Are Green Day Punk?

[Hermione]

I gotta go along the lines of this guy. Even though I thought it was very nice written, a lovely article, etc etc. I cannot say I agree. Especially since I don't know anything about whoever wrote this. Surely she listens to Green Day, but does she listen to punk? Because I really do not think you're one to define the term "punk" or determine whether a band is "punk" or not, if you have no idea what you're talking about. I'm not saying you don't, I'm just saying I find it hard to take you seriously when you might as well be a slightly more eloquent version of the average Green Day fan ("z0mfg green day is hXc punx"). Props for conveying your opnion in a very respectable way though.

I think anyone can have an opinion on what punk is. There are no 'rules' to define it, it's up to individuals to decide their own definition. Who are these special elite people who are somehow more qualified to comment? It doesn't matter how many punk bands you like, your opinion is still equally valid.

Oh and Delfina, I think your post is spot on.

[Fuzz]

I gotta go along the lines of this guy. Even though I thought it was very nice written, a lovely article, etc etc. I cannot say I agree. Especially since I don't know anything about whoever wrote this. Surely she listens to Green Day, but does she listen to punk? Because I really do not think you're one to define the term "punk" or determine whether a band is "punk" or not, if you have no idea what you're talking about. I'm not saying you don't, I'm just saying I find it hard to take you seriously when you might as well be a slightly more eloquent version of the average Green Day fan ("z0mfg green day is hXc punx"). Props for conveying your opnion in a very respectable way though.

Here's her reply to him just earlier today

Yeah, me. Here's the way it went down - Andres asked me to write an editorial on this subject, and so I considered what my opinions were. As regards the 'dogma' thing, whatever I say in that article is my opinion, I don't speak for anyone else and I'm sure no-one feels obliged to take my opinion as dogma.

What it would all boil down to for me goes with something Billie Joe said at some point that I can't completely remember, but it was along the lines of 'if punk was a smell, it would be...' - and that's how it is for me, a smell, a feeling, a sense. I look at Green Day, and they smell right .

As regards arriving at answers, I think that's up to the individual - personally, I don't go along with movements. I don't think so much in terms of answers as in evolution, but I know that to some people, answers are important.

Anyway, considering how much I've written on this theme, both in the editorial and in some of the better debates I got into in the thread following it, I'm gonna leave it at that.

[beat_on_the_brat]

I think anyone can have an opinion on what punk is. There are no 'rules' to define it, it's up to individuals to decide their own definition. Who are these special elite people who are somehow more qualified to comment? It doesn't matter how many punk bands you like, your opinion is still equally valid.

Fair enough, I see your point. It's not like I'm trying to define punk either, I'm just saying that whoever takes a shot at it should know a thing or two about it. And I'm not sure this person does, which results in me not being fully able to appreciate her article. Nevertheless, I respect her opinion and see where she's coming from.

[Hermione]

Fair enough, I see your point. It's not like I'm trying to define punk either, I'm just saying that whoever takes a shot at it should know a thing or two about it. And I'm not sure this person does, which results in me not being fully able to appreciate her article. Nevertheless, I respect her opinion and see where she's coming from.

No probs, I see your point too now

[Celes Chere]

They're not punk.

[FilmAdaptation]

Not sure if I've posted here before, and what I said if I have, but I view punk as a musical genre, and Green Day's music is no longer anywhere close to that genre.

Therefore, Green Day aren't punk.

[Hitman]

Punk is one big contradiction anymore, from what I've seen.

Then again, I'm not an expert on the subject.

[Celes Chere]

Green Day is considered by many as pop punk, still in the punk genre.

I think that punk as a pure thing is no longer available.

[Hitman]

Wouldn't "Pop-Punk" be an oxymoron ?

[Celes Chere]

I don't know I was reading the Wikipedia

[Trotsky]

You can credit them for mobilizing the punk movement, just like you can credit Green Day for doing the same thing in the '90s.

The Ramones were not a punk band. And I can name more than 30 significant 90's punk bands that have nothing to do with Green Day.

[Celes Chere]

Oh, this guy and his ideas....

[Laura33]

I can name more than 30 significant 90's punk bands that have nothing to do with Green Day.

Go for it.

