It's interesting, how tied to political moments in my childhood Green Day is. Good Riddance is married to the first half of 1998, when I first started watching SNL, which never missed an opportunity to reference Monica Lewinsky. I got into them in earnest with their greatest hits album, which came out two months after 9/11. American Idiot came out in September 2004, the year I turned 16, grew disillusioned with the world thanks to a healthy diet of Michael Moore and George Carlin, and ended the four-year process of coming out that December. However you feel about that album now, it really was everything I was thinking and feeling at that moment.
Seeing them play Dookie and American Idiot in full this August. Can't wait.
This, but substitute Rage Against the Machine for my musical/political awakening.
I also was listening to a steady diet of grunge and west coast rap in my later elementary school years but not really identifying with the lyrics outside of "they are saying bad words and this sounds good." Then RATM's first album came out and blew me out of the fucking water.
I had nice, liberal ex-hippie parents, so there were some seeds there of radical politics, but the lyrics on that album and the anger behind them opened up a whole new world to me. I started researching the references in their songs and before long I was a pissed off 12 year old Marxist.
My political beliefs cooled off a bit as I got into high school (mostly so I could fit in and not estrange people at parties with heavy conversations about how America was actually a fascist state) and then in college I tried to take a more nuanced approach so I could appear reasonable and more palatable to my professors and classmates (econ and poly sci double major).
In the 20-ish years since I graduated though, I've come back around to the way of thinking of 12 year old me, and I give that version of me credit for being fucking right. Everything he saw has come to fruition and then some. I guess sometimes it pays to stick to your gut and not overthink and rationalize the world around you.
I've managed to keep steady mid/upper manager-level employment mostly by being in a field (manufacturing) where politics is rarely discussed and corporate speak is less prevalent, but my lack of tolerance for prevaricating and general bullshit has hurt me in advancing in my career. I still rage at injustice, so when I see people in my jobs who try and avoid blame for their fuck-ups or pass it on to people below them I can't help but call it out. I'd be better served by keeping my mouth shut, but fuck that. You have to have some integrity and standards. I'd rather speak up and get the rep as the guy who is difficult than hate myself.
I had a similar but later reaction to RATM. I'm now in the gov't machine and regularly reflect on being the person some of my favourite music rails against.
This scene from Braveheart more accurately captures that dichotomy than any other I've seen, and is legit my favourite from any movie:
Great read. Even as an EDM-head, this album means so much to me. Discovered it around the same age as you, only it was ten years later (when American Idiot came out and they were marketing to a new generation) but it still very clearly had influence and staying power over post-9/11 teens
I like that this post came not long after i read elsewhere that the late James Gandolfini was a big fan of Green Day and Dookie and-from contextual calculations-20 years older than Vince, so i can definitely get behind the timelessness of a band that dispensed with euphemistic niceties and just said the word “masturbation” right in their hit song. For a bunch of 20 year olds then they were not effing around
My brothers friend gave me the Bottles To the Ground EP and I played it nonstop on my Walkman. Felt like I finally had another side in a war I didn't realize was happening.
I feel this Vince even if for me it applies to music from a couple of years prior (grew up in the Seattle area and the nascent grunge scene (late 80s) was my punky outlet. I do remember in college when Dookie came out that we made fun of it but we made fun of everything. TBH it probably struck a little too close to home with our shitty off campus living arrangements and overall directionless view on life (despite working towards a college degree).
" I think I discovered writing mostly as a tool for cutting through bullshit, a tool that was immediately coopted to produce more and better bullshit in the job market."
Every generation vows to cut through the bullshit when they're younger, but all they ultimately do is supplant that bullshit with their own better brand of bullshit.
Great piece, BUT I feel it's my obligation as a music snob to "Francisco" you. Citing Green Day as one's rebellious revelation is like saying the Foo Fighters was your introduction to real rock 'n roll. I mean, Green Day has/had(?) a Broadway show. I know they didn't perform it, but you'd still be hard-pressed to find a less punk musical outlet than that.
Then again, I like Sonic Youth, so I'm one of those guys.
