Green Day's Magic Days - Three East Bay Boys & 'Dookie'

[annie]

I bought Dookie after American Idiot, but I had several songs (Welcome to Paradise... Basketcase... When I Come Around..etc) on mix tapes when I was like 9. Hehe. And I remember watching MTV when I was 5 years old and seeing the music video for Longview

[Laura.]

My parents were into punk music, so i practically grew up listening to them, mainly stuff from Ramones n stuff though.

[ImnotaDrIjustPlayOneOnTV]

I was 21 almost 22 when Dookie came out. Sadly being from Kansas I didn't know of them before that. I had just put our 18 month daughter to bed, my hubby rolled a joint and we sat down to watch tv. I turned on mtv and after a few videos Longview came on. I was totally blown away (in more ways than one ). My husband had mentioned hearing the song on the radio a few days before that. We liked it so much we went to Best Buy that weekend and bought Dookie. It got played into the ground. I still have it. Its one of the ones that still has Ernie from Sesame St on the back cover. We also purchased the pay per view to see them @ Woodstock. We managed to get our hands on 1039 and Kerplunk shortly after that. I and my husband to a lesser extent have been hooked ever since. Our now almost 14 year old daughter and 10 year old son are HUGE fans. They were raised hearing Green Day. (Don't rip me a new one on the weed thing, we don't smoke it anymore.)

[ReMoss85]

My mom found Dookie behind our compost bin in the backyard, still in its shrink wrap, around 1994. She brought it in and we listened and they swore and it was loud so we didn't like it much. A couple years later when I was older, I listened again and then I liked the swearing and the loudness. Then I bought Insomniac and that's what really did it.

[Oh_Botha]

My dad bought Dookie when he was 22 in '94. He showed it to me a year ago so I kept it. He told me he remembers when he saw the list of music videos from new bands on MTV and they showed Longview. Then he was like "I have to buy this album!"

[sarah!]

one of my older brothers has dookie. i don't know if it was him or someone else who played it while i was growing up but someone sure as hell was; i didn't know it was green day i was listening to until i was asking a friend of mine to send me some different music and he sent me all this green day, which i recognised from the days of yore. it was before ai, it was before they were as explosive over here as they are now, and so i still wasn't fussed that it was green day. as a matter of fact i found all the stuff he gave me the other day and i was like "wow, i was more educated than i thought.....". most of that stuff was from dookie, and i bought myself a copy a year and a half ago maybe? i kinda felt guilty for having all the music and putting in none of the cash for a band i loved so much.

these stories are really interesting, just btw.

[whatsmyname_jimmy]

my beloved mother gave me her dookie cd when she realizes i liked nimrod

[TotalBasketcasexx]

My sister had it and played it and i loved them ever since

[xXTattooed_MemoriesXx]

My older sister owns Dookie. If it wasn't for her, I wouldn't have heard of Green Day until probably American Idiot.

She used to play it all the time when I was younger, so I grew up listening to Basket Case and Longview. Although I was too small to even appreciate them. As I grew up, I went through the normal teenage stages, and my music interests changed a lot throughout the years. Then, in 2004, I heard American Idiot on the radio, and knew it was Green Day right off the bat. I automatically fell in love with the song. The only cd I knew from Green Day was Dookie at the time (I knew they had others but I didn't know what they were called or anything), so I went back and heard all of Dookie. It was now that I understood all the lyrics, and appreciated the songs more because I could actually relate to them.

So I thank my sister sooooooo much for playing Dookie for me as a kid. :wink:

[GreenDay-Idiot]

My mom had Basket Case on cassette!

now I have the CD! much better

[justcause]

one of my older brothers has dookie. i don't know if it was him or someone else who played it while i was growing up but someone sure as hell was; i didn't know it was green day i was listening to until i was asking a friend of mine to send me some different music and he sent me all this green day, which i recognised from the days of yore. it was before ai, it was before they were as explosive over here as they are now, and so i still wasn't fussed that it was green day. as a matter of fact i found all the stuff he gave me the other day and i was like "wow, i was more educated than i thought.....". most of that stuff was from dookie, and i bought myself a copy a year and a half ago maybe? i kinda felt guilty for having all the music and putting in none of the cash for a band i loved so much.

these stories are really interesting, just btw.

I think all of the stories are wonderful, the different ways one band's music came into people's lives, sometimes really randomly,like the post above where it turned up behind the compost heap!

