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

Lol

All my myself=eyerolly imo

all I need is their comp tbh

Basket Case has immediate appeal but I have heard it so much by now that it bores me. longview is the one that still has some of the magic left.

So objective vote would be basket case, longview would be the subjective one for me.

i loved this when it came out, then immediately went into hating them for years, now I've come back around. this is a great record. can't pick one track.

"Longview" was the first Green Day song I got into, so it still tugs at the heartstrings a bit. I actually was not much of a Green Day fan when they came out tho - my taste in my teens was very particular and I liked very little, 'rock' wise. I came around to them in my 20s more or less.

for whatever reason I thought BJA was Australian when I first heard "Longview" and I was like YAY THE DONOVAN OF PUNK ROCK

"2,000 Light Years Away" tho still my fav GD song.

Pretty sure that everyone only needs one Green Day album in their life and that is a) the one that came out when they were 14-15 and b) the objective best. So I am happy that the one that is genuinely objectively the best came out when I was 14.

this was a fun listen, "Longview", 'Basket Case" and "She" were the ones that really stood out to me

During my freshman year in lolcollege (when this first came out), the guy in the room next to me that listened solely to hip-hop found it utterly hilarious that a band would name their album Dookie. So much so that he borrowed it from me to show his friends on another floor. Then, for the remainder of the year, every time he saw me in the hallway he would say, "still listening to Dookie?" then crack himself up all over again.

I will say classic, for sure. I pulled this out last summer and thought it stands up surprisingly well and I forgot how many of the non-singles I loved. Probably going to vote, "When I Come Around".

Do you ever think back to another time?
Does it bring you so down that you thought you lost your mind?

Then, for the remainder of the year, every time he saw me in the hallway he would say, "still listening to Dookie?" then crack himself up all over again.

haha

in high school i had a lot of friends who listened to nothing but hip-hop and they thought everything i listened to was hilarious

(never cared for green day past age 12 though)

yours or theirs?

I had a friend who got not one, not two but three Green Day tattoos ...
pre-Dookie. Poor guy.

Listened to this this morning, it was great and nice and felt like comfort food! I think this album is front-packed, and I start to lose interest on side 2, though "Basket Case" and "She" are both really great. I remember my parents thinking "Do you have the time to listen to me whine?" was a hilarious opening line. I like "Are you feeling like a social tool without a use".

But "Longview" is just so perfectly teenage in so many ways. "My mother says to get a job, but she don't like the one she's got", etc. Plus the "I've got no motivation/Smoking my inspiration" middle-eight is really killer. All across this records there are Beatles-style middle eights in these songs that are sometimes better than the songs they are in!

I had a friend who got not one, not two but three Green Day tattoos ...
pre-Dookie. Poor guy.

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, April 18, 2014 12:49 PM (32 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

could be worse tbf, they are still semi-relevant

yeah think of the guy who has 3 MxPx tattoos

exactly

hey whatd mxpx ever do to you

didn't stay semi-relevant, slowly went the way of the buffalo

dud. buncha poseurs. i don't care how played out that sounds.

mxpx?

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).

This is now certified 20x platinum for U.S. sales. Still amazes me that this band is so enormously popular. (I actually have nothing against this album, it's just a mind boggling number that, for the moment, far outpaces any of its peers.)

Damn that is incredibly high by anyone's standards. Is that really just pure sales or does streaming come into it?

Streaming must count, but have no idea how much of it comes from streaming.

As a 7th-8th grader during Dookie’s peak neither the sales numbers nor general popularity surprise me. That was the biggest album of the decade for my immediate peer group - Nirvana and Pearl Jam were more sustained but never as omnipresent, Metallica’s Load was close

That anyone has listened to music they made after 2004 is baffling though.

