Green Day - Dookie Poll also C/D?

I think maybe Basket Case for me - for better or worse, it feels like their definitive move from goofy three-chord pop-punk to "songwriting" with bridges and stuff. Great anxiety lyrics; great melody.

I saw them on this tour at the Palace in Hollywood, and though it was their show and their moment, I think Jawbox, who opened, absolutely blew them off the stage. Dischord sincerity always being very weird bedfellows with juvenile NorCal stonerisms, of course.

I played this album a ton, but I can't think of how ANY of the non-single songs go, weirdly.

Yeah really... All the singles have the title of the song featured prominently in the lyrics though.

Between "She" and "When I Come Around" I think.

'Welcome To Paradise'.

For some reason I've always preferred the albums that immediately came before and after this (Kerplunk! and Insomniac).

Also, I also always felt that Green Day were the most British sounding of all the '90s pop-punk acts from the US... if it weren't for the lyrics, which let the cat out of the bag as to their geographical origins in places, I could comfortably think that Green Day were a British band.

I went for 'Welcome To Paradise' although I would be surprised if 'Longview' didn't walk. As I say WTP pretty much changed my life insofar as understanding hard rock music was concerned, and that opening riff is monumental in my mind.

Though I think this is at that fine line between "too many tracks" and "just the right running time," there's generally some strong stuff in the non-singles. "Burnout" is a great opener (I de-clare I don't care no more!), "Chump" has some cool/memorable lyrics (Magic man, egocentric plastic man), but the album's appeal is maybe summed up in "Coming Clean" - "I found out what it takes to be a man / now mom and dad will never understand / What's happening to me!" Some of those also get closer to the teenage tenderness, heart and hurt that you got on e.g. "2,000 Light Years Away" - feel like the singles, either through their overfamiliarity or their video imagery, get more tied up in self-confident distance, smarminess, cleverness, something something irony. That's also part of being a snotty punk but not one I need to really pull out the CD for. For all that, I'm tempted to vote "F.O.D." (I can't explain it cause I think you suck)... but really, it's "Welcome to Paradise."

Green Day were very obviously influenced by UK bands - the Kinks and the Who especially, although I reckon the singer's accent is still firmly US-routed.

Yeah really... All the singles have the title of the song featured prominently in the lyrics though.

Yeah, who can forget such immortal couplets as

Bite my long and close my view
Take me away to paradise

or

Do you have the time
To listen to me whine
About baskets and cases
All at once

haha amazingly my brain substituted in "lip" and "eyes" from context and i had to read that three times to see what you did there.

oh alright, not all of them

;)

actch for a commercial rock band, GD were very good at coming up with song titles that didn't directly relate to the lyrics, which makes it very hard for me to recall which songs are which even if i've heard an album like Insomniac a load of times.

I'm havin' trouble tryin' to think
What Green Day song you're talkin' bout

Green Day were very obviously influenced by UK bands - the Kinks and the Who especially, although I reckon the singer's accent is still firmly US-routed.

― 1 pONO 3v3Ry+h1n G!!!1 (dog latin), Thursday, April 17, 2014 11:54 AM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yup. 'Warning' taking the riff from 'Picture Book', 'Walking Contradiction' taking the riff from 'Do It Again' etc.

Longview is my favourite song about pounding off

Classic if you were a teenager in the nineties

"Having a Blast"

"Pulling Teeth" really the only one on here I don't like

The live version of Chump on the b-side to WTP sounds like it was recorded at a kids' birthday party

basket case, one of the all time great pop songs

The Welcome To Paradise breakdown is so good.

Really hard to decide between all the singles on this.

I played this album a ton, but I can't think of how ANY of the non-single songs go, weirdly.

― Walter Galt, Thursday, April 17, 2014 12:12 PM (4 hours ago)

I'm having this problem right now, too. I know it was a long time ago but I'm a bit weirded out by how few of these I can bring to mind. Ah fuck it, Kerplunk was better anyway.

Thinking about their discography as a whole, the success of "Good Riddance" on Nimrod really saved Insomniac from New Jersey status.

Classic classic classic.... then again I was 11 and it was my first cassette tape. Still love this album and know every word.

"Basket Case" is the only one of the big singles that I don't like all that much any more - maybe because it points too much toward Green Day's bad stuff to come. "Welcome to Paradise" gets my vote.

I really loved this album cos i was in middle school when it came out. I think the day i found out about it, someone had a tape of it at school and they just gave it to me cos it wasn't there thing. I remember reading the lyrics while listening to it. I'm gonna have to re-listen (cos i haven't heard this in at LEAST 15 years) cos I didn't really have a clear favorite, it's such a consistently good album from start to finish. One of the first three songs has a really cool Who-like instrumental break in it I remember absolutely loving.

Hard to choose between "Longview" and "Basket Case", though I may very well give a vote to "In the End" (my first exposure to the album) if nobody else will.