[Hitman]

It could be (and in some cases is), but it doesn't have to be.

It just defines a punk sound that leads more towards hooks and pop song structures, without being pop itself. But that's where the genre crossover gets tricky. Some people will call Fall Out Boy pop-punk, which they're not, they're pop-rock. They're a fantastic band, but there's nothing definitively punk about their sound. There's also the 'ethics' issue of whether a band can be 'popularly' accepted by the mainstream and still be punk which Green Day are almost the embodiment of, but there's no clear answer to that question within the punk community.

Yeah, that's what I meant. Pop stands for popular, right ? But, punk is supposedly anti-mainstream, the answer for people who don't buy into what it's popular, so pop-punk contradicts itself, in a sense. However, if you do certain things to avoid becoming popular, in order to retain your "punk" status, doesn't that go against the free-will of punk ? Which, if you do become popular, are you selling out, or just spreading your message to more people ?

Punk confuses me. haha

[Celes Chere]

Yeah, that's what I meant. Pop stands for popular, right ? But, punk is supposedly anti-mainstream, the answer for people who don't buy into what it's popular, so pop-punk contradicts itself, in a sense. However, if you do certain things to avoid becoming popular, in order to retain your "punk" status, doesn't that go against the free-will of punk ? Which, if you do become popular, are you selling out, or just spreading your message to more people ?

Punk confuses me. haha

Yeah but I think we are talking about punk as a musical style.

[Trotsky]

I just am annoyed with any band being put on a pedestal. There's not a single band that should be credited with the sustenance of a genre. It's the hundreds of indie and unsigned bands, not the few bands with the light shined on them, that sustain the types of music they play.

[Laura33]

I just am annoyed with any band being put on a pedestal. There's not a single band that should be credited with the sustenance of a genre. It's the hundreds of indie and unsigned bands, not the few bands with the light shined on them, that sustain the types of music they play.

So you couldn't name 30 bands then?

No, I know what you mean, but I think what they are trying to say is that Green Day was launched into the limelight and then suddenly 'punk' was everywhere

[Celes Chere]

Yes.

Since the music you like is not popular, other bands cannot be influenced by them or will be very difficult.

[mbk]

Of course certain bands should be excluded the name! Are Metallica a punk band? No, nobody could possibly define them that way. Punk has a box just like any other definition. It may be an oddly shaped box, with various protruding angular corners and flexible, bendy, even breakable walls, but it's a box nonetheless.

As I said on the previous page, there are different strands to punk rock, and Green Day could certainly have been considered to encompass one of those strands in the beginning. However, you don't get out of marketing methods by saying that it was up to someone else. That's like Primark buying dirt cheap cotton on the open market then claiming it wasn't them fucking the child workers who picked it, it was their suppliers. Green Day are a big enough band to have nearly full control over the way they're marketed. They don't have to dress up like snappy looker pretty boys like every other faux-punk/emo band that are all the rage at the moment, they chose to do that. And I find it very hard to believe they didn't write Warning or AI as a means to address a more mainstream audience. Fairplay that's subjective as far as observations go, but the fact is they did go more mainstream and at least musically moved away from punk.

You can't define punk as doing anything against the grain. By that logic I could claim joining an organised criminal syndicate was punk, since I was rebelling against society, and then following that donning a pseudonym of 'Joker' and becoming a costumed criminal and fighting a figure dressed as a bat would be punk. Anything can be defined as punk unless you reign in the definitions a bit, and some people will draw the line in different places to others. But the lines have to be drawn in the same ballpark, or they end up being different sports (got to love Pulp Fiction analogies).

I wasn't suggesting all bands should be included under the "punk"label, I was only talking about Green Day. I think your definition is unnecessarily narrow if you want to leave Green Day out of that camp. Like you said, punk is a box with a lot of give, and it's both a musical style and a philosophy. As a musical style, I think there are too many elements in AI that are drawn from punk for it to be excluded from being called a punk album, which is what Green Day itself has called it. Yes, it has other elements as well, so be it. Not every band has to sound like the Subhumans to be considered punk. I'm not a huge fan of Blink, for instance, but I think their sound fits pretty solidly withing the pop punk genre.

