Glad to see that the superiority complex of the scene is still alive and well...
Everyone needs an onramp to discovery. There are WAY worse things to be into than Green Day. But please, don't let me stop you from telling Hacker News how you're too punk for Green Day...
green day dookie was the first CD I owned. It was the first thing I found on the street (read: garbage), and inspired my interest in free and used things. I owe them a lot. But man do they suck.
I don't know, I've always been more of an Offspring fan, but I don't think it's fair to say that Green Day "suck". They've obviously achieved an impressive level of success and people still pay attention and listen to their new releases decades after they were truly relevant.
I never was a big fan of Dookie but their next album, Insomniac, is still an immensely enjoyable album to this day. Whether it's technically not 'punk' and is instead 'pop-punk' or just 'rock' makes no difference to me. The fact that their music isn't overtly anti-establishment doesn't affect the quality of the music.
In fact, and this may get me into trouble here, I like the Dead Kennedy's 'Plastic Surgery Disasters' just as much as I like Green Day's 'Insomniac'. Is one punk and one not? Who cares? I quite dislike the purity tests in some genres of music (like punk and metal). That's something I've always appreciated about pop music - it doesn't have to adhere to some nebulous framework to qualify for the genre, it simply has to be popular (e.g. Beatles were pop, Madonna was pop, and Arianna Grande is pop - very different styles of music)
You like the music you like and that itself is as punk rock as you can get.
The difference between "Lookout! Green Day" and "Warner Green Day" is one of DIY vs Payola. These days, it's much easier and potentially more profitable to go the DIY route, but back then, you needed a sugar daddy to "make it big" fast. Taking the easy route meant Green Day were shunned by their original fan base (somewhat justifiably so,) but they had more energy, raw talent, and Buzzcocks hooks than anything else on top 40 radio with the exception of Nirvana (which is why Warner was trolling for talent in the first place.)
It's hard to call any "punk" bands sellouts after Nevermind. Were Hüsker Dü sellouts? They signed to Warner in '85 (almost a decade before Green Day.)
The music business is harsh. If you're in a band and into it for the long haul, own your masters and go the DIY route. Your fans will find you and are more likely to pay directly when they do. If you're in a band and want to make it big fast, consider this often cited article from Steve "Mr. Gold Bracelet" Albini on cashflow:
I ignored Green Day when I first got into punk because they seemed like radio-rock music. But years later, when I was in grad school and stopped caring so much about how I classified bands, I was blown away by "American Idiot." That album was brilliant.
I listened to Offspring's album "Smash" a bunch in middle school, which made for an interesting revelation when I devoured Bad Religion's entire catalogue in high school.
This seems to be turning into a thing so let me explain. My comment is obviously satirical, but with any satire there's a grain of truth. Personally I never got into them but when they 1st came out I didn't have a negative opinion about them either. It's more about what they turned into. They found a formula and just stuck with it because it pays. Now I'm not saying that punk bands can't be successful but there's a difference between just making good music and making something that just generates sales. Billy Jo is almost 50 years old now. I was born in 75 and he's older than me but Green Day is still making the same played out, radio frindly, teen angst driven music after 20 years. They've just become a sad parody of themselves.
I don't know when "dookie" came out I was like 12 and this album was pretty much the starting point for me and my friends. Don't know who much people got into punk via ZSD, but for us this came later. Maybe like VisualBasic for programming, started with it but wouldn't touch it today. Well at least I'm a True Believer ;)
What else have we got other than some people saying it? Some people say the Sex Pistols are punk, there isn't really an objective measure we can measure this against.
What do you mean, "some people"? Is there anyone saying that the Sex Pistols WEREN'T punk?? I can't truck with any taxonomy of punk rock that excludes the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, or the Clash. There were later waves of punk rock (bands like the Dead Kennedys, Minutemen, Circle Jerks) and there were not-strictly-punk spinoffs especially in the NYC art scene (Talking Heads, Television, Patti Smith)... but come on, anything written up in "Punk" was clearly at ground zero of the scene.
I mean I can disprove the flat earth theory by walking around the world, orbiting around the earth in space, or use something that relies on that, like say GPS. Whether Green Day is punk or not is a matter of peoples opinions. We can discuss what punk meant in the 70s, what it means today, whether its still relevant, how Green Day fits into that, it's pretty much someone's opinion whether they classify them as Punk.
Apparently The Monkees were also written up in Punk, are we calling them punk now?
Whether Green Day is punk is debatable... probably mostly centering around whether you think punk is a musical style or a philosophy.. but I'm really just saying that it's not really debatable that the Sex Pistols were punk, since the term "punk rock" was pretty much coined to describe what they were doing.
I don't think Green Day counts as punk rock, because actual punk rock was about a lot more than the music... so Survival Research Labs, f'rinstance, was definitely punk in my book... and so were Nazi skinheads, although they sucked. But as you say, opinions vary.
If you've read the Monkees writeup in "Punk", it's a snide hit piece the thrust of which is "these guys represent everything we're not". Punks hated hippies, and fake Madison-Avenue canned hippies were considered about the lowest of the low.
Personally I'd rate the Monkees a bit better than that, once they started dropping acid... anybody who gave me Head surely can't be all bad!
I think it's a problem of specificity. Green Day's music do or did sound like punk, but do they (still) live the punk lifestyle/ideology? Did they ever?
I remember that question being hotly debated even before Dookie came out. Hard to believe this is still something people quibble over. Let’s get back to tabs vs spaces ;)
Everyone needs an onramp to discovery. There are WAY worse things to be into than Green Day. But please, don't let me stop you from telling Hacker News how you're too punk for Green Day...