#6: Green Day January 6, 2012

Image via Wikipedia

I have a love/hate relationship with Green Day.  Back in middle school, I used to love them.  Then all my friends hated them, so I decided I did too. When I started to listen to them again, it was 10th grade and I started to explore more and more music styles. But like a fool, I decided I didn’t like Green Day, so back on the shelf they went.  I never really got back into them in a big way until the middle of my freshman year at college, and man are they awesome!

Let me back up a little bit.  My first taste of Green Day was a sixth grade Christmas present from my mom.  It was the compilation album International Superhits! and I loved it right away.  In fact, it’s been my favorite Green Day album, and it’s easily in my top 10 albums that I own.  My favorite songs off that CD are “Maria” and “Welcome to Paradise” (not that you asked).  I loved this CD all the way up until my friends decided Green Day wasn’t cool anymore.  When was that, you ask? Right around the time American Idiot came out.  I was still in middle school, and I admit, I liked it at first when I heard it.  But for whatever reason, my friends decided Green Day was “too emo” (whatever that means) and a “bunch of sellouts” (though that one I agree with).  So I stopped listening.

Skip ahead a few years to the 10th grade.  I’m exploring music, and take a trip to the heavier side and eventually meander back to Green Day.  I browse to it on my iPod, turn the volume up, and drift off into my music. Tune in, drop out, as it were.  Suddenly, the guitar riff comes blaring in, followed by: “Dear mother, can you hear me whining?  It’s been three whole weeks since that I have left your home…”  Holy CRAP I forgot who awesome this song was! “This sudden fear has left me trembling cause now it seems that I am out here on my own and I’m feeling so alone….”  You better believe I turned that shit up, man!  Green Day was back into circulation, if you would.

For the sake of brevity, let’s skip ahead to my freshman year at college.  It’s winter, and architecture school  had gotten me down.  One night in design, my design partner Chi (I forget what his real name is now; we always called him “Chi” because his last name was something ridiculously Polish. Chajkouski, or something like that.) puts on a song I know, but hadn’t heard in awhile.  It seemed so distant.  I listen closer… “Pay attention to the cracked streets and the broken homes…” Sure enough, it was the same song as that one day so many years ago.  Fuck yeah, man!, I thought.  The Green Day love had started again.  Except this time, it lasted much longer.  I kept listening to Green Day (and some other punk rock) for a couple months, and I even went out on a bender and downloaded their entire discography online, as well as a physical copy of Dookie (which happens to be my second favorite Green Day album) at one point.  I was in a full-scale Green Day swing.

Later on that summer, I came down with a bit of a cold (which was weird, because, who gets sick in the summer?), so I stayed indoors for a couple days.  One night after I was feeling better, I was skyping with my best friend who had just gotten back from some concert.  We got to chatting and I found out it was a Green Day concert. Hoo boy, that must’ve been fun, wish I could’ve gone.  Too bad I was sick.  I don’t really like anything they’ve done since Dookie (coincidentally, right around the time they “sold out”), but who knows what would’ve happened?  Maybe Green Day would be higher on this list… 🙂