Well, I’m not a dude, but yeah, I really should buy one of those adapters for my cassette deck. If for no other reason than there’s about a 30 mile stretch between here and the house we still own in Maryland where you can’t get any decent music!
At least I know I like the stuff on my mp3 player!
I do think I’d keep listening to the Magic station just driving around town, though; I kinda like being “forced” into being exposed to some of the newer stuff. When my middle (adult) daughter lived with me, she would expose me to new music (I lurves me some Lily Allen!), but now, it’s just my 9YO living with me, and her idea of “good music” is Miranda Cosgrove of iCarly fame, and The Plain White T’s! :eek:
On the plus side, at least she doesn’t like Miley Cyrus!
I’m so over Green Day. Yeah, when I was in middle school and Nimrod was the CD to have, sure, I liked them. But now? I mean, seriously, how many almost 40 year olds dress like emo teenagers? Grow up and get over it.
ETA: And I’m over Madonna, too. You’re 50. I don’t wanna see you in your underwear in public. I don’t want to see anyone’s undies in public, much less your old ass’s nasty panties.
Don’t even talk about emo unless you’ve heard Current, Falling Forward, Embrace, or Fugazi. The “emo” that everyone talks about now isn’t even emo at all, it’s just alt rock crap.
Maybe everyone should go back to calling the original emo music “emotional hardcore”. Trying to connect peoples’ notion of what emo is is fighting an uphill battle.
I really don’t see much of anything that would define them as traditional punk or emo. I’d call them alternative punk at most, and I have no beef whatsoever with anyone who calls them alternative rock or college rock. I don’t know where you got the notion that they were a latter-day Bad Religion or Dead Kennedys. (I feel exactly the same way about No Doubt, even more so since their angriest song ever, Just a Girl, is way more emo than punk.)
I’d go so far as to say as Boulevard of Broken Dreams gets a ton of airplay…it’s over 5 years old now, BTW…precisely because it’s so unusual for them and stands out. Much like Citizen King and Better Days, or for that matter Chumbawamba and Tubthumper.
As for selling out…well, admittedly I’ve never actually given a damn about this, but I would assume this only applies to bands that, y’know, actually had a rigid ethos to begin with. I mean, it’s not like anyone from Metallica said they WOULDN’T have a colossal hissy fit over Napster and sue the pants off of it. Applying this label to an alternative band is flat-out ridiculous…good lord, the whole freakin’ point is doing whatever you want! But hey, if anyone feels like going on a rant about how Green Day went from considerably-somewhat-kinda-sortaish mainstream to mostly-somewhat-kinda-sortaish mainstream, go ahead. I could use a good laugh.
Given the definition of punk being do what you want, damn the consequences, especially if it pisses people off wouldn’t selling out be the most punk think you could possibly do? But then you wouldn’t be punk… but you’re defying convention which makes you headasplode
Green Day themselves may not have had one, but the label and the scene they came out of certainly did. I was quite heavily involved in that scene (although I had already strayed from it by the time Green Day emerged, in their original incarnation as Sweet Children), and I still keep in touch with some people from it, and they are definitely viewed by many as having sold out. Their original label (Lookout) also sold out.
I don’t care personally though, I still like them.
I don’t want to threadshit - and since this thread is basically about why Green Day sucks, I won’t spoil the party.
But I will say that if you care more about whether a band fits into a genre instead of whether the music is good, perhaps there is a bit more to consider before you dismiss them. Boulevard, which did get a ton of airplay on a standalone basis, really doesn’t work well on a standalone basis - who’da thunk that radio would’ve gotten it wrong? But American Idiot as a whole is brilliant. Happy to go toe-to-toe with anyone who would argue differently.
I agree with you.
And I like their new album, as well.
Had to listen to it a few times to get into it, but it works for me.
In terms of what music I choose, being my age (55) can be humbling (it’s hard to keep track of new stuff) but so liberating: I find this or that, and just unconditionally love it, without worrying about genre, what Pitchfork says, or what the band looks like.
Well, you’re not spoiling my party. Clearly, since Boulevard is the only song I’ve heard from American Idiot, I didn’t have any subtext, so I just took it for what it sounded like: a whiny, spoiled brat. Waaaah, waaaaah, waaaaah. Obviously, in the context of the entire album, it takes on a different tone.
Hell, if I objected to being proven wrong, I’d have probably shot myself by now! Or at least stopped posting on the Dope!
As Green Day goes on I am sure they are putting out material as auditions for a Disney soundtrack gig. Is there a new Lion King straight to DVD being mooted?
