Green Day were, far as I remember, the first band to give The Duke the shivers. You know how it is, right? There's a hook, a melody, something so inspiring, so infectious, that you can feel it burrow into your asshole and ascend your spine, beating every organ, bone and muscle fuckless in the process. It only lasts a couple seconds, but in those couple seconds, man, there's enough endorphins and shit released in the body to keep you soaked in delirium for the next fortnight.
I've never felt ashamed, as I see some folks do, by the fact that Green Day were my first love, and that I've followed their every flatulent piff since that evening spent entranced by Top Of The Pops. For a twelve year old kid whose only knowledge of the world came from A Nightmare On Elm Street 3, (the motherfucking pinnacle of all Freddies, by the way), living in a council estate in the arse-end of nowhere in The Northern Ireland, you didn't worry too much about credibility. I can pretend that the first record I bought was Stations Of The Crass or some equally kudos-drenched record, but it wasn't. Until I heard Green Day that night, via satellite link-up, no less, I didn't know that there were rock bands in the world who you just fucking knew existed only to catalogue and soundtrack your every waking thought.
I mean sure, I loved Iron Maiden, but it's kinda hard for a pubescent cinephile to identify with songs about WW2 bombers and plots to assassinate unborn children.
The T-Shirts fucking rocked, though.
This is gonna be hard for a motherfucker from, say, California or some shit to believe, but when Dookie was straddling the album charts like some acne-riddled colossus, I was one of about five folks in my high school who had even heard of these sons a bitches, much less gave a rancid shit.
Of course, this had its benefits, like when I wanted to go out with a lass and so gave her a piece of paper with the lyrics to Why Do You Want Him scribbled on it, claiming it as my own.
Article comments
1 - Tim Hall
Progressive punk? Who remembers The Damned's "Curtain Call"?
2 - Mark Edward Manning
Duke, thanks for the link, very decent of you. I'll have to return the favor with you someday.
Now then, you're right that there's nothing shocking about a punk band making a political statement - even the Ramones did that - but Green Day is engaging in the foulest, most dangerous area of politics, undermining and questioning the fight against terror, insinuating that whatever disgust and fighting spirit and patriotism that people felt in the aftershocks of Sept. 11 are no longer valid and that the President is a more of a terrorist than Osama. Billie Joe doesn't quite sing as much, but the point is made.
I expected better of these guys, and what a cheap way to revive one's career and get the respect of glue-sniffing 14-year-olds back.
3 - jonny
green where good but american idiot didnt do it for me