Reflecting Pool: Green Day - Dookie

Consider this a different kind of Listening Post and more like a Reflections Column. With Reflecting Pool I will be going back through the catalog of bands that I love and have been following for years. I will try to be as impartial as possible, but I admit that I am biased. This is a little more loosey than the LPs.

With the new album released I realized that I hadn't heard any of Green Day's older material in years. There was a reason. It was my daughter's favorite band. From the time Dookie came out she was a 2 year old inveterate rocker. American Idiot was a family fave and we sang all the songs together.
Then Liz died and it was too hard to listen to Bille Joe and the Boys anymore. I tried to dip my toe with the Dean Grey, American Edit mashup and that was almost bearable.
The new album hit the digisphere last week. I bought it. It's great. Then I thought: You know what? It's okay. I think Liz would like that I still listen to Green Day.
We're not listening to 39 smoothed out blah blah or Kerplunk becuase this is a reflection more than an LP and I'm currently in the middle of a Judas Priest Listening Post. This is a matinee. An afternoon at the beach. This is 15 years with Green Day



Green Day - Dookie - 1994 (iTunes - Amazon)

Where were you in 1994?
I was sitting in the office of a ramshackle farmhouse in Lancaster, California. Amidst pot-bellied pigs, goats and horses. My connection to the world was through Prodigy. And my music came from the Columbia House record club.
I had to get the album not for me, but for my daughter who, at 15 months was obsessed with the song "Basket Case". Every time it would come on Alternative Nation, Liz would come running from wherever she was and start dancing like a maniac. So, we ordered the record and she and I would listen to it on my boombox. Only Liz would crank the shit out that thing. I mean, loud.
And when Billie Joe Armstrong sing, "Scream at me until my ears bleed", Liz would point to her ears and laugh.
Listening again to Dookie, 15 years later, I am struck by something that I missed. It's brilliant how, on the second album, Armstrong shows his songwriting prowess by embodying the mind of a serial killer with a bomb attacked to his back. Pure genius.
And then there's Chump. Chump with the 1+minute long outro that falls away leaving only a massive and recognizable bassline that is the basis for Longview.
These guys were playing in the classic rock, concept album, rock opera idiom long before they hit it big. They were "punk" because, well, punk is easier.
No leads in punk.
Lots of tude in punk.
Say what you want in punk.
You can be pissed in punk.
And everyone will accept you regardless of your sexuality because you're an outside and they are all outsiders. (Billie Joe as stated that he's bisexual, only I believe that he also said he never has been with a man....)
The guitarist can't play leads. I don't think there is a lead line until well into the album, three songs before its all over.
The drummer is heir to the Ginger Baker/Roger Taylor/John Bonham throne.
The bassist is rhythm in name only. THIS is where the leads are. In Mike Dirnt's hands.
These guys were a rock band from the start.
And this album is perfect. There is not a wasted note.

Grade A+
A Side: In descending Order:
Basket Case
Pulling Teeth
She
Burnout
She
In the End
Welcome to Paradise
Long View
Emenius Sleepus
Chump
When I Come Around
F.O.D.
Sassafrass Roots
All By Myself (Hidden Track)

DownSide: Are you kidding?