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What got you into Green Day?


Insomniac45

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I honestly can't remember a time in my life when I wasn't into Green Day. Dookie came out when I was 4, and my dad got the cd and I remember playing the crap out of it. Then in the lead up to the release of Insomniac, I heard Geek Stink Breath on the radio and thought it was the greatest thing ever, and I got Insomniac as a present for my 6th birthday (it came out 3 days before my birthday). I went thru a strange period in my life from when I was like 9 til when I was 12 where I didn't listen to a whole lot of music, or at least I don't remember listening to much. Then I saw International Superhits on the table one day, and being a retarded 12 year old I didn't notice Green Day's name plastered on the cover (I assumed it was just a collection of hits from different bands) and I popped in the CD and skipped the first two songs, and ended up on Longview, and upon hearing it I go, "Oh sweet! A frickin awesome Green Day song from my youth!" then Welcome to Paradise came on and I was confused so I looked at the CD and saw what it actually was. I ended up wearing that damn CD out, I'm fairly certain that I listened to it almost every day when I was in middle school. So I've always been into Green Day, but that time period in middle school cemented them as my favorite band.

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My dad, mostly. My mom and dad used to listen to Dookie a lot, and when I was around 10, my dad would take me to places and we would always listen to Dookie and American Idiot together when we drove around. Now Green Day is my favorite band, and American Idiot is my favorite album by them! Good times...

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My love for The Clash inspired me to listen to Green Day. Needless to say, I was impressed

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The Dookie album art haha.

I remember I was 6 or 7 and my sisters friend left the CD at my house. I remember thinking the album cover was the coolest thing I ever saw, so I put the CD on. So basically if Dookie had lame artwork, I would have never put the CD on.

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Boulevard of Broken Dreams :D

8 years later and I can still remember where I was the first time I heard the song. The only other music-related event that I can say the same about was hearing of George Harrison's death, as I am a lifelong Beatles fan.

I was on the school bus in Sept./Oct. 2004, would have been in Grade 5 at the time. I was not really into new or "popular" music at the time, but I liked the tremolo effect. Billie started singing and for some reason his voice sounded very familiar, even though I was completely unfamiliar with Green Day. I asked who it was, was told "Green Day."

I didn't even have a computer at the time (didn't get one until early 2005), so I had to get my parents to call into radio stations to request the song over and over, each time they played it, it was announced only as "the most requested song this week."

When I finally got a computer, I Googled Green Day, but my 2004-self (very different from me now :cool:) was put off by the album art and the amount of profanity in the songs. But listened to a self-censored ( :sick:) rotation of Holiday, Boulevard and Wake Me Up When September Ends for the better part of a year.

For Christmas 2005 I got an MP3 player, and my cousin put together about 6 CD-Rs full of MP3s. I immediately looked under G and only found 2 Green Day songs: When I Come Around and the radio-edit of Minority, so that was how I was introduced to their back catalog.

It wasn't until 2009 when 21CB came out (and I was just getting into vinyl, thanks to the 2009 Beatles remastered CDs) that I heard Green Day's entire discography was being pressed on vinyl. I immediately downloaded all of their albums to decide which records to get first.

Strange, I always considered myself a fan since 2004. In writing this, I realized that I didn't completely familiarize myself with Green Day's output until mid-2009... that kinda sucks... :sorry:

However I did listen to AI and Dookie pretty consistently from 2005 onwards.

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Man,In the summer of 5th grade I was listening to All-American Rejects,The Fray,Coldplay and Jesse Mccartney (Don't judge me :P)

I really didn't know how to choose music,I only knew those artists from Yahoo! Music back then,so I ended up listening to those artists around that time,but I didn't really..how should I put...Love music..It just sounded good to my ears,and that's it.

Then my friend sent me an Email...It was "Boulevard of Broken Dreams"

I was like "Holy crap,this is good..and I can relate to this too..." being I'm a Misfit at school.

So then I clicked on the related search videos on YouTube,which took me to "American Idiot"

I loved that..and I clicked on the next song which was "Basket Case"...and

The rest is history.

Here I am today,The biggest Green Day geek at school.

(Everyone knows it)

And they've been with me every step of the way :D

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The song Minority is what got me started on Green Day, i was watching KerrangTV at home....years ago....Loved the song....

Went to a car boot sale, found the album International Superhits and grabbed it for £1, It wasnt even sure if i would like their other music!....haha! i've loved Green Day ever since :)

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2005, the first song i heard... Basket Case...

and then American Idiot, WMUWSE, BOBD, and many songs from AI...

my friends playing basket case on his handphone...

and then i fell in love with Green Day...

and Green Day saved my life...

