Green Day journalism FAIL

I guess someone had to write Fat Bottomed Girls.

What a band.

 

For a rock-n-roll brainiac, it's hard to top Dexter Holland of The Offspring.

From his wiki page:

Holland was the class valedictorian at Pacifica High School in Garden Grove, California and was a Ph.D. candidate[4] in Molecular Biology from the University of Southern California; however, he abandoned his Ph.D. in favor of focusing on The Offspring. He has a Bachelor's degree in Biology and a Master's degree in Molecular Biology, both from the University of Southern California.[5]

 

I'll see your Dexter Holland and raise you one:

Greg Graffin from Bad Religion has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from Cornell and actually teaches courses at UCLA.

That's pretty badass. That's so non-punk that it's actually about as punk as I can possibly imagine.

 

Tonight in Cleveland, a couple of days in advance of their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, Green Day played its first gig in about a year.

One of the highlights was playing a set with the original members of the band ... including Kiffmeyer on drums.

If he had regrets about leaving, he's probably OK with it now.

 

Green Day is in the RRHOF? That's ridiculous.

 

I actually think they belong in the RRHOF but if there was any question they deserve to be there for writing American Idiot in honor of George W. Bush. Congrats and well deserved.

 

Greg Graffin - Bad Religion

Greg Graffin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Graffin attended El Camino Real High School, then double-majored in anthropology and geology as an undergraduate at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He went on to earn a master's degree in geology from UCLA and received his Ph.D. from Cornell University. The Ph.D. dissertation was officially a zoology Ph.D., supervised byWilliam B. Provine at Cornell.[2] The title of his dissertation is "Evolution, Monism, Atheism, and the Naturalist World-View: Perspectives from Evolutionary Biology".[3]

Greg Graffin returned to UCLA where he taught Life Science 1.[4] In a June 2008 interview with Bad Religion bassist Jay Bentley, he mentioned that Graffin would be teaching there from January to March 2009.[5] In April 2011, Graffin revealed that he would return to Cornell University that fall to co-teach a course in evolution for 14 weeks.[6]

 

Oh, I think that they are an absolute slam dunk. Not inner circle, but a George Brett-level RRHOFer.

 

Do you really think their music holds up?

I have a hard time imagining people listening to Green Day 10 or 20 years from now.

'90's faux-angst, and an anti-George Bush album?

I don't even see them as influential, but rather as derivative. They took grunge and made it sound more like pop, which made them more commercially viable.

 

I didn't think it would hold up, but I think it largely has held up. "Time of Your Life" will be played at graduations from here to eternity. "Dookie" may be a moment-in-time album, but it was a hell of a moment. "When I Come Around" is at least one of the top 20 songs that kind of defined that decade. I don't think you can dismiss "American Idiot" as an "anti-George Bush album." The title track is critical of the dumbing down and partisanship of the news media, yes. And, yes, it comes from a lefty point of view. But the album is really ambitious, spawned a bunch of hit singles, and, to me, impressively showcased a band that cared about progressing from where they started, which was pretty good in its own right.

And you can't say they aren't influential. No one is going to compare Blink 182 and Goldfinger and Sum Whatever-the-Fuck to the Beatles or anything, but Green Day influenced a ton of bands. Were they derivative? I suppose. So was Led Zeppelin, though. And it would be tough to argue they aren't influential, right? (Not to compare Willie Mays to George Brett. Just talking about the principle involved.)

 

Yeah, last song at prom too.

But, it's pretty different from the rest of their catalog. Does anyone other than Billie Joe even play on the track?

And, I''l take Lyle Lovett's "Closing Time" over it any time.

 

Dookie is more than 20 years old and is played a lot on classic rock stations. I'd say it holds up pretty well.

I don't know if the song "American Idiot" will hold up, but a lot of the songs on that album should hold up.