A Green Day Fan Site

Green Day have often named Husker Du and the Replacements as influences, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard them mention the Descendents, though those are arguably the three bands most responsible for pioneering the style of catchy, tuneful punk that Green Day became masters of. But, as this insightful and wonderfully written article comparing Green Day and the Descendents points out, “without the Descendents there never would have been a genre of melodic pop-punk for Green Day to capitalize upon. They came first, like it or not, influential or not.”

Although I obviously love Green Day more, I think the Descendents are an amazing band, easily one of my favorites. Even though I’m 44 years old, a woman, and I actually like my parents, I can still sing along to Parents — I’m a boy and not a toy, I will kill and I will destroy — with utter conviction and fury at the unfairness of it all! And Cool To Be You, which was written some 20 years later, has all of the same raw frustration and sarcasm: Must be pretty cool to know you belong. Lately I haven’t been able to get that song out of my head. But to get a real feel for the Descendents, you have to read the article. Nothing I could say would come close.

Although Green Day may rub the author the wrong way, and in the end his preference is for the Descendents over Green Day, his praise is so shining I think it transcends whatever reservations he may have:

The fact of the matter is, Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, and Tré Cool are all amazing musicians. Although not as raw as the Descendents, Green Day’s notes are played with greater precision, sung with cleaner technique, and arranged with more compositional attention. With a catalog of doldrum rantings as well as worldly relevant lyrics, and a tight, addictively energetic live performance, I might even petition Green Day as the greatest three-piece alt-rock band in history (yes, better than those guys from Seattle).

As for the criticisms he has of Green Day, I actually find it hard to disagree with them. Tre Cool does have a very goofy and silly name, and though he wears it well as a very goofy and silly guy, if Larry Livermore hadn’t picked out his nickname when Tre was still just a kid, “Tre Cool” may not be what he would be calling himself today, who knows?

I also have to admit that the eye makeup and gelled hairdos of the American Idiot era were always a little strange to me. I think of that look as a package deal that came with the theme and marketing of that particular album, but it doesn’t define Green Day’s image in my mind. When I think of Billie Joe, he still looks like this:

I suppose it’s because that’s when I first fell in love with their music. That photo is from 1994. But, come to think of it, that’s exactly what Billie Joe looks like today:

This photo is from 2008, playing with Pinhead Gunpowder. (Photo by Kristina Siegler.) He’s even got the same kind of necklace! Same hair color, same scruffiness, same style of shirt… People love to moan about how much Green Day has changed. I’m not sure if they have at all!

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For those who may not be familiar with the Descendents, here’s a few sample songs. I wholeheartedly agee with the article it would be worth your while to pick up a copy of Somery.

Descendents - Bikeage

Descendents - Get The Time

Descendents - Parents

Descendents - Cool To Be You

Although it ’s nothing more than a summing up of previously reported information and some speculation and thoughts from various sources, the article published by NME on Green Day’s “comeback” contains some interesting food for thought. Reading it, I find myself wishing that some predictions will turn out to be truer than others. [The scans are on GDA]

I love what Ben Myers says: “I think they may retreat into something less commercial. They seem like a band that are sometimes uncomfortable with being a big stadium rock act.” I suppose it’s purely selfish to hope that they will do something quieter, put out an album that won’t make such a huge splash, but being a fan of a hugely popular band like Green Day can be exhausting. Even a simple task like buying tickets to see them play becomes an ordeal fraught with anxiety, because if you’re not exactly on the ball the show will be sold out in seconds. But I also love the idea of the band getting closer to its roots, or even creating entirely new and unexpected shoots, both of which they have been doing in so many ways, with a seemingly inexhaustible resourcefulness for reinventing their relationship to their music and their public. I don’t know if it would be possible to carry over some of the playfulness and coyness of the Foxboro Hot Tubs, both in terms of the music itself and how it was released, or the unassuming humility of putting on intimate pub shows with Pinhead Gunpowder with very little publicity, to something that has the actual Green Day name on it, but it would be lovely. At least it would be lovely to me, and probably to some of you reading this, but Green Day is many things to many people, and they’re a constant moving target: you can’t pin them down to being any one thing.

It may be frustrating to me, and maybe to some of you, to read the complaints of people who don’t want to hear about the Foxboro Hot Tubs because they want their Green Day dammit! Personally, I love that they’re doing the Foxboro Hot Tubs. But I’m just as guilty of wanting Green Day to be what I want and have come to expect, and just as ornery in being unwilling to give up my own perception of what I think the band is best at. Lucky for us, they don’t give a shit about conforming to anyone’s expectations — mine, yours, or anyone else’s — so they keep doing their thing, and it’s always great.