I was thinking that AI is the first album of Green Day :lol:

also basket case on AI... :lol:

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My neighbor, when I was about 8 or 9. He was the "cool" kid on the block, and one day he played Dookie and Nimrod for me. I've been into them ever since.

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I talked about this before in the debate topic about the band selling out, but now for the specs. I love recalling all of this, so it's a lot of text. Thus: Spoiler!

I've always known of the band because my mom was an avid radio listener and I was raised on rock, metal, and punk (other than GD, I'm a huge Metallica freak). I think I remember calling Green Day "dweebs" at some point, just because of the When I Come Around video. I always remembered that video, but never payed attention to the music. I saw their little grungy sweaters and they looked so little, so, "dweeb." I also knew of Brain Stew as well. Then when I finished 6th grade and was going on to Jr. High, they made us sing Good Riddance, which was my first real introduction to the band. They were still always just acknowledged, never enjoyed (granted, I never gave them a shot because I wasn't into music).

At the time I was really not my own person. I followed trends. Since I listened to the radio, I started to lean more towards the pop stations and started liking what was popular. In my neighborhood especially, it was pretty ghetto. I was the only white chick in most of my elementary school classes, mainly hispanic, so the popular music around that time was rap and hip hop as well as R&B (I still like me some R&B...that shit is smooth).

Anyways, so I never was INTO music that much. Then my family got satellite TV and I found music video channels like Fuse, so I started to know the new rock bands and all the music that was out. This was it.

2004 comes along, I'm 14, going on 15. The video for American Idiot comes out and I was stopped in my tracks. Was this the same band?! My cousin was over with me and I remember us both commenting on the band's looks (being very pleased). haha My cousin says that she thinks she has a compilation album of theirs at home and would let me borrow it. This was, of course, International Superhits!

So I got a hold of American Idiot as well as International Superhits, and it was done from there. I began to pick up all of their albums as I fell in love with them. I was literally obsessed. I wore red and black for the album, I drew heart grenades everywhere, I wrote lyrics constantly, I couldn't get enough. I was on the internet for hours a day just learning about the band and talking to people.

Before coming to GDC, I was an avid member of GeekStinkBreath.net's boards. I forgot about those boards until I just typed it now, but I spent so much fucking time on those boards and met so many awesome people. I got into the whole slash thing for a while (weird phase), and even met someone on MySpace who shared the obsession. She lived in Pennsylvania and we both had dial-up internet. We wanted to talk more, so we got permission and started to actually write to each other. I still have piles of letters we would send to each other, decorating the envelopes and every page. We'd send pictures, poems, everything. We were best friends.

I first saw Green Day live October 8th, 2005 at the Home Depot Center in Carson, California. It was the second leg of the American Idiot tour, a few months after Bullet in a Bible was filmed. The seats we got weren't that great, but it was one of the best nights of my life.

Everyone thought it was a phase. People at school, family, everyone. They would make fun of me for liking this band and I would have to constantly defend myself. Never before were my eyes opened so much. I was able to question everything and make my own decisions in life. I was really religious in Jr. High before I became a GD fan. I'm not saying GD is the reason I'm an atheist, but it opened my eyes and allowed me to question what was in my life and what kind of person I really wanted to be.

This band has been with me during my best of times when I went to CIF for Water Polo (King for a Day before EVERY game, no matter what. It got me PUMPED). They have been there for me during my worst times, struggling through depression and anxiety to this day. Laughing, crying, driving, wasting time, having the best time of my life...this band has been there for me during all of it.

Now we're here, 8 years later. I've seen the band over 5 times live. I also won tickets to see BIAB with the band, to see Heart Like a Hand Grenade, I went to a KROQ "breakfast" with the band (it was an afternoon show, recorded for Breakfast with Kevin and Bean)...and I've met Billie Joe briefly. I'm thankful that I've had all of these opportunities and my love for this band keeps growing with every year that passes.

I have a beautiful tattoo on my side of the lyrics, "To live and not to breathe is to die in tragedy," which symbolizes my love for this band and everything they've given me. They helped me breathe on my own when I was just living the day-to-day and following what everyone else had set for me. Now I am living my own life, I'm fucking happy, and I have this band and an amazing community of fans by my side. Excuse the pun, but I'm having a blast. :D

Ahh jealous you've seen HLAHG.Will you be my new best friend :P This might sound weird but can i live in your memory for an hour or two to see it :lol: jk. But i bet that was a great experience.

