Could Green Day be the best mainstream American band of their generation?

...Radiohead > Green Day

Could someone list some other bands that fit the description? I take it hip-hop acts are disqualified as they are generally not "bands" (Roots et al excepted)?

Foo Fighters
Dave Matthews Band
Pearl Jam (do they count? albums still debut in top ten if I'm not mistaken)

ohhh waaaaaait....they're not as big but....RANCID!

Off the top of my head, other bands that could fit would be Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews Band, Weezer (who there probably is a valid argument for, though I wouldn't make it), Rage Against the Machine (I think, I have no idea when they broke up), No Doubt, Garbage (eh, they're American enough), Offspring. I think Nine Inch Nails is a little early for this class but not completely inadmissible. I'm sure there are other bands I'm completely forgetting.

Sorry.

Fair enough. Let's exclude them because their first album came out in 1989 instead.

(x-post)

I once worked with someone who went "pearl JAM"!

HOLY SHIT! AWESOME!

Maybe they'll take the throne with a Rob Thomas collabo!

EW FUCK NO.

If Pearl Jam had some bigger hits on their last two albums, I would go with them, but I think Green Day and Weezer have more impressive/more surprising careers. Pearl Jam will never go away though, and they have the potential to have more hits in the future if they choose to play the game.

so sad, so true...

It use to bug me when people on message boards would abbreviate Pearl Jam to PJ, and I would think they were talking about PJ Harvey and get confused.

Yeah -- it's a fantastic album, which is what got me thinking about the question that led to this thread. I'm only a casual Green Day fan, but it does seem like they've had a better career than any of the competition. (Which may say more about how lame their rivals are than anything else, really.)

My problem with Pearl Jam is less that they haven't had a chart hit in 10 years, and more that they're wonky and classic-rock boring. Wilco, I see as being a different generation, though I understand the Uncle Tupelo argument.

What about the Flaming Lips?

Incorrect. The biggest chart hit of their career was "Last Kiss" in 1999. "Light Years" from Binaural also got significant airplay on rock stations.

Feel the wrath of my bombast.

xpost hahaha

They've had four stellar albums (the 1039SOSH comp, Kerplunk, Dookie and Warning - I think how much you enjoy this depends largely on how much you enjoy pop-punk), one good album (Insomniac) and two mediocre albums (American Idiot and Nimrod, the latter much better than the former). I can't think of another mainstream '90s act that's done as well, so yeah probably.

No Doubt has a lot of great singles from the "Don't Speak" era onward, but the albums were always kind of meh and their ska material is just bad.

(what I could tell from the 2-hour recap I fast-forwarded through).

First of all, if you're referring to the current generation of music, why would the band in question need to have released their album more than 10 years ago? This makes so little sense that the confusion is making my head explode.

Second of all, Green Day would certainly fit the description of an otherwise outstanding mainstream rock band that is currently mainstream. However, Pearl Jam is long gone from the consciousness of America's youth culture. Around the release of vs, Pearl Jam shirts were worn by 40% of every middle school in this country, but ever since "Last Kiss," their irrelevance towards mainstream has been growing more and more.

Dave Matthews makes little sense, as they haven't had a hit song in over 4 years, and since their music is the blandest of the bland. Rancid is fine, but far from mainstream. Offspring is terrible.

No Doubt makes a lot of sense I think. Their singles have remained consistantly great over the years, and hopefully their next few records will never recall Gwen's solo material.

I don't see how Outkast, White Stripes and The Strokes don't count for this, so I would include them along with Green Day and No Doubt.

Because the question is about Green Day's generation - their biggest seller was eleven years ago and they're associated with early-mid '90s rock more than the garage-rock revival (popular in 2001) or Outkast (complete mainstream domination in 2003).

Were the Beatles and Black Sabbath in the same generation?

Well, are the Beastie Boys a band? If they are, why can't we throw out Snoop? Where is the rap music on this thread? If I think about music that was popular in the mid 90s and is still going strong, Snoop, Missy (ok, she's late 90s really), Nas all deserve to be mentioned. And probably a lot of other rap artists who I'm forgetting.

