthemic statements - the kind that can fill a stadium with 60,000 screaming fans - that it already operates on a grand opera-like stage. So you might well ask, why would anyone bother to make a "rock opera." But rockers have been trying for over 40 years to do just that. Now, The Who's Tommy is marking its 40th anniversary as still the best-known "Rock Opera"; and Green Day is getting raves for the new 21st Century Breakdown, also billed as a rock opera.
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