How sometimes the music was in the backround for years, and other times, it just galvanized the person who heard it and they went straight out and bought everything of Green Day's they could lay their hands on. Or how a thirteen-year-old was blown away by American Idiot, music like they didn't know existed.

This really is Green Day magic; I've printed up all your stories to keep, and I really treasure them.

[sarah!]

seems like a lot fo people owe a lot to various relatives

[darkhriss]

When Dookie came out, I was 4 years old... :/ But my brother liked Green Day before me, and I think he had Basket Case on the computer or something

[EatTheMeek]

Back in those days I didn't really know anything about them. I had Dookie, Kerplunk, Insomniac and Bowling Bowling..... Brain Stew/Jaded-video recorded on VHS and a poster. That was enough for me.

[GreenDay-Idiot]

My mom loved Green Day back in 1994....

now she understands my obsession

[Gangsta-licous.]

I bought Dookie after American Idiot came out. It was my 3rd Green Day cd, I bought ISH before it.

[Kat-Meow]

The first song i ever heard from gd was "When I Come Around" I was just 6 years old and i had a crush on billie... but seeing as how i was waaay too young to listen to "that kind of music" my mom decides she'll pick out the ppl i'll like... britney spears... ugh! but now after i turned 15 last year i was set free! i told her i was old enough to choose what i wanted and i thought briney spears was trashy... i remembered gd over the years and whenever their songs were on the radio or mtv or vh1 i would listen to them... the first cd i got was american idiot... then nimrod and then dookie... when i heard the first song from them i ever heard i was so fucking happy! when i was listening to britney spears i still became the thing my mother didn't want me too... i'm no fucking lady and i have no lady like manners to speak of... she hates it and realizes she's lost the fight to turn me into something she never got to be... she wanted to live through me and she still tries, but i'm fighting her over it and i don't like to fight her and i love her and i want her to understand that i'm alowd to change and be who and what i want and that green day... billie, especially... showed me that if they could make it in this shitty world, i can too... god! i sound like a dweeb!

[justcause]

^^^^^^^^

No, you don't sound like a dweeb - lots of us have variations on the 'Green Day changed my life' theme - (me included), and you told it well.

[Peter.]

I remember me and my brother watching Woodstock all day long...they aired Basket Case and When i come around on Swedish tv and he recorded it...it was so much fun and my brother kept on telling me more and more things about Green Day that i didn't know...after all, i have my brother to thank that i got into Green Day and the kind of music i like today

[Terrbear]

I bought Dookie when I was 13, (4 years ago) because it was 5 dollars and I liked "When I come around" because I saw the music video of it being played at Woodstock 1994

[Hermie™]

Let's see... the first time I ever heard Dookie was when I was probably about... 13 years old, so... 1998 I guess. A friend of mine had been walking around her neighborhood and found a cd case on the ground with a bunch of cd's in it, so we were looking through it and I found "Dookie" and I thought it was funny. So I kept that cd and I listened to it all the time. Then... sadly, I fell into the crowd of boy-band lovers, and forgot all about Green Day. I re-discovered them after I heard Boulevard of Broken Dreams and remembered how much I had enjoyed them. I bought AI, then I just went and bought all of their albums. I've been addicted ever since.

[I Am The Idiot America]

The first CD I bought was International Superhits because I thought it had American Idiot..but instead I found Good Riddance. And the rest is history. I first heard of them when I was 6 and that was when I saw the Good Riddance music video.

[1039slappygirl]

I was less than a year old when Dookie came out It was the third GD album I got. I found them during the American Idiot era, so there's no much I can say about it

[Tragically Green]

Well nobody has any true "punk" stories to share about Green Day's early days so let me share one...

I guess you posted your age wrong...or else you were getting stoned and watching green day when you were 2 or 3?

I started listening to Dookie in '94 when the songs were all over the radio and much music. I was in Grade 8 and I remember kids dying thier hair blue and green with markers and Kool-Aide at reccess.

[SixtiesJunkiie]

the story of green day is actually a rather depressing story. it would make a really good movie (like about their lives, but with a story), if it just left out american idiot. its kinda depressing how everyone left em though. i think people who diss em for signing to reprise are just retarded. i think anyone in their position wouldve done it.

i remember watching 'behind the music: green day' and just finding the whole gilman backlash really depressing. half of me can understand why they wouldn't welcome them back [it's not like the guys never knew that the only kind of music welcomed there was underground music] but the other half is like 'cmon, getting known does not equal selling out.'