It’s 1999.
System of a Down are already making serious waves with their ferocious debut album, but they’re on the cusp releasing Toxicity, which would catapult them to major international attention. Lead single Chop Suey thrust Serj Tankian and co into the global spotlight. The next few years would see them headline some of the world’s most important rock music festivals like Reading and Glastonbury, as well as receiving four Grammy nominations and a win, among other accolades.
Down the line they would break up, reform, play a couple shows, break up, work with other artists, reform, and break up again. According to Wikipedia, Serj Tankian would later relocate to a place called Warkworth, a “semi-rural town north of Auckland, New Zealand.”
Sum 41, meanwhile, have just signed to Island Records. It would be about two years before their debut album, but that was all they needed. All Killer No Filler immediately shot them up the charts, and they went platinum in the UK, USA and beyond. They played more than 300 shows in the next year, many of them with Blink 182 and The Offspring, after which they released sophomore record Does This Look Infected?, which was a similarly mammoth success. They went on to be nominated for a Grammy and several Juno Awards.
Unlike many of their contemporaries, they never technically broke up, but members came and went, many choosing to focus their attention on side projects instead, and their next few albums didn’t make much noise.
By 1999, Green Day have well and truly established themselves as the world’s foremost pop punk band. 1994’s Dookie sold more than ten million copies in the US alone. They would go on to win five Grammy Awards, release twelve albums and would even be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2015.
It’s pretty great to be in 1999.
Oh wait.
It’s 2016.
It’s 2016 right now.
Green Day are currently on a world tour supporting their new album Revolution Radio, which came out last week. It’s their first album in seven years. They’ll be performing for most of the next twelve months, including stadium shows in Australia.
System of a Down have just announced tour dates for 2017, with a possible headline slot at Download and rumours of a new album. If true, it will be their first since 2005.
Sum 41 also just dropped their first record in years, 13 Voices, their first in five years. They’ve been touring ahead of the release and have just announced more dates for 2017.
Furthermore, Blink 182, who dropped their new album California back in July, earning them their first no. 1 record in 15 years. have recently revealed plans to drop an EP by the end of the year. They’re currently on tour with contemporaries including A Day to Remember, All Time Low, Simple Plan and The Used.
Even The Offspring are rumoured to be releasing a new album later this year.
I’ll let Blink do the talking:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7l5ZeVVoCA
Image: Billboard
Outspoken Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong has delivered an open letter to Enfield High School in Connecticut, after it was revealed that a musical production of American Idiot was cancelled at the request of parents, who voiced their concerns regarding the manner of content, including sex, drug use and swearing.
Censorship seems to be the buzz word of the week in the music business. However this time it’s not B.O.B mouthing off about his Twitter being censored because he has miraculously discovered that the world is flat.
Labelling the school as engaging in censorship, Armstrong pulls no punches in insisting that the younger generations should be exposed to the political and social landscape that they are a part of:
“I realize the content of the Broadway production of AI is not quite ‘suitable’ for a younger audience. However there is a high school rendition of the production and I believe that’s the one Enfield was planning to perform which is suitable for most people.
It would be a shame if these high schoolers were shut down over some of the content that may be challenging for some of the audience. But the bigger issue is censorship. This production tackles issues in a post 9/11 world and I believe the kids should be heard. And most of all be creative in telling a story about our history.”
I’m sure Billie Joe is even more ecstatic that the school has now chosen a production of Little Shop of Horrors to be performed in place of American Idiot. That doesn’t exactly scream punk rock now does it?
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee_uujKuJMI]
The latest round of inductees into rock and roll’s most hallowed ground, the Hall of Fame, has been announced and uh… it’s kind of baffling.
Sure, Lou Reed is rightfully there, so are Joan Jett and Bill Withers. Even Ringo Starr is going in. Thank the good dude above someone finally realised Stevie Ray Vaughan deserved a place in there too.
And then there’s Green Day.
These fucking guys
Forgive me while I spit out my morning Cheerios in disgust. For an idea of just how big a travesty I think this is, here is a list of just some of the artists who AREN’T in the Hall of Fame even though Billie Joe Fuckface and co. somehow slithered their way to the front of the line:
Iron Maiden
The Smiths
Kraftwerk
New York Dolls
MC5
Joy Division
Deep Purple
Afrika Bambaataa
The Cure
N.W.A.
The fuck is this? You know, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that 10-year-old me loved him some Green Day. I used to listen to tracks like When I Come Around, Basket Case and even Minority and thought this was punk. By the time they rolled around with the barely containable fury of American Idiot my first year of high school I thought they were spiky-haired Gods. But then you kind of grow up a little and actually recognise the bastardised and commercialised brand of punk, the angst-y teen garbage music they were really peddling.
This kind of bullshit
Did anyone listen to utter crap like Warning, Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Jesus of Suburbia (all 9 unnecessary minutes of it!), 21 Guns or pretty much anything that band has done since 2004 and honestly think ‘Yes, these people deserve to be in the Hall Of Fame next to artists like Elvis Presley and Led Zeppelin”
This the answer I’m looking for.
Take a look at that list of artists from before. Many are absolute legends within the history of rock and roll. Many pioneered entire genres (Kraftwerk, Afrika Bambaataa) or had successful careers spanning decades (The Cure, Iron Maiden) or may have burnt too briefly but are so transcendent that their overarching influence is still felt to this day (Joy Division, N.W.A.). Green Day were a forgettable bunch of 90s punks who were heading the way of their contemporaries in bands like The Offspring before one incendiary song that took the world by storm in 2004.
That’s it. Everything they did before and after American Idiot was either mediocre at best or vomit-inducingly atrocious at worst (see their triple album extravaganza of horseshit in 2012). They looked poised to enter the next stage of their career after American Idiot but they squandered it by failing to release a follow-up album for five years and falling totally and utterly behind in the game. So does one good song and an otherwise forgettable career with barely a decade of relevance justify a place in the Hall of Fame over a bunch of other artists who were better in every aspect?
Still no.
I won’t go as far as to say that they don’t have a place in the Hall Of Fame. Hell, we are probably going to need tack-on bands like Green Day for the inductee lists in 30-40 years time when they’re clutching at straws and forced to debate whether people like Katy Perry and Fall Out Boy merit a place in there. To push Green Day to the front of the line in the very first year they are eligible for induction though, when so many other worthy candidates have been eligible for years without even a look-in, is just ludicrous and smacks of corporate bias and just overall bad taste from the small cabal of judges who are responsible for the sanctity and celebration of rock and roll and the good folks behind it.
Is it any wonder that perhaps Green Day’s biggest luminaries, the Sex Pistols, called the Hall Of Fame a ‘piss stain’ and refused to attend their own induction?