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I would have to say that my two closest friends got me into Green Day. They loved the older stuff and burned me the international superhits cd, and fell in love and then I heard American Idiot and fell even more in love and as everyone moved on, I stayed faithful to my band ;D And if anything, I love them even more ^__^

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Ahh jealous you've seen HLAHG.Will you be my new best friend :P This might sound weird but can i live in your memory for an hour or two to see it :lol: jk. But i bet that was a great experience.

haha I don't remember too much about it. I do remember that it was very artsy. Although it was a lot of behind the scenes stuff, it played every song from the album in full with some odd dancing to go along with each song. lol I have a poster and booklet from the show, which is one of my prized possessions. haha.

Unfortunately, though, it was before I really knew anyone from this fandom (well, I still don't, really...), so I just hung out with my mom the whole time :lol:

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what got me into green day... .i don't know really, but my friend in the 7th grade reintroduced me to GD by showing me American Idiot and at one point of my childhood (roughly about 7 years of age) i was into blink and GD.... not intensely though,

my first video of Green Day... i wanna say When I Come Around or Good Riddance. Again I was about 6-7 years old.... THE WARNING ERA.

my first few song..... hmmm good riddance, When I Come Around, i wanna say longview, minority, warning and walking contradiction

I started getting into bands properly when I was about 10 or 11. I'd heard Time of Your Life on the radio somewhere down the line, but I never took much notice. I was also pretty big on Busted at the time :lol: and reading about some of their personal influences they mentioned Dookie, still I didn't take much notice ¬__¬. I'd have Kerrang! on constantly, but this was around 2003 maybe. So the bands I got into were blink 182, Good Charlotte, Linkin Park, Sum 41 etc. because their videos were being aired a lot. Then eventually in 2004 when American Idiot dropped, it just stuck. I went out and bought the single, and christmas that year I received the album. It was love from then onwards :wub:

that's the same how i was. i'd listen to some of their songs, then like LP or SP or Good Charlotte stuck then my friend let me listen to AI and i was amazed :)

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The first few songs I heard that were Green Day were from American Idiot (BOBD, WMUMSE, and Holiday) on the radio and I really like the songs. I was about 9 at the time and didn't really give a shit about music at the time but since I liked those songs I thought I would download them on the internet. While this is really embarrassing to admit, for some strange reason (I think where I downloaded them from had the wrong artist name or something) I thought those songs were by Nickelback so had no idea that it was actually Green Day, only that I liked the music. I didn't really become a Green Day fan until 21CB when I took a summer music course that talked about them and we listened to the entire album throughout the span of a week and I was awestruck and in love with the music, so I bought the CD and now I have every one of Green Day's albums and a huge fan :lol:. (on an ironic side note, I don't even like Nickelback and never have, the only time I "liked them was when I thought BOBD, WMUMSE, and Holiday was by them :P)

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haha I don't remember too much about it. I do remember that it was very artsy. Although it was a lot of behind the scenes stuff, it played every song from the album in full with some odd dancing to go along with each song. lol I have a poster and booklet from the show, which is one of my prized possessions. haha.

Unfortunately, though, it was before I really knew anyone from this fandom (well, I still don't, really...), so I just hung out with my mom the whole time :lol:

I remember reading somewhere about them playing the album in full with behind the scenes stuff, but the dancing sounds very crazy :Dand dont worry we all hang out with our mom from time to time :)

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Well, I'm a bit of a late bloomer to the Green Day fandom. I had sort of heard a few songs on the radio when American Idiot first came out (I would have been around 10 or 11), but I never really got into them. It wasn't until 21st Century Breakdown came out that I actually even really noticed them. I decided to get 21 Guns and Boulevard of Broken Dreams on my ipod. I think the thing that really got me interested in the actual band besides the mainstream music was looking them up on deviantart. The stuff people made was so funny, so I decided to look more stuff up on youtube like music videos and such. That's when I really fell in love. I had never really realized bands could be funny until then. The first album I ever got was Nimrod, which I found in a Goodwill for like $5. I played the crap out of it. And the rest is history. I have been an OCD Green Day fan ever since. :)

edit: grammar

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my sister took me their concert on july 14, 2009, that's what really got me into them, it would be impossible to say what was the first song i heard by them though since they have been played in my house since literally before i was born. the first song i ever leaned the lyrics to was Good Riddance though. i also remember liking a couple songs off warning and nimrod, mainly Misery and King for a Day. i had no idea what they were about though, i just liked the way they sounded. so yeah, it was my sister who really got me in to Green Day, something i am quite happy about.

