I saw "This is 40" last night becuase I still trust the Apatow brand and for the Graham Parker sub-plot, naturally. Everybody came through, though Apatow's plots are getting thinner even as his ability to work wonders with sprawling cast is rising to Robert Altman-esque levels. Parker was dead hilarious, as anyone who's watched him on stage or recently would guess. One of the MANY strong turns (John Lithgow, Albert Brooks, Charlyne Yi, Melissa McCarthy) was, surprisingly, Bille Joe Armstrong from Green Day who's never struck me as very good cameo material. Billy Joe's taunt of Chris O'Dowd oughta make it into the vernacular but this deleted scene (via diffuser.fm) is a must-see for all rock geeks!
Y'know back in the last decade, the mash-up seemd like a charming novelty. Then, gradually, the internet seemed to turn into one giant mash-up factory. This particular musical mash-up, by G3RSt, skillfully intersects Bob Marley's dorm-reggae standard "Get Up, Stand Up" with Green Day's punky blues-rock hit, "Hitchin' A Ride". By combining a song that you grew tired of years ago with a song many people never warmed to in the first place, this creation both creates a fascinating new thing and makes you reconsider the old things. Good work, internet.
So I've been expecing a train-wrecking, shark-jumping, Sandanista-besting nightmare to arise from the forthcoming Green Day three-album [!] onslaught but this song, "Let Yourself Go!" is fucking amazing!
Pinhead Gunpowder (named after a very strong tea) are a sort of Gilman Street super-group, the Blind Faith of NoCal punk, if you will. After all the band is centered around uber-sceneststr Aaron Cometbus and prominently features Green Day's Billie-Joe Armstrong and other Gilman/Lookout Records (more HERE) vets. Fortunately, the band always played it low-key - releasing records sporadically, rarely playing live - thereby avoiding any vestiges of hype. They've released a string of albums, singles, split releases and compilation appearances in their twenty-plus year existence without ever becoming widely-known. The group's songs (mostly written by Cometbus but some written by Armstrong under the pseudonym Wilhelm Fink) consistently offer a cool mid-temp punk with sharp-eyed, narrative lyrics, as this live show from 2010 goes a long way to prove.
Let us know what you think of this low-key super-group in the COMMENTS section (which is where you'll find the Live at Gilman St. link)
Green Day were polarizing. From the beginning the knock against them was their lack of punk boanfides; no breakneck tempos, no yelled vocals and the lyrics were not only comprehensible but they were clearly about...girls. But Lawrence Livermore and his Lookout Records label (more HERE) stood by the band, as did a lot of record buyers. When the band signed to a major label, the same people who'd derided them as being 'too pop' now called them 'Greed Day'. It's no wonder they abandoned the punk underground. What's more interesting is how much they carried the punk flag, coming around to an anti-establishment view not so far removed from that of the punk politicos they'd left behind.
Like a lot of folks, I wanted to hate Green Day but I ordered those first two singles from Blacklist mail-order back anyway back in 1990 and have refused to renounce them ever since. Yup, I own every Green Day album (well minus live/greatest hits/B-sides collections). I'm not ashamed of this fact, though it's taken me a few years to state it openly. And it started with those opening chords to "1,000 Hours". The lyrics were, as I'd been arned, kinda dippy but the tunes were so strong that they reminded of the really early Beatles (with a hefty does of Buzzcocks thrown in).
(Slightly dodgy footage but I think I'm in there somewhere.)
So here to unite us (maybe?) on the virtues of the band, is a radio show recorded live on May 28, 1992 in the WFMU studios, East Orange, NJ, which Mike Dirnt says is, "A real good Green Day bootleg".
01 Don't Leave Me
02 409 in Your Coffeemaker
03 Welcome to Paradise
04 2,000 Light Years Away
05 At the Library
06 80
07 The Judge's Daughter
08 Christie Road
09 Only of You
10 Who Wrote Holden Caulfield?
11 Going to Pasalacqua
12 16
13 Paper Lanterns
14 C Yo Yus
15 Longview
16 One Of My Lies
17 Dominated Love Slave
18 All By Myself
19 Knowledge
20 Words I Might Have Ate
Hey give us your honest take on Green Day's career in the COMMENTS section, (where you'll find the Radio Daze link).
MRML is a blog about the devestating effects of culture: music, politics, comics plus etc. blah blah blah. At times MRML will post fine, unpurchasable three-chord obscurica (punk, pop-punk, new wave, mod, power-pop, gospel, reggae, hardcore, rockabilly, folk, country...whatever.) - - - - - - "The otherwise unavailable files in this blog are posted for a limited time and are intended for educational, non-commercial use. These files were transcribed from what are believed to be out-of-print sources. If you are aware of any of these items being readily available from commercial sources, or if any of these files infringe upon rights that you hold, please notify us so that we can quickly remove the referenced items immediately." - - - SUPPORT THE ARTISTS - BUY MUSIC!
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Re: Re-Ups
MRML does not plan to restore all of the content lost in The Great Mediafire Gutting of 2012. Polite requests may be made in the appropriate section, regular commenters will get priority.
