Takin' A Ride

I’ve always liked Green Day, but didn’t really love them until Dookie came out. Not a very “punk” thing to say, but I’m very open-minded and take music at its face value. “39/Smooth” had some decent songs on it. “Kerplunk” had much better songs on it. But both albums were recorded poorly. Like they were recorded in a tin can.

Then came “Dookie”, which I thought blew the other albums away. The punk scene? They were happy for their band “as people” to be doing well, but very against Green Day “selling out” to a major label and being on Reprise. And all the reviews in all the zines reflected all this. Me? I didn’t care. I just want good music out there. Here was my review in Flipside of an advance I had and heard before everyone turned on them (Martin McMartin also had a favorable review of this album in the same issue):

The backlash against Green Day for “selling out” was so great, they even denied their “punkness” saying “We never waved the punk rock flag”. Well… until “American Idiot” (another GREAT album) came out.

I saw Green Day a few times back in the day, but passed up many chances to see them when they were up and coming. Mainly because I didn’t think those first two albums (and singles) were that good.

And here’s a review from Flipside that someone (not me) did of the show. I do not remember Rancid (maybe I missed them?) and I saw Big Drill Car all over the place at the time, so I also don’t remember them from this show.

This show was pretty good. Right before they signed to Warner/Reprise, I think. Or maybe it was right after they signed. I remember thinking how cool it was that they did some riffs to Metallica’s “Master Of Puppets” during a medley they were doing at the time.

When Green Day broke big in ’94, they played a couple shows with the Muffs. And like Nirvana did on their way up, they tried to take bands they grew up with in the scene with them. Pansy Division was one of them.

Here’s my review of one of the shows at the Hollywood Palladium:

(find a review of this that I did if printable)

Yeah, Green Day, like Nirvana, had a weird dichotomy between their newfound success and the noobs that were showing up at the shows. Pansy Division, probably one of the most punkest bands around at the time, were vilified. Why? Because they were gay. The big bandwagon trend back then was to throw coins at the band while they were playing. They didn’t mind. They made a few extra dollars picking them up.