BURNOUT

Insomniac is FAR superior

voted "longview" without remembering that "basket case" was actually on here

having a blast

I have never heard this album, lol old. I have one of the singles on Lookout!

I do have respect for these guys, they seem fairly well-intentioned and they made Lookout a ton of money iirc

I will listen later & report back

'When masturbation's lost its fun, you're fucking nowhere'. As an awkward teenage boy I thought this line was super deep! Bless em. I revisited this a couple of years ago and it's really fun. For all its goofy stoner humour, there's a sweetness underlying it all. Perfect teenage music. My green vinyl copy of it was my pride and joy. For all that its a mainstream pop-punk record, next to horrid shiny stuff like Sum 41 and Blink 182 it sounds like Crass.

First band I loved. Teenage me used to smugly tell everyone that Kerplunk! was far superior: my initiation into the joys of challopsing. Insomniac was a let-down and I had lost all interest by the time the next one came out.

Insomniac is p great but weighed down heavily by "Brain Stew"

whichever one goes "i walk a lonely road, the only road that i have ever known"

Ick. I dont f/w green day American Idiot era :(. Tho that album is half good

Thinking back I have no idea what's on Insomniac besides "Brain Stew" and I'm not sure I even listened to it more than a couple of times - and this in the days of playing new purchases over and over and over.

"Walking Contadiction", "Geek Stink Breath", "86"

Brain Stew does weigh things down but that's kind of the point... love the transition to Jaded.

whichever one goes "i walk a lonely road, the only road that i have ever known"

lol i distinctly remember hearing that one for the first time while driving home at night and wondering if they were serious because it was so awful

anyway, basket case

some of us who aren't miserable fucks find it a little easier to enjoy things than you do

lol i distinctly remember hearing that one for the first time while driving home at night and wondering if they were serious because it was so awful

Sad but true

Daaaaam markers!

haha i totally thought markers was being ironic

should have known better : /

"American Idiot" the song is probably the most successful mainstream protest song of the Bush era and has aged well. It got people who didn't quite agree with the message to sing along, almost as if they knew they would agree with it later, which they did on Bush, Iraq, terrorism, gay rights, etc... "Holiday" is also still listenable.

The rest of the album not so much...

thread now littered with broken dreams

Yea the title track is fantastic but the album is out of their wheelhouse imo

like a bypass or service road or roundabout

of broken dreams

mxpx are soldiers of jesus iirc

but no i was talking bout the green day. carry on

I listened to this album so much when I was at school. It fit on one side of a C-90 - can't remember what was on the other side, maybe SFA? but yeah I will have to re-acquaint myself with some of the album tracks.
Voting WTP as it was the first time I heard GD and thought it was just amazing.

I'm sure this poll will reveal no shortage of unadventurous voters. Therefore I will vote non-single, which I would've done anyway.
It's just a matter of deciding which one, which might be kind of impossible...

Having a Blast vs Sassafras Roots vs Eminius Sleepus
Burnout and Chump are also really good.

"Pulling Teeth" really the only one on here I don't like
― getting strange ass all around the globe (Neanderthal), Thursday, April 17, 2014 10:04 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

I can appreciate this as I've only recently finally come around (lol) to enjoying this song after years of always skipping Track 6.

Although if "J.A.R." were somehow able to be included, this would've been a very easy decision.

it feels like their definitive move from goofy three-chord pop-punk to "songwriting" with bridges and stuff.

I dunno, I kinda hear some bridges n stuff on "39 Smooth."

I don't even mind them branching out a bit (Nimrod's a fun album IMO), I just have no desire to hear Billy Jo singing ballads. Ick.

Not to be confused with Greenery Day, the Japanese holiday.

kinda glad Green Day didn't drop nowadays, shudder to think of a slew of people cutely titling their blogs "Do you have the time...to listen to me BLOG?"

one of my fav memories of Green Day growing up were all my friends arguing over whether Billy Jo was british or not.

Thinking back I have no idea what's on Insomniac besides "Brain Stew" and I'm not sure I even listened to it more than a couple of times - and this in the days of playing new purchases over and over and over.

― robocop ELF (seandalai), Friday, April 18, 2014 12:31 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"Walking Contadiction", "Geek Stink Breath", "86"

― getting strange ass all around the globe (Neanderthal), Friday, April 18, 2014 12:32 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The long intro to 'Panic Song' is one of my favourite Green Day moments ever. It's just such a shame they couldn't come up with a better song for the rest of it.

one of my favorite moments was watching MTV air a live Green Day concert and Billy Joe going "this next song is dedicated to....uhhh....uhhmmm...YOU! (points at audience member). The guy over there making all that noise! This is called....CHUMP"

kinda glad Green Day didn't drop nowadays, shudder to think of a slew of people cutely titling their blogs "Do you have the time...to listen to me BLOG?"

