I discovered Green Day 26 years ago almost to the day (June 29th 1994) when they made their first television appearance on the David Letterman show. They quickly became my favorite band and remained so until around 2009 when I could no longer connect emotionally to the lyrics Billie wrote and their sound drastically changed.
I understand, expect and encourage bands to explore different avenues and to grow artistically and not be the same as they were twenty-plus years ago. However, Green Day’s sound within’ the last decade has not so gradually abandoned any resemblance of what made them an iconic band.
The most recent album ‘Father of All Motherfuckers’ sounds more like their 2007 garage rock side project (Foxboro Hot Tubs) than it does Green Day.
The band will always have a special place in my heart, especially because of the albums they put out from 1994 – 2004 (Dookie, Insomniac, Nimrod, Warning, American Idiot) I was 16 when Dookie came out and 25 at the release of American Idiot, those are turbulent times for many teenage boys and they helped me get through a lot of bullshit and helped me celebrate a lot of happy occasions.
Now and again I’ll pull out the playlist that has some of my favorite songs by them, have a glass of scotch and let the nostalgia wash over me and think about being that 17-year-old kid playing along to Green Day on a piece of shit $400 drum kit that I bought with the money I saved sacking groceries for old ladies at the Piggly Wiggly.
Good times.
TL;DR: Blink 182
(kidding! Green Day)