The point was not that Green Day was the punkest punk band, it’s that I, as a dumb ass 13-year-old in Fresno, probably would never have heard punk without them. I don’t think there is any genre that the Foo Fighters introduced to the masses in the same way, unless you count having a lead singer, who is a much better drummer as a genre.
Oh, I definitely get it. I'm just making fun of you because that's what annoying music people like me do. I will credit you that at least it was Green Day you got into and not Blink. I at least like Green Day well enough. "Longview" remains one of my favorite things to play when I'm slappin' da baess.
My first Green Day experience was when the guy at the comic book shop was listening to "Kerplunk!" and I thought it was cool AF. I think that came out in 1991, so coincidentally, I would've been around 13 as well.
And Dave Grohl is legit AF on the kit. His work on "In Utero" is so good (a lot of credit to Steve Albini on the sound) but yeah, the Foo Fighters are just the most okay of okayest bands ever.
He rocks the shit out of the drums, I love his drumming. Foo fighters have… like 1.75 good songs. I saw Green Day and blink play a show in San Diego in college and blink headlined because they’re from San Diego, and certainly I’m biased but Green Day absolutely blew them off the stage. I think we left early. That being said barker is a pretty solid drummer and I got his autograph like three years prior at an in n out burger when he was still an Aquabat.
You might've went to college with some friends of mine if you went to SDSU in the late '90s/early 2000s.
I saw Blink open for Primus before Blink was a thing (this was probably 1997) and they were legitimately one of the worst professional acts I've seen to this day. But Barker is legit AF. And obviously immortal, surviving a plane crash and all.
You're a bigger Foo fan than me giving them credit for 1.75 good songs. I argue "My Hero" is really just a Nickelback song performed by a different set of musicians.
Ooh look at Django and his sophisticated music taste here! This motherfucker was listening to indie shit while you plebs were jamming your dicks into bagels listening to "popular music".
It's interesting, how tied to political moments in my childhood Green Day is. Good Riddance is married to the first half of 1998, when I first started watching SNL, which never missed an opportunity to reference Monica Lewinsky. I got into them in earnest with their greatest hits album, which came out two months after 9/11. American Idiot came out in September 2004, the year I turned 16, grew disillusioned with the world thanks to a healthy diet of Michael Moore and George Carlin, and ended the four-year process of coming out that December. However you feel about that album now, it really was everything I was thinking and feeling at that moment.
Seeing them play Dookie and American Idiot in full this August. Can't wait.
This, but substitute Rage Against the Machine for my musical/political awakening.
I also was listening to a steady diet of grunge and west coast rap in my later elementary school years but not really identifying with the lyrics outside of "they are saying bad words and this sounds good." Then RATM's first album came out and blew me out of the fucking water.
I had nice, liberal ex-hippie parents, so there were some seeds there of radical politics, but the lyrics on that album and the anger behind them opened up a whole new world to me. I started researching the references in their songs and before long I was a pissed off 12 year old Marxist.
My political beliefs cooled off a bit as I got into high school (mostly so I could fit in and not estrange people at parties with heavy conversations about how America was actually a fascist state) and then in college I tried to take a more nuanced approach so I could appear reasonable and more palatable to my professors and classmates (econ and poly sci double major).
In the 20-ish years since I graduated though, I've come back around to the way of thinking of 12 year old me, and I give that version of me credit for being fucking right. Everything he saw has come to fruition and then some. I guess sometimes it pays to stick to your gut and not overthink and rationalize the world around you.
I've managed to keep steady mid/upper manager-level employment mostly by being in a field (manufacturing) where politics is rarely discussed and corporate speak is less prevalent, but my lack of tolerance for prevaricating and general bullshit has hurt me in advancing in my career. I still rage at injustice, so when I see people in my jobs who try and avoid blame for their fuck-ups or pass it on to people below them I can't help but call it out. I'd be better served by keeping my mouth shut, but fuck that. You have to have some integrity and standards. I'd rather speak up and get the rep as the guy who is difficult than hate myself.
I had a similar but later reaction to RATM. I'm now in the gov't machine and regularly reflect on being the person some of my favourite music rails against.