Back in the late 70s/early 80s, we had no difficulty distiguishing between punk music (Ramones, Clash, etc.) and punks (Elvis Costello, Graham Parker, etc.).
Green Day said the same thing on their Behind the Music special about Dookie. That they took all the money the record label offered and made the album they were going to make anyway.
I actually knew that you weren’t, but I wasn’t paying attention to who I was replying to. :smack:
RE: Green Day
I bought their newest album from Amazon MP3 because I was impressed how they stood up to Walmart and refused to make a non-explicit lyrics version. The beginning of the album is good, but towards the middle I lose interest. Maybe I’ll give it another try since a few people in this thread have said that you need to take their albums as a whole.
Mm. Always learning something new on this board, I am. (San Francisco a bastion of rock and roll, who woulda thunk… )
Just like to remind everyone are different kinds of punk (so your head doesn’t keep asploding and whatnot). Traditional punk is the rebellious, middle-finger-to-authority, smash-the-state one. Pop punk is mostly about having fun and not taking anything too seriously. New wave is an offshoot of traditional punk, more mainstream, tending more toward lewdness than rage. Then there’s alternative punk, which is…well, whatever the band says it is. Against all flags. Too blue for the red and too red for the blue. Which appears to be the path Green Day took, and yeah, absolutely good on them.
Re. BoBD, there have been coutnless instances of artists badly misrepresented by a megahit. Remember Chris DeBurgh and Lady In Red? He did that as a tribute to his wife (whom he later divorced, BTW). Of COURSE it’s going to be slow and melodic and romantic! And completely like the John Parr-esque macho pop that was by far the majority of his work. Or Sixpence None The Richer. Know what they do to the exlusion of nearly everything else? Gentle, acoustic folk hymnals. I’m pretty sure There She Goes was a prank that went horribly wrong. In Green Day’s case, however, it’s a case of not being able to be painted by one or even three hits. Where does Minority place them? Wake Me Up When September Ends? 21 Guns?
As for the Disney soundtrack, well, after #35 on the list I provided, that’s certainly no big deal.
Green Day aren’t from San Francisco, but from the East Bay. You might think this is nitpicking but there was a very significant difference between the two punk scenes at the time (and probably still is for all I know). The East Bay bands always leaned less toward hardcore and more toward pop-punk, or what you refer to as “alternative punk”. A lot of what Green Day are still doing would have fit in pretty comfortably with the Berkeley scene of the late 80s, although on cheaper equipment.
Rancid came out of that scene too (Tim Armstrong and Matt Freeman were members of Operation Ivy, probably the best-loved band of that era) but they alienated their old friends and supporters even more than Green Day did.
My takes is that this is deliberate. I seem to recall an interview with Billie Joe Armstrong where he stated this outright. The entire album is a progression through a character’s (‘Jesus of Suburbia’) emotional state, and this song is the character’s whining.
I am biased, but I too heartily recommend listening to the album in its entirety. There’s very little whining on it. To me it was a surprising, angry and brave cry against the prevalent attitudes in post-9/11 America, and really captures the silent minority anti-Bush Zeitgeist of the mid-naughties. Seriously, I think that album a work of brilliance.
I would like to be the first to welcome the OP to 2004. If you liked American Idiot, you might also like 21st Century Breakdown…when you hear it in 2015.
Ok, first of all, no band after the late 70s / early to mid 80s are “punk”. They are Post Punk or Punk Pop, starting with Green Day and Blink 182 in the mid 90s. The Ramones are sort of the bridge between old style real Punk and modern Punk Pop.
As far as I’m concerned there are few musical differences between Emo and Pop Punk. The best way I can describe it is is Punk Pop like Blink 182, Sum 51, Lit and Green Day are more “American Pie soundtrack” and Emo bands like Panic! At the Disco, Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance are more “Gossip Girl soundtrack”
AFAIAC you may catagorize Good Charlotte wherever you feel comfortible. The fact that you admit to liking them is a big first step.
No offence but that sounds pretty silly to me. What happened in the early to mid 80s to make the label “punk” obsolete?
First of all, “post punk” is a widely-recognised term for a particular genre of music that had its peak in the early 1980s… it’s a bit nebulous but examples would include Joy Division, the Birthday Party, Killing Joke. Absolutely nobody would put Green Day or Blink 182 into this category.
Secondly, do you realise you’ve left out an entire decade? What label would you put on the punk-like music that came out between the mid 80s and mid 90s?
Third, Green Day started well before the mid 90s anyway.
:eek:
The Ramones are old style real punk. They’re where it all began.
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