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 :)

[catsgomiaow.livejournal.com]

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

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

i only know one of these songs (by title)

[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.

[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.

[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.

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'.

[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.)