9 November 2006
I had to double-check the dates: Hurricane Katrina was in August 2005 and the U2-Green Day collaboration tops our chart in November 2006. So, this charity single makes landfall over a year after the actual disaster (natural and man-made, or at least man-exacerbated) hit the people of New Orleans. I see, however, that their rendition of ‘The Saints Are Coming’ marked the first post-Katrina NFL game at the Louisiana Superdome, scene of shelter and suffering, in September 2006, where U2 and Green Day played it live. (The home team were the New Orleans Saints, you see.) They subsequently met up again and recorded this studio version. That explains that, then.
I’ll be brief. My apathy towards U2 is documented in the lower reaches of the ‘By score’ listing above. As for Green Day, I have no time for their alt-rock skater boy gurning or their corporate notion of punk. I didn’t know ‘The Saints Are Coming’ beforehand, and this hollow, laminated, self-important run-through gives me no great urge to dig out The Skids’ original. Lyrically it features imagery of bad weather, but tact isn’t the forte of either group. The doubling-up of personnel only serves to clutter the later stages of this thing with duplicate perfunctory riffing and drum fills. You can always depend on the crapness of U2 and Green Day. The proud, rich, idiosyncratic musical heritage of New Orleans deserves better than this streetcar named dire.
