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align=center><B style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: "><FONT face="Times New Roman">Beck’s ‘American Idiot’
welcomes a new kind of tension</FONT></SPAN></B></P>
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style="FONT-FAMILY: "><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"><FONT
face="Times New Roman"></FONT></SPAN></SPAN><SPAN
style='FONT-FAMILY: ; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi'></SPAN> </P>
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align=center><SPAN
style='FONT-FAMILY: ; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi'><FONT
face="Times New Roman">Bob Abelman</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal"
align=center><I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><SPAN
style='FONT-FAMILY: ; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi'><FONT
face="Times New Roman">Cleveland Jewish News, The News Herald, The Morning
Journal</FONT></SPAN></I></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal"
align=center><SPAN
style='FONT-FAMILY: ; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi'><FONT
face="Times New Roman">Member, International Association of Theatre
Critics</FONT></SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: "><BR><FONT face="Times New Roman">According to a 1994 issue
of Rolling Stone magazine, the underground band Green Day was comprised of
“snotty little Berkeley, California, punk kids… three cheeky monkeys who came to
raid the bar and disappear.”<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Raid they did but disappear they did
not.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Earlier this year, the band
was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: "><FONT face="Times New Roman"></FONT></SPAN> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: "><FONT face="Times New Roman">One reason was that, in 2004,
they produced the Grammy Award-winning concept album “American Idiot,” which
followed<SPAN
style="BACKGROUND-IMAGE: none; BACKGROUND-REPEAT: repeat; BACKGROUND-ATTACHMENT: scroll; BACKGROUND-POSITION: 0% 0%; COLOR: "><FONT
color=#252525> the story of Johnny, a young and angry anti-hero who chooses to
leave home for the city to find his voice as a musician and to find a girl, but
finds instead drugs and crippling </FONT></SPAN>malaise<SPAN
style="BACKGROUND-IMAGE: none; BACKGROUND-REPEAT: repeat; BACKGROUND-ATTACHMENT: scroll; BACKGROUND-POSITION: 0% 0%; COLOR: "><FONT
color=#252525>.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>His best friends
choose other paths with equally disastrous
results.</FONT></SPAN></FONT></SPAN></P>
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style="FONT-FAMILY: ; BACKGROUND-IMAGE: none; BACKGROUND-REPEAT: repeat; BACKGROUND-ATTACHMENT: scroll; BACKGROUND-POSITION: 0% 0%; COLOR: "><FONT
color=#252525 face="Times New Roman"></FONT></SPAN> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal"><FONT
face="Times New Roman"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: ; BACKGROUND-IMAGE: none; BACKGROUND-REPEAT: repeat; BACKGROUND-ATTACHMENT: scroll; BACKGROUND-POSITION: 0% 0%; COLOR: "><FONT
color=#252525>The </FONT></SPAN><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: ">magazine referred to
the album as “a 57-minute politically charged epic” written at a time when there
was little socially conscious discourse in pop music.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The review goes on to note that the band
“may rail hard, loud and long against the hysteria of a paranoid country
compromised and commoditized by a media monolith, but they also lament, sweetly,
like romantic poets from the days of yore, about the way the innocent never seem
to last.”<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal"><SPAN
style="COLOR: "><BR></SPAN><FONT face="Times New Roman"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: ">And so, too, does the 90-minute punk rock opera that
resulted from this work, which hit the stage in 2010 when there was little
socially conscious discourse in Broadway musicals (the previous year’s Tony
Award for best musical went to “Billy Elliot”).<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It has just made its triumphant,
full-frontal assault on the Beck Center for the Arts in Lakewood.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><BR><BR></SPAN><SPAN
style='FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: ; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi'>For
the rest of this review, go to:<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN></SPAN></FONT><A
style='href: "http://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/columnists/"'><FONT
style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt"
color=#0000ff>http://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/columnists/</FONT></A></P></DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>