Personally, what I love most about Green Day, other than their ability to write great tunes, of course — I don’t think anyone who is a fan would disagree with that — is the statement that NME closes the article with: their “talent for cutting through bullshit.” It’s not unique to Green Day: bullshit detection is one of the cornerstones of punk rock, but I was mostly unfamiliar with punk rock when I first heard Green Day, and their unwavering honesty and rejection of falsehood and pretense was the clearest sign I got from them, and it was like a blast of air that cut through so much of the confusion that is created by the clamor of voices in our culture vying for attention, from advertising to politics to media spin.

Which is why I welcomed the overt political content of songs like American Idiot and Holiday. To me, they are a natural part of Green Day’s passion for exposing falsehood and spin, and telling the truth as they see it in a way that is blunt and forthright, as well as artistically and musically elegant. I don’t see it as any kind of departure from their passion for being honest and airing their strongest feelings, whether they’re singing about the state of the world or their own state of mind. NME continues the debate, which I find tiresome, on whether their next album will be “political.” To me, everything they have done has been political. Telling the truth is a political act. Refusing to lie, even when it means admitting your own vulnerabilities so others can see that they are not alone with their confusion, is in itself liberating and subversive. And writing songs about the things that strongly affect you necessarily includes openly political themes among the many options available, if you’re at all conscious of the world around you, as well as other, more subtle and personal themes.

I suppose it’s not surprising for a major music magazine to see everything in terms of trends, but NME writes about the end of the Bush era as if that’s the end of worrying about the state of the world. Or, rather, they seem to be implying, which is somewhat insulting to the depth of Green Day’s political statements, that Billie Joe’s beef was with Bush and not with the broader, underlying political issues. “Having found his voice with the neocon-baiting American Idiot, if regime change comes to the US, will Billie Joe be able to channel his voice into something entirely different?” The problems will still be much the same, so there’s no need to worry about where Billie Joe will find material for his passion and outrage. The open question is how will he channel it and what will Green Day’s artistic statement be, not whether or not it will deal openly with global politics, which by itself is a narrow, and to me rather uninteresting, question.

Here’s a cool little memoir, worth reading in its entirety. It’s about listening to Dookie at 11 years old and enjoying it from the perspective of a well-adjusted 11 year old girl who didn’t necessarily relate to the fairly dark themes of the songs, but loved the album anyway: “To me, the album meant that me and my two 7th grade best friends could jump around madly and write love letters to Billie Joe, Tre Cool and Mike. And maybe if there were any lessons in Dookie it was ‘Kristin, don’t take yourself so seriously! Let loose!’” But she also realizes now that there is more to the album than what was obvious to her, or mattered to her, at that specific time in her life. She writes:

“I appreciate it now as a real punk album - one of the very few mainstream punk albums from the 90s, and I’m actually glad that songs like “Coming Clean” (about Billie Joe’s bisexuality) were around for kids to identify with. And I think it’s fantastic that they actually played this stuff on the radio, because it’s pretty risque. The songs are passionate without being practiced, accessible while still being artistic.”

What she’s writing about is one of my favorite themes about Green Day’s music: that it can be appreciated for so many different reasons by so many different people: even the same person can get more and different things out of listening to Green Day at different stages of his or her life. Saying that the songs on Dookie are “accessible while still being artistic” sums it up nicely, and I think it’s one of the things that are really unusual about Green Day, that they not only are committed to creating serious art but that they are also willing to have their work remain completely accessible, even to someone as young as 11, or younger.

I like the closing paragraph, especially the acknowledgement, which I completely agree with, that whatever the reason why Green Day appeals to any given person, it’s as important as any other: “For me, writing “I *heart* Billie Joe” on my Jansport with whiteout was about as deep as it got with these guys. And, as I said, I think THAT response is also important and part of Green Day’s appeal. Their appeal was their talent for being serious and fun, and serious fun (see what I did there?).”

While I was writing this, I read a bit of news that I think is appropriate to the topic: country singer and guitarist Glen Campbell, who is 72, will be putting out a CD of covers this summer, and it includes his version of Green Day’s Good Riddance. See, Green Day appeals to all ages!

It always tickles me when aging punks pay respect to Green Day. Every mall kid who loves to snort that Green Day aren’t punk might do well to listen to punks who were around before their parents met, and who, despite the tendency to be dismayed by the state of punk today — nothing like the good old days, right? — still hold up Green Day as an example of punk being alive and well, and still producing music of quality and power.

I came across an article about a new documentary on The Clash. The film itself sounds really interesting. I would especially love to see the clips of the guys from The Clash being interviewed by mainstream TV reporters:

Also included are two NBC television interviews from 1981, “The Tomorrow Show” with Tom Snyder, and “Live at Five” with Sue Simmons. The stilted banter between the clueless inquisitors and the laconic Londoners makes for occasionally uncomfortable viewing.