But enough about Metallica. What about Green Day's post-2004 work (American Idiot was my biggest album of that decade and 21CB I awaited like few albums before or since).

i've stated in so many green day threads that i love 21cb. everything they've made since.... eh. the new one was pretty good tho

I owned a record store when Dookie was big. Preteens loved it.

it was the first alt/punk record of any kind that i owned. i heard "basket case" on mtv and i was like "i'm into rock music now" (previously my favorite group had been tlc). my parents put the cassette in my stocking for christmas

Hah, very similar to my experience (see OG post)

Yeah 'eh' was regretfully how I started feeling about GD after the (still excellent) 21CB. Though - despite rarely ever being true for the double albums it gets used against - the 'a single album of the highlights would have been great' axiom probably does apply to Uno Dos Tre.

i came up with a pretty good single disc trilogy edit earlier this year... and even then it would be the worst green day album at that point

nothing at all against green day, but at some point i became aware of the lyrics to 'boulevard of broken dreams' and ffs try harder

you're walking
and you're alone
the street is empty
you're the only one
the city is sleeping
oh! you have a shadow
but nevertheless you're still alone
you've reached both borderline and the edge!
but -- oh no! -- you're still alone

As a 7th-8th grader during Dookie’s peak neither the sales numbers nor general popularity surprise me. That was the biggest album of the decade for my immediate peer group - Nirvana and Pearl Jam were more sustained but never as omnipresent, Metallica’s Load was close

― papal hotwife (milo z), Tuesday, September 17, 2024 8:13 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i would swap Load for The Offspring's "Smash". You could not escape that around the time.

Yeah i was around the same age and it was definitely one of those albums felt ubiquitous, a safe consensus pick in any social situation. Even my parents didnt mind it, or at least didnt seem to find it quite as annoying as Nirvana et al.

xp - Smash was omnipresent for a bit, but I feel like it's rep really faded fast, Dookie hung around as a perennial fave, in my experience anyway

where I was, the biggest inescapable thing before Nevermind was the RATM debut album

That 20M records number really re-scales in my mind how badly Lookout managed to squander the back catalog windfall from Dookie's success...
At the same time, Epitaph and Sub Pop seem to be doing OK, but don't seem to have conquered the world with their annuities.

Dookie's singles fit well in streaming-age background music playlists in a variety of genres. It has almost picked up a bit of an AOR vibe over time. Smash's production is tinny and abrasive by comparison and the lyrical content hasn't aged well.

getting into "rock" in the UK in my early teen years, so thats about 97/98 - the albums everyone owned were Nevermind, Dookie, Blue Album, Rage debut.

That drop from 20x Dookie to 2x Insomniac now stands very Rumours v Tusk

I'm surprised International Superhits! isn't a gigantic seller (currently at 1 million). It skips anything from the two Lookout albums, which feels stingy when there's plenty of space left on the disc, but otherwise it does a solid job of gathering the major hits pre-American Idiot.

insomniac their best album is certainly their tusk just short instead of long

(nimrod is really way more of a tusk but)

it was the first alt/punk record of any kind that i owned. i heard "basket case" on mtv and i was like "i'm into rock music now" (previously my favorite group had been tlc). my parents put the cassette in my stocking for christmas

― ivy., Tuesday, September 17, 2024 8:04 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Hah, very similar to my experience (see OG post)

― Sade of the Del Amitri (dog latin), Tuesday, September 17, 2024 8:06 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

thirded, xmas '94. good kids get Dookie in their stockings.

I have no interest in this record or band but just dropping this here in case anyone hasn't seen it because it's awesome:

https://www.dookiedemastered.com/

the same team (https://brain.wtf/) was behind the emo-tears fallout boy record
https://crynyl.com/

Are they related to mschf? their typography and web design feels similar or maybe everybody who does consumer stunts shares that aesthetic?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYdh5hYknFQ

I love this so much

Did those people do the Flaming Lips blood filled record?

ahhh I was wondering what the last track would be played on <3

lmao this is amazing. the answering machine intro kills me.

Player piano "Burnout" is pretty much a Hold Steady/Replacements track intro

This is so fun. I love it.

god, "Sassafrass Roots" sounds awesome on the 8-track.

genuine question: how long do you think they worked on this, from brainstorming to concept to execution? seems like a big-ass project! did someone come to this company in, like, 2022 and say "starting thinking of something clever to do for Green Day's Dookie in two years"

"Crank it as long as you want with “All By Myself,” arranged for the first time on a hand-cranked music box."

lmao

I feel like the Teddy Ruxpins might be sold at a loss if they somehow got ahold of new old stock.