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My cousin had a bunch of videos all full of hip-hop and pop. But somewhere in there I found 'Boulevard of Broken Dreams' and I guess that's the first song I heard by them. It wasn't until 3 or 4 years later, that a friend of mine gave me '21st Century Breakdown' and he told me to listen to 'Know Your Enemy' and '21 Guns'. Me I listened to the whole album and I liked what I heard, so I downloaded their whole discography.

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You see, my mom (about age 24 at the time) got Dookie when she was pregnant with me and loved listening to it on her way to work! Even 2 years after i was born she listened to it while taking me to my babysitters'. a long time passed and when i got to 5th grade American Idiot came out and my mom got that, i wasn't really into music i just liked hearing what i heard on the radio but when my mom put AI in as we took a road trip, we refused to take it out of the CD player! and when i told my mom, "Mom, I really like this Green Day CD!" then she said "Do you remember listening to that CD with a bunch of drawings of people and dogs and airplanes and blimps?" i said, "Yes" she said, "that's the same band!" I had no idea since at age 10-11 all i really payed attention to were the vocals and lyrics and how Billie Joe's vocal style changed over that time. and from that point on, Green Day has always had and always will have a special place in my heart (and that place is quite large) :D

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Green Day got me into Green Day.

But seriously, I have a very complicated past with these dudes.

I was born 1 month before Dookie was released. My cousins would babysit me while my parents were working, and they got really into Green Day. So essentially, I heard Dookie on repeat for probably the first couple months of my life, ever since then those songs have always seemed damn familiar.

In the 5th grade my friend Chris introduced formally me to them when American Idiot came out. I loved the singles but never listened to the whole album (huge mistake). I sort of forgot about them.

I got back into them in 7th grade for a bit. I remember watching the "Saints Are Coming" music video a lot, it gave me massive chills. I started listening to the American Idiot stuff again, but I would get teased by some of my friends for liking Green Day and rock music in general, and like an idiot I stopped listening to them.

Then the summer before my freshman year in high school I discovered the rest of American Idiot. And then Dookie right after. By this time I was learning guitar and was really into rock, especially Metallica, so it was only natural that this time the music would stay with me. And it just sort of spread from there, to the point where they overtook to Metallica to become my favorite band. Now I'm a punker, I listen to way too much punk because of Green Day, and I'm sad to say that I don't listen to as much Metal anymore, although those bands still have a special place in my heart (somewhere under the massive space that Green Day and all the bands they introduced to me take up).

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I think I told this story before but one of my friends let me borrow the International Superhits cd and I was instantly hooked on that thing for the next few months. This happened right after AI came out and for that Christmas I got that CD as well. After that, that same friend just let me have all the rest of his GD cds haha and I was hooked on them from there on out. The only band I liked before GD was Sum 41 and that was only their Chuck cd and first album.

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My story is very unusual: when i was 11 i found an old almost broken mp3 player at school on it were around 100 Songs i listened to all of them and the only 3 songs i liked were American idiot , Holiday and Boulevard of Broken Dreams. So i listened to them for a view weeks then i googled green day and watched all the videos on the oficial website and (because i was a dumb kid) i recorded them with the mic of the mp3 player so all Songs with a video were my first GD Songs. One day in school a good friend of mine brought a CD whith him which he got the day before and he liked it very much it was American Idiot. I borrowed it from him. Then i bought it myself. At that time I listened to AI almost every day after school. Then Bulet in a Bible was released and this was the first time I saw GD live and where i heard them talking about their music and it was very impressiv for me so i bought some other GD Albums (the first was International Superhits then Insomniac then Nimrod then Warning Then Dookie; these wer all the Albums i could find in the Stores, i got all the other Albums (Shenanigans 1039SOSH, Kerplunk my next birthday). Another Important thing maybee was that all my friends at that time liked green day. The sad story about this is I'm the only one of them who still does :( all the othes no listen to Dubstep and GermanGansterRap :bad:

i think thats it :)

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I was 15 when Dookie was released, heard a single and fell in love. It was the first CD I ever bought and I still have it today, complete with Ernie crowd surfing on the back cover. They got a lot of hate back then, too, especially from all my "musician" friends who liked to make fun of their three-chord style, but I loved them anyway, still do and always will.

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I was 14 and I got 21st CB to my birthday. My dad listen to 21 guns and he liked this song so much so I noticed Green Day. I searched around the Internet to find out who they 're. And I listen to the other awesome songs and from there are on, Green Day became my life!

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