The Friday Canon: GREEN DAY

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

It's the Peter Pans of Punk! They've had 20 UK Top 40 singles, and you get to pick your favourite SIX out of this lot:

[Poll #1055183]
Blondie: (link)
1. Heart Of Glass
2. Atomic
3. Hanging On The Telephone
4. Rapture
5. Call Me
6. Denis
7. Picture This
8. Sunday Girl
=9. Maria
=9. The Tide Is High

Comments

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Horrible 12-yr-old boy music. 12-yr-old boys are the worst.

I was so, so unutterably disappointed in Venus Williams when she admitted to liking them. I always thought she was the cooler Williams sister but was totally wrong. Serena hangs out with Brandy and Paris Hilton, Venus...likes Green Day.

TRUFAX

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

the_roofdog and I did a 'version' of Brain Stew in our old band. Happy memories :)

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Haha I guessed your reaction would be something like this.

However I like to think that without Green Day there would be no Busted. They allowed teenage guitar bands to have a sense of humour!

[catsgomiaow.livejournal.com]

I quite like boulevard of broken dreams til i realised that it has the same chords as bloody Wonderwall.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I kind of hate Busted as well for v similar reasons! I mean they're not as bad as Green Day but there's still something about them which is a bit unhygienic.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

I think you'll find that was The Damned.

[miss-newham.livejournal.com]

I learned to play it in guitar class last year and then our teacher made us listen to a horrible mashup of BOBD and Wonderwall! I still like both songs though...

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

i only know one of these songs (by title)

[sbp.livejournal.com]

Unhygiene is the most important thing in teenage guitar pop! Something you can rebel against your parents with but not too far....

[sbp.livejournal.com]

Um I think liking Green Day >>> hanging out with Paris Hilton.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

This is probably the band that has passed me by most totally. I sort of got the impression they were a good thing for the world (judging mostly by the people who couldnt stand them back in the mid-90s) but without ever feeling any kind of need to hear the records. i.e. this is the start of my spiritual dadness.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

It does annoy me that this band are lauded, sell loads, are/were v popular with American and British teenagers because it feels so anti-progressive...but at least they made some sort of political comment on 'American Idiot'. I liked 'Longview' quite a bit at the time tho (Billy Bob or whatever his name is watching Roobarb & Custard on TV in the video :)

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Things wot annoy me about Green Day:
1. Offspring beef. I don't think the two bands ever had anything remotely resembling beef but at my school, aged thirteen, you were one or the other and I was the other.
2. Ubiquity
3. Despite it's severe case of #2, 'Basketcase' is probably one of my favourite songs
4. Billie Joe's voice
5. People expecting me to like American Idiot because I am politicised
6. People who think owning American Idiot makes them political genii

I am aware only one of the six pertains to Green Day themselves but sometimes things are too situationalised to take objectively, innit.

OH

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Actually the most annoying thing about them is that the first two minutes of 'Jesus of Suburbia' are FVCKING AMAZING. Then they totally screw it up.

Re: TRUFAX

[the-roofdog.livejournal.com]

Most of our influences came from the Godzilla soundtrack album.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Avril Lavigne at least looks like she showers occasionally!

[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

You would really like Dookie I think!

They have one good album, which came out when I was 15 and obviously sounded like the greatest record ever made at the time because it was mostly about being sulky and wanking, and everything else is rubbish. Especially when they went 'political'.

[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

Actually if I am being totally 100% honest then I would probably say that, factoring in enjoyment at the time, Basket Case is probably in my top five singles of the 90s.

[mcarratala.livejournal.com]

I've often wondered how much Billie Joe's weird enunciation is descended from Joe Strummer's rather strange accent which I think owes an awful lot to Harold Steptoe.

[datura800.livejournal.com]

'Dookie' and 'American Idiot' are great albums. And Billie-Jo would get it.

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

They have two good albums. 'American Idiot' really was very very good.

Re: TRUFAX

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

MOAR JAMIROQUAI

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

The whole 'political' thing is a strange beast. On the one hand you have dumb rock bands trying to gain some credibility through a few well-placed lyrics to compensate for their lack of musical experimentation. On the other hand, if you just want to say something and you just happen to be in a band, what better way of getting your message across? Dudes are far more likely to pay attention to your latest song than some press conference about world peace etc.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I didn't realise there was any Offspring/Green Day beef! If chaps at my school liked one, they generally liked the other too. Even the hardcore metaller kids liked Green Day.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

I don't know if GD's statements about Iraq really go beyond 'sigh, isn't this a shame' but it just seemed to be them and the Dixie Chicks making any kind of statement about it at all as mainstream artists over there - unless i've forgotten someone equally big. that was a bit frustrating.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

blimey

[avv.livejournal.com]

I only know 'Basketcase' of these songs, I think. My single Greenday anecdote was that they played Leeds festival in 1999 or 2000 I think and everyone at school was there and said it was totally incredible!!! because they set fire to the drumkit!!!!, but I missed it 'cos i had only just discovered ABBA and was in a tent watching BJORN AGAIN and it was the fucking best.

[koganbot]

Offspring is so much more fucking better. Until they got worse.

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

i have dookie on NUMBERED GREEN VINYL!

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

hahaha EXACTLY. as long as getting worse = AFTER pretty fly ;)

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

as does BJ's expression in the photo above...

[justfanoe.livejournal.com]

I was a 12 year old boy when Dookie came out and I loved it. Hypothesis proved.

[koganbot]

Definitely.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure it went anywhere other than my school. The Offspring were me and my best friends' favourite band and Green Day were some kids in the other half of the year's favourites and somehow it ended up as 'my punk band is better than yours' playground arguments. It's something about the fact 'Americana' came out about the same time as the one with 'Warning' on it, I think, it seemed to have lodged in our brains as making them mutually exclusive.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

It faintly distressed me a few years ago when Green Day managed to bring out American Idiot and The Offspring produced 'Can't Repeat'. *facecarpet*

claims

[mooxyjoo.livejournal.com]

1. green day are more american (despite fake accent) than yall are able to appreciate.
2. they owe much of their importance to their moment in history and their special status as unifiers of different social groups (of teenagers and college students, at the time of their breakthrough). i think jess harvell said somewhere, if no one else did, that 'everyone' in our generation had a copy of 'dookie'.

Re: claims

[mooxyjoo.livejournal.com]

that's more like the 'everyone' who had a copy of 'the chronic' than the 'everyone' who had a copy of 'nevermind'.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I like that Offspring is getting love in this thread. I always liked Green Day OK, though I don't think their recent stuff has been very good. But Smash destroys everything ever as far as growing up with safely angry boys goes. (Some of us WERE twelve when this stuff came out, Lex, if by twelve you mean like ten. Or maybe eleven, I forget.)