“They were pretty alien to what was going on in America. It was part of the attraction to the younger people, but to the old established guard it must have been quite shocking,” Letts explained.

But I liked reading the filmmaker’s words about Green Day, which seem especially strong given his bleak view the state of punk today:

“The culture’s got pretty soft and conservative these days, I think. To me, it feels like punk rock never happened, man. In the punk rock days we used to say, ‘Never trust anybody over 30.’ And sometimes when I look around I think maybe I shouldn’t trust anybody under 30!”

He goes on to say:

Just as Elvis Presley ignited a revolution 25 years earlier by shaking his hips, it’s a reminder that things move in cycles. Letts is not totally depressed about the state of punk rock. He was particularly impressed with California trio Green Day’s recent Grammy-winning concept album “American Idiot.”

“I do have faith,” he said. “It is like The Force in ‘Star Wars.’ You can’t stop it, And just when you think things are going really bad, it will erupt somewhere, I hope.”

And speaking of aging punks, my boyfriend, who is 45, is in Houston right now visiting with his aging punk rocker friends. He talked to an old comrade who was in the band The Pain Teens, who told him that when they played in Minneapolis in 1992 at a club called First Avenue, Green Day opened for them. He recalled a fond memory of Billie Joe spitting a loogie way up into the air and catching it in his mouth…

Yay! Photos of Tre Cool and Mike Dirnt at the charity golf tournament for MuST, that they attended and sponsored on April 21, have been posted. You can see all the photos by going to the MuST site and clicking on the photo, or by clicking here.

Keep checking the MuST site, as they have been adding photos and links.

Tre is looking goofy as always — love the leisure pants, the plaid sleeves, and the polo shirt with the giant alligator — and Mike is looking natty, as he usually does. Here’s a few of the pics. The first one is of Tre posing with the guys from NOFX.

Diablo Magazine has a nice article, from its May 2008 issue, about the eco-friendly boutique that Adrienne Armstrong and her partner Jamie Kidson opened in Oakland last September. The store seems like a real labor of love, selling only environmentally friendly products, many of them made by small cooperatives and some benefiting diverse charities, and it’s all put together with a great eye for beauty and design, judging from the photos.

“Sitting in the loft above their Rockridge shop, Atomic Garden, Adrienne Armstrong and Jamie Kidson are surrounded by sewing machines and clothing samples. Artwork by their children decorates the walls as well as the boutique downstairs, which stocks green items exclusively. Armstrong and Kidson want to build a successful, stylish brand that does right by their roles as moms and citizens of the planet.”

             
Photos by Stephanie Rausser. [ Source ]

There are more photos of the store in earlier posts at More Ways to Waste Time.

The Foxboro Hot Tubs have unexpectedly graced us with another new song. It’s enough to make your head spin. It’s like a creative energy that has taken on a life of its own. The depth and breadth of Green Day’s output never ceases to amaze. I don’t even know whether to be surprised anymore.

I’ve never had any doubt about Green Day’s amazing talent. The first album I heard was Dookie, and I thought it was absolutely great. Then I heard Kerplunk and 39/Smooth and I thought they were great too. I never bought the notion that they were simply aggressive pop-punk nuggets whose appeal was limited to amped-up kids. There was always something about their work that was special, with a perfection, power and unvarnished honesty and emotional directness that other bands never seemed to quite match.

I studied visual art, where directness and brutal honesty is considered a high virtue, partly because it’s so hard to achieve. It’s a lot easier to be arty than it is to be completely truthful, and still come up with something affecting and wonderful. In music, there seems to instead be skepticism with work that appears to be simple and unpolished, like Green Day’s early work, but I think raw power and sincerity are much more elusive, in music as well as in art, than they get credit for. So I wasn’t surprised that musicians who could produce something as good as Dookie could come out with American Idiot, which had all of their early strengths plus a breadth of feeling and creativity that many thought was unexpected coming from Green Day.

That they would turn their creative energies to something like the Foxboro Hot Tubs is not something that I would ever have guessed, but it makes perfect sense. When they made American Idiot, they said they didn’t want to follow their previous work with another album that was just an extension of Warning or Nimrod. So why would they follow American Idiot with something that sounds like American Idiot? Especially when there’s such a wide open field of styles and ideas out there that a band with the talent of Green Day can romp through and make their own. There’s been a lot of speculation about the pressure that must come from having to follow a huge success like American Idiot, so why not just do something else, at least for the time being? It’s genius.

I don’t know that the Foxboro Hot Tubs has the depth of American Idiot. I don’t think it does. But it’s pretty great stuff nonetheless. My completely un-objective barometer is how it makes me feel. American Idiot is so good I’m kind of in awe of it when I listen to it. It almost makes me feel shy. The Foxboro Hot Tubs doesn’t match that feeling, but it brings out some of the same sense of wonder.