If that is true then Puff Diddy went from being a bling bling rapper to an activist with a voice for black America with his "vote or die" campaign.

There are a fairly limited of bands that fit that criteria (probably no more than 10). The only one I can recall who hasn't been mentioned yet is Fountains Of Wayne. I haven't heard the new Foo Fighters yet, but if I end up not enjoying it, the winner would be No Doubt.

if they're the "best" then its only because that particular crop was FUCKING AWFUL.

Hole

Too obscure too recently.

And the logical fallacy is the "only game in town", Shakey

Besides snoop/outkast will have inspired some interesting musicians.. Are there any good bands that would/will have been inspired by green day?

In a way it's complicated, since Green Day have very distinctly had two "generations"--one with Dookie, when they were inescapable, and another now, with American Idiot. The American Idiot-era Green Day is a really different band; the songs are really different, they have this vaguely goth/80s look, and AFAIK the kids who love them now are pretty estranged from the old Green Day aesthetic, e.g., compare:

http://www.therock.net.nz/dynimages/Green%20Day%20Pic.jpg

to

http://www.altpress.com/sections/wallpaper/03-19-2002/greenday/GreenDay800.jpg

.... to see two totally different bands. The melodies are still the same, but the context in which the music is heard is completely different. I don't think Green Day are even recognizable as 'punk' today for most listeners, or that 'punk' is even recognizable as such.

Basically, very few big '90s bands have survived iinto the '00s, and there is a class of 'big' band that makes it through multiple decades--of that class in the '90s Green Day is it.

Judged within the question's narrow parameters, then mrjosh otm.

No, that would be, "Could Green Day be the best pop-punk trio from California of their generation to achieve mainstream success?" The list of bands is small -- even smaller, it seems, than I thought it was when I made the original post -- but not impossibly so. And, as mrjosh pointed out, one of the things this points to is the decline of the band as a lasting musical force.

And I meant for this to be about rock bands. Someone else can start a thread on the best hip-hop act of that generation. Could we edit the header to reflect that? (I do not know how to, sorry.)

Those are all the bands getting discussed here, or did I forget someone? (Except for Blink-182, who weren't mentioined at all as near as I can tell and are smarter and catchier [not counting that last album] than Green Day)

Oh, and stick Everclear in-between No Doubt and Green Day.

(And if the Dixie Chicks count, stick them between Rancid and Blink)

It can. I'm not arguing OutKast or the Fugees aren't bands, just that Imeant for this thread to be about rock bands and failed to say that in the header.

-- no tech! (hjink...), July 6th, 2005.

nor should anyone over the age of 18!

-- no tech!, July 7th, 2005

Sagging-pants Green Day singer kicked off plane

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/09/02/BAON1KVNKS.DTL

actually surprised he is flying Southwest, as i would think he would fly first-class.

Wow. I don't know if I should laugh or cry. Better yet, I think I'll just slit my throat. Green Day?

Got the Dookie cassette from some kid when i was in middle school, learned every word to the album. Everything else, tho, I could take or leave it. And the more they got older and got more successful, the more it just sounded like soulless slick radio rock to me. The penultimate point in my Green Day relationship was the one time I got arrested, the cops were listening to them on the radio. I was like "Ok, game over, fuck this band".

dookie still sounds good. GREAT DRUMS. the rest i can also take or leave.

they are the red hot chili peppers of their generation. in that they never go away and are still on magazine covers and are still horrible.

What a marvelous idea – dumping Rivers for Rob Thomas!

― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Wednesday, July 6, 2005

Got the Dookie cassette from some kid when i was in middle school, learned every word to the album. Everything else, tho, I could take or leave it. And the more they got older and got more successful, the more it just sounded like soulless slick radio rock to me. The penultimate point in my Green Day relationship was the one time I got arrested, the cops were listening to them on the radio. I was like "Ok, game over, fuck this band".

So... what was the ultimate point?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Xm1XErUvXo

My point is that cops suck.