As far as the punk philosophy, if it's narrowly defined then no band that makes millions of dollars for a major label can be considered punk. I think Green Day's decision to become a mainstream band was a pragmatic one, and one that there is good reason to disagree with, but I don't think they've done anything overtly commercial nor changed their own way of looking at things. I think the image that went with AI was a conscious decision to be taken seriously in mainstream music, which dismissed the seriousness and musicianship of Dookie because they were three scruffy kids. And as you know they don't do that anymore. The live FBHT shows were very much like any punk show, even tho the style of music was different.

I didn't say anything about punk being "doing anything against the grain." I think punk has to do with having clear values (not any values, as some have suggested, but specific ideals about rejecting bullshit and spin, and being honest, and a belief in justice and equality) and remaining clear headed about them. Sometimes you can choose to do things that don't exactly fit those values, but as long as you don't change your thinking in order to justify your actions I think your integrity remains intact.

Oh and Delfina, I think your post is spot on.

[justcause]

Fair enough, I see your point. It's not like I'm trying to define punk either, I'm just saying that whoever takes a shot at it should know a thing or two about it. And I'm not sure this person does, which results in me not being fully able to appreciate her article. Nevertheless, I respect her opinion and see where she's coming from.

Thanx for the props. My fundamentals are the bands of 77, and it's with them that I measure anything that followed, including Green Day. Punk goes deep with me, and also, I should say that I don't write about stuff unless I know what I'm talking about, on any subject. While I wrote the editorial in response to Andres' suggestion, it gave me the opportunity to voice feelings I already had about Green Day, and if I didn't feel like they were punk, I would've been completely comfortable with putting across that opinion. Anyway, I expanded on all of this further into the thread, if you're interested in reading.

[midlfecrysis]

I think they are punk in attitude at least. They do what ever the hell they want and don't give a f**k what anyone else thinks. They aren't worried with outward appearances or trends, they set the trends.

[Silje Kristin]

Buried Deep With Your Identity: Are Green Day Punk?

June 17, 2006

Written By: Angeline

The interview’s around the time of Insomniac. The guys are slouched up against a bathroom wall - how many photoshoots over the years, new look for every era, putting a mark on time, putting a mark on your skin, blood and ink of another rite of passage? So Billie Joe says ‘I have nothing really to be proud of, except for the fact that I happen to be a punk’. Ignore the screaming lack of self-worth in this statement - or maybe not, because ‘worthless’ is punk’s dictionary definition - this is what it comes down to for him, the essence of how he sees himself. Then remember that this guy saying these words is the guy with a ground-breaking mega-hit album called 'Dookie' under his belt, a string of hit singles, cool videos, never off MTV - nothing to be proud of ? Not when it means that the thing he values more than all of that is being torn away from him - his identity, the right to say 'I happen to be a punk'. I didn’t get to hear if he had a definition of what punk is - I don’t think the guy is about definitions anyway. But to me, punk is whatever he is, and if anyone has a right to the name, it’s Green Day.

This argument rages on and on, as the ‘sell-out’ chorus loops its drone, and maybe it’s pointless to address it again. But this band’s integrity is what has been constantly attacked since Dookie, perversely because people know they care about it - and I think that to attack someone’s integrity is no small thing. That the broader community does it is a reflection of the fact that punk scares them - and here were some punks who had ventured out of their niche and were radio-friendly - in fact, pretty friendly generally. Easy game then, and appropriate for a society that is at its heart deeply conservative, to still somewhere resent the tattooed outsiders who crossed the tracks to shove their dicks in Billboard with Longview. If that’s not the case, why is it this song mentioned in every review and interview right up to today, and used ignorantly to trivialize them ?

A radical point of view is a challenge to the comfortable norm, and it’s easier to attack those who expound ideals than to engage with the ideals themselves.

But to paraphrase ‘Reject’, who the hell are we to tell them who they are ? Who even is uber-punk John Lydon to tell them? Johnny rightly expects that people should be familiar with his Punk culture and its origins in the desolation of Seventies Britain, hopeless, workless, bleak and futureless, kids taking that nothing - the badge of worthless - and making a revolution.