― getting strange ass all around the globe (Neanderthal), Saturday, April 19, 2014 1:36 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

pretty sure i did this in 2003

http://dambreaker.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/slap.jpg

"panic song" rules! i always skip the intro (awesome tho) bc i love the second part so much! that descending chord progression under "the world is a sick machine breeding a mass of shit" is IMO their finest/peak moment, seriously

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

"Having a Blast" is a dope song but those lyrics are so cringeworthy. but it's fun so who cares

i can't tell what most of the words are. it's one of those songs where i sing along to the phonetics, and i've been singing it that way for so long that i don't care to learn the words for real.

one of BJA and Kurt Cobain's strengths were coming up with these amazing phonetic hooks that you didnt need to know the words to enjoy. they were better that way. for 10 years i thought the last verse of all apologies was "choking on the ashes of a renerade." and god knows i didnt know the chorus to geek stink breath when i was singing it at 9 years old

"Pay attention to the backstreets and the broken nose / Some call it socks, some call it niiiice"

my brother thought the lyric in "When I Come Around" was "sell doughnuts at my door"

I had a friend when I was 15 who spouted all kinds of RONG info and I always believed it cos I was gullible and he told me that "Longview"'s radio version wasn't edited, that the band intended it to sound like that. so I thought Billy Jo was really saying "I'm sick of all the same old shh" and that he actually did that crazy squeak that obscured the word "fuckin" intentionally.

I felt so lied to when I went into Blockbuster Music and listened to the unedited thing.

Always preferred the non-sweary version of 'Creep' by Radiohead.

my brother thought the lyric in "When I Come Around" was "sell doughnuts at my door"

― Neanderthal, Thursday, April 28, 2016 9:03 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Haha, so did my friend Scott! The first time we heard it he was like, "Donuts on my door? What?"

Happy Birthday, Dookie!

https://www.jimdunlop.com/images/jimdunlop/products/en_us/thumb/11025000001.MAIN.jpg

$200 worth of punk.

Had never really looked at the album cover in full before.

https://jamesostafford.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/green-day-dookie-large.jpg

just listened to Insomniac for the first time in forever ... it might be better?

blew them off the stage

nice

i had a big poster of the cover art on my bedroom wall, when i was 6 years old. loved the shit out of this album back then.

but, yeah, insomniac was better. had better singles too.

Insomniac IS better - it's more consistent, feels much more like an album than Dookie where the singles stick out and there's more variety, but nothing beats the pummeling 33 minute screed of Insomniac.

Serena Williams being a Green Day stan has always been one of the most endearing things about her

25 years ago my life changed... for the better. Thanks @GreenDay @billiejoe @trecool @MikeDirnt pic.twitter.com/3ATEc4J4tJ

— Serena Williams (@serenawilliams) February 2, 2019

39 Smooth is the actual best.

I prefer Insomniac to Dookie, too. The intro to 'Panic Song' still gets the blood pumping!

the world is a sick machine breeding a mass of shit

Insomniac doesn't have the classic singles of Dookie but I agree it's a better listen from start to finish.

London dive bar cover band launches into "Basket Case" and lo and behold, guess who is in the audience and jumps onstage to sing lead:

https://www.tiktok.com/@greenday/video/7232793292373577006

typical man, thinking he can do a woman's job better than her.
(jk obvs, would've made my week to have been there! )

Did Billie Joe actually relocate to the UK?

yes, purely to gain punk credibility.

(actually it was because of Roe v Wade and him being fed up w/ America)

sorry not Roe v Wade itself, but the overturning of it

It's weird how so many left-leaning people I know have done the opposite, moving to Florida and especially Texas (Austin specifically), and they hate the new laws they've enacted (against abortion, gun control, transgender rights, education, etc).

I mean, I suppose it’s a theoretically productive thing to do from a voter standpoint; but to paraphrase Lucille Bluth, “I’d rather be dead in California…”

Theoretically, but here's how it played out: U.S. conducts a rushed census in 2020 (thanks to the pandemic and Trump, it doesn't go that well, but it's held anyway). Texas has a lot more people now, so they get more Congressional reps (while states like NY get less reps). But wait, the majority of Texas is still really conservative, and with gerrymandering sealing the deal, that means a bigger right-wing influence in Congress.

yes, purely to gain punk credibility.

― the manwich horror (Neanderthal),

he got sick of people asking why he sings in a British accent

Now we just need Sting to move ti Jamaica and we're sorted

xxp I was thinking more with regard to the state laws they were complaining about, but yeah interesting point…

How does a rock star like Billy Joe move to the UK? Does he go back and forth (for visa purposes)… or do you qualify for UK citizenship if you can prove you were sufficiently influenced by the Clash?

yeah no, wealthy people seldom have immigration issues (unless you're a russian oligarch or political fugitive).