This scene from Braveheart more accurately captures that dichotomy than any other I've seen, and is legit my favourite from any movie:
https://youtu.be/-KaSAUHvqUw?si=z9T3v5zarP1xV8la
Great read. Even as an EDM-head, this album means so much to me. Discovered it around the same age as you, only it was ten years later (when American Idiot came out and they were marketing to a new generation) but it still very clearly had influence and staying power over post-9/11 teens
I owned Dookie on tape. I was 12 and felt so cool because I bought it with my own money and it said "bad words."
I like that this post came not long after i read elsewhere that the late James Gandolfini was a big fan of Green Day and Dookie and-from contextual calculations-20 years older than Vince, so i can definitely get behind the timelessness of a band that dispensed with euphemistic niceties and just said the word “masturbation” right in their hit song. For a bunch of 20 year olds then they were not effing around
I really enjoyed this. Thanks.
For me it was Nofx and an 87 Honda accord. The shit whipped
Punk in Drublic?
My brothers friend gave me the Bottles To the Ground EP and I played it nonstop on my Walkman. Felt like I finally had another side in a war I didn't realize was happening.
I feel this Vince even if for me it applies to music from a couple of years prior (grew up in the Seattle area and the nascent grunge scene (late 80s) was my punky outlet. I do remember in college when Dookie came out that we made fun of it but we made fun of everything. TBH it probably struck a little too close to home with our shitty off campus living arrangements and overall directionless view on life (despite working towards a college degree).
" I think I discovered writing mostly as a tool for cutting through bullshit, a tool that was immediately coopted to produce more and better bullshit in the job market."
Every generation vows to cut through the bullshit when they're younger, but all they ultimately do is supplant that bullshit with their own better brand of bullshit.
Great piece, BUT I feel it's my obligation as a music snob to "Francisco" you. Citing Green Day as one's rebellious revelation is like saying the Foo Fighters was your introduction to real rock 'n roll. I mean, Green Day has/had(?) a Broadway show. I know they didn't perform it, but you'd still be hard-pressed to find a less punk musical outlet than that.
Then again, I like Sonic Youth, so I'm one of those guys.
The point was not that Green Day was the punkest punk band, it’s that I, as a dumb ass 13-year-old in Fresno, probably would never have heard punk without them. I don’t think there is any genre that the Foo Fighters introduced to the masses in the same way, unless you count having a lead singer, who is a much better drummer as a genre.
Oh, I definitely get it. I'm just making fun of you because that's what annoying music people like me do. I will credit you that at least it was Green Day you got into and not Blink. I at least like Green Day well enough. "Longview" remains one of my favorite things to play when I'm slappin' da baess.
My first Green Day experience was when the guy at the comic book shop was listening to "Kerplunk!" and I thought it was cool AF. I think that came out in 1991, so coincidentally, I would've been around 13 as well.
And Dave Grohl is legit AF on the kit. His work on "In Utero" is so good (a lot of credit to Steve Albini on the sound) but yeah, the Foo Fighters are just the most okay of okayest bands ever.
He rocks the shit out of the drums, I love his drumming. Foo fighters have… like 1.75 good songs. I saw Green Day and blink play a show in San Diego in college and blink headlined because they’re from San Diego, and certainly I’m biased but Green Day absolutely blew them off the stage. I think we left early. That being said barker is a pretty solid drummer and I got his autograph like three years prior at an in n out burger when he was still an Aquabat.
You might've went to college with some friends of mine if you went to SDSU in the late '90s/early 2000s.
I saw Blink open for Primus before Blink was a thing (this was probably 1997) and they were legitimately one of the worst professional acts I've seen to this day. But Barker is legit AF. And obviously immortal, surviving a plane crash and all.
You're a bigger Foo fan than me giving them credit for 1.75 good songs. I argue "My Hero" is really just a Nickelback song performed by a different set of musicians.
Ooh look at Django and his sophisticated music taste here! This motherfucker was listening to indie shit while you plebs were jamming your dicks into bagels listening to "popular music".
Exactly. Although I was also jamming my dick into bagels. Salt bagels, though, because the sound was more raw.
Everything bagel here because why not.
Classic noncommittal bagel fucking.
"What kind of bagel banging do you like?"
"Oh, I'll jam into anything if it's good."