Johnny’s struggle blinds him to Green Day‘s, and he never bothered to discover their culture : for him, it never rains in California, and no-one is poor or degraded or disenfranchised. No need to ask what it’s like to be the underclass of a wealthy state in a wealthy nation, swept under the rug of national pride, your pain not even allowed to name itself.

No such thing as a refinery town built on landfill, no broken homes or exclusion, no trailer parks or dead-end schools, blue-collar, no-collar, drop out and fall down - this is America in the late 80s, for fuck’s sake, no such expression as ‘the slums of Oakland’ - welcome to paradise!

What if the bankruptcy of the American Dream is the barren place where your soul is seeking to be nourished - and what if in being rejected, you reject, and dare to want something different, what then?

Walk a mile in these guys’ shoes before you take away the badge of worthlessness that they blazon as a badge of pride, and tell me who’s more entitled to it, and to decide for themselves what it means to them.

So punk is indelibly their identity, but I don’t think they ever signed up to a set of rules that defined it - Billie Joe again: ‘We were never really into that whole PC punk clique’. The basic concept, yes; the rules and rigidity, no. He is first and last an artist, and whatever competes with that drive will lose - it’s rightly his higher law.

In their Gilman years, they were committed to DIY - it was a way of making possibilities where there were none, enabling themselves to go forward on the path they’d already chosen.

As kids who didn’t fit the school system and didn’t have a home life at that time, poor and disadvantaged, despite their artistic gifts - there they found a way to live with dignity, purpose and a sense of control over their lives and future - a toe-hold in American society ‘that don’t believe in me’.

They were also part of a community of artists, they got to make music and talk ideas and ideals; for Billie and Mike, who had to grow up too fast, too hard, there was structure for lives that had seen too much chaos, there was somewhere they could just be young guys hanging out. Gilman was a place where it was ok to be who they were, and it must have been such an amazing time for them.

When their needs changed and this system started to constrain them rather than free them, they moved on from it. They’ve said how they felt it was more honorable to leave the scene rather than stay and risk distorting it with their presence, but there’s no doubt they didn’t envision the painful parting that ensued. If you want the living document of that pain, it’s called Insomniac, and it echoed down the years till it was amplified again in American Idiot.

They most probably had harbored hopes that they could stay within the broader parameters of that community, continuing to contribute, which goes back to the idea of structure. Green Day’s rebellions are usually around changing situations rather than tearing them down - they want Bush out of the White House, but they don’t want to overthrow the government.

People look at them now, since American Idiot went seismic, and decry their punk status without ever knowing where these guys came from, how hard their journey has been, how they questioned all their decisions and suffered for many of them, and how a fierce artistic integrity burns in everything they do.

But ‘question everything’ means that your philosophy has to be up for grabs too - it has to be evaluated on an ongoing basis. Ask yourself in all honesty - would you let a set of rules you embraced in your teens dictate what you do for the rest of your life, no matter what else you learn or what else changes thereafter?

What if you ‘wanna be an omnivore’, a rock star, a pretty boy, all of the above instead of none of the above - would you let it stop you? That’s not punk, that’s sublimating yourself instead of expressing yourself: it’s not any kind of philosophy - it’s dogma! Would you let dogma stop you from achieving what you want to achieve in your one and only life?

Mortality is a big theme for Green Day, overtly in songs from J.A.R. to Wake Me Up When September Ends, but implicit also in almost every song that talks about time and how you use it. These guys have known loss and exclusion, they know what it is to lose your faith and have people lose their faith in you, and how important it is ‘to find what to believe’.

So there’s this fucking great band whose music has always been about truth. Music that’s never deviated from a standard, never sold an audience short, never given less than 100%, given till it hurts. They’re down-to-earth, unpretentious, still connected to their roots, still socially active and concerned, still kicking ass. Fuck the merch, fuck the ringtones, fuck the crappy covers of September - fuck everything extraneous that they don’t concern themselves with.

Who they are is what punk is ; no-one can take away from them what they owned for themselves.

Wow, very well written!

[Jack96]

Their earlier work is alot more punk than nowadays i think

[billiejoe3272]

The Ramones were not a punk band. And I can name more than 30 significant 90's punk bands that have nothing to do with Green Day.

still waiting

[billiejoe3272]

still waiting

please go on 2 this an give em hell kid

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