I don’t know whether Stop Drop and Roll can be considered “Green Day’s next record,” which is what the band members themselves have said, but I don’t really think that’s an important question. This is what they’re working on. And it’s pretty damn good. So who cares?

It will be interesting to see if there will be a tour, or interviews and other public appearances, for the Foxboro Hot Tubs. Even the proposed video for The Pedestrian is apparently not a sure thing yet. I’d love to see a tour obviously, but even the way this was done, without the massive publicity that surrounded the release of American Idiot, is a wonderful breath of fresh air. We got a lot of great music without a lot of hype or commercialization. Green Day not only succeed in constantly reinventing themselves musically, they even manage to reinvent the public image of the band and how the band and the music relate to its fans.

Update: According to info obtained by netty on GDC, the video is not a sure thing yet. The director has been asked to do a “treatment” of it, which is a preliminary step.

Well, it seems to be official. Apparently there will be a video for the Foxboro Hot Tubs’ song The Pedestrian. The announcement was posted by Video Static, and it also lists the director and the production company, which makes it seem like it’s pretty much a done deal. This is the info on Video Static:

BOOKED: Foxboro Hot Tubs - Graydon Sheppard, director
artist: Foxboro Hot Tubs
song: “The Pedestrian”
label: Jingle Town
director(s): Graydon Sheppard
production co: The Revolver Film Co
rep: Labuda Management

The video’s director, Graydon Sheppard, posted the image below on his blog on the same day, with no explanation except for the headline “Stay Tuned.” Related? Hmm, no idea. There certainly seems to be a 60s theme to the image… Okay, it probably has nothing to do with the video, but it’s a cool picture nevertheless.

[ Source ]
German magazine Bravo has an article on Pinhead Gunpowder. As far as I can tell, the orange button says, “A sensation: Billie Joe plays for six dollars!” which struck me as kind of funny: oh my, a big rock star slumming it, in a dive! Imagine that!

If you speak German, which I don’t, you can read the whole article here.

In spite of the easy labels they’ve been given over the years, which prior to American Idiot could be pretty dismissive, Green Day doesn’t sound like any other band. The bands that approximate their sound, like blink 182 or Sum 41 are just imitators. They’re not all bad, but they only skim the surface of what Green Day does so well. And even bands that are more appropriate comparisons, like the Bouncing Souls, or that were around when Green Day got their start, like the Mr. T Experience, aren’t what Green Day is: inventive, edgy, tight, emotional, aggressive but sweet, and always with perfect, catchy melodies.

A lot of pop punk is silly and nerdy, and self-deprecating in a way that ends up feeling self-conscious. Green Day is more serious, in spite of all their goofiness and antics. The music always has a very serious intent. Part of the intent is delivering one’s heart on a tray, but instead of doing it in a bleak way, which is the usual way to serve up woe and mournfulness, Green Day expresses a dark view of life with catchy hooks and happy melodies, so the seriousness is not as obvious. I think the Foxboro Hot Tubs delivers strong emotions too, but in a more playful way. It’s not pure silliness like The Network, which is creative and fun in its own right but not really a favorite of mine (though I think Spike is a brilliant little gem of audio theater).

Recreating a distinctive sixties sound is more like an artistic experiment than a chance to dig deeply into one’s own personal demons. There’s a kind of distance you feel listening to the Foxboro Hot Tubs, unlike with Green Day songs that rip your heart right out. Some of the lyrics are very sixties, even using actual lines from famous songs, like “ride Sally ride,” or words that seem corny today, like “baby,” which is maybe a timeless classic. But the clever plays on words are very Billie Joe, and so is the way they lay emotions bare, even though the storylines seem to be about fictional characters, more like a scratchy, faded movie than autobiography.

But what I really love about the Foxboro Hot Tubs is the music, the kick ass instrumental breaks, like in Sally and 27th Ave Shuffle, or the cool meandering groove of a song like Red Tide, which goes so perfectly with the aching vocals. The more I listen to the songs, the more I love them. (I’m not crazy about every single song, but no need to split hairs…) The breadth of Billie Joe’s musical talent never stops blowing me away. What more gems does he have up his sleeve?

In American Idiot there were influences and even some riffs taken from the history of rock and roll, but that’s part of the album’s genius: reinventing a stew out of familiar flavors and making something completely original from the mix. In the Foxboro Hot Tubs the borrowing is up front, and the reinvention doesn’t stray far from its influences, but the result is fresh anyway. Sally sounds like The Monkees’ version of Stepping Stone, and Alligator sounds like The Kinks’ You Really Got Me, as was pointed out to me, and Dark Side of Night is an awful lot like The Zombies’ She’s Not There, but you don’t listen to these songs and think you’ve heard them before. You kind of think, holy shit, how does something this good come out of territory that was already explored and thoroughly trampled forty years ago?

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