Kerplunk

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First came the name change: Green Day. Then came their nearly weekly shows at 924 Gillman Street, the straight edge all ages refuge that birthed influential acts like The Lookouts and Operation Ivy. Green Day even managed to swipe The Lookouts drummer, an excitable and unpredictable ball of energy who went by the name Tre Cool. By the time they stumbled into the Art of Ears studio in San Francisco to record their second full length on Lookout! Records, they had a (slightly) increased budget, a solid year of touring behind them, and a whole slate of new songs written by lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong. We really wanted to make our records sound like us, but a bigger version of it,” Armstrong said in 2006. “We’d seen what had happened to so many other bands before. Throughout the Eighties, if a punk band signed to a major label, it always seemed like they compromised their sound, and we didn’t want to do that”. The narrator in this song expresses his fear of growing up and turning into someone who has to plan out everything they do. He sees that his friends are ageing and realizes that this will inevitably happen to him too. He doesn't express a certain opinion - he simply looks at both sides of the problem and tries to figure out what to do. He's saying that he doesn't want to live a planned out life, but wants to stay spontaneous and have fun for as long as he can. Yet, he's saying that sometimes he unintentionally hurts people with who he is, and that makes him wonder whether he should somehow change, have a plan for life, grow up. He's wondering whether what he's doing with his life is right.

It's a common belief that this song is about a place where the author and his friends used to go to get high. However, this is only a part of it, and the lyrics are mostly not about smoking weed but simply about a place where you want to go when you need to be alone - a place that you can call home. The narrator says that Christie Road is a place where he feels comfortable and where he can relax. He goes there when he's stressed out because that's the place where he feels complete, where he can forget about the rest of the world and just be himself. This is a song about missing someone you love, thinking about them all the time and dreaming of being next to them again. Hours, 1990’s Slappy EP, and 1991’s 39/Smooth LP were bundled together on CD as (duh) 1991’s 1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours. It’s raw stuff, but even at this point Green Day’s records were at least halfway decently recorded, unlike most of their peers’ tin-can-and-twine set-ups. And songs like “At the Library” were downright hummable, always important when you’re trying to make pop music—especially out of only a few chords in a formally restrictive setting. Of course, on a label that at the time included household names Plaid Retina and Sewer Trout, early Green Day were bound to shine, but if they had broken up after 1,039, they’d be remembered—if at all—as perhaps the slightly less emo cousin to early Jawbreaker, or maybe the musically less accomplished Crimpshrine.Android was named after (producer) Andy Ernst. It was about a homeless man walking down college ave. I was drinking coffee with Tre. That’s another part of the story that’s worth talking about: Kerplunk sold 50,000 copies by the end of 1992, making it by far the biggest release Lookout! Records had ever produced. Despite including a letter of loyalty to Lookout on their debut 39/Smooth, the band released they had hit a ceiling with the independent label. Upon their signing to Reprise Records, Green Day were excommunicated from their roots: barred from Gillman, shunned by hometown friends, and viciously insulted in fan zines proclaiming them as the worst thing a ’90s band could be – sell outs. Christie Rd is off Hwy 4 between our hometown Rodeo and Martinez, CA. My brother hung out there first. Then my friends hung out there too."

All these realizations lead the narrator to another serious question, and that is whether there is a God, whether there is someone or something that actually knows the answers to eternal questions. Like so many others he was praying at night because he'd been told that this was the right thing to do. Now he's reached the time when he starts questioning whether he believes in that himself - so far he has no answers. And he's wondering if he's just been lying to himself all along. The song was inspired by Armstrong's relationship with Adrienne Nesser, his future wife, who at that time lived in Minnesota, while he lived in California. Obviously, being so far away from her made him miss her a lot, and 2,000 Light Years Away is one of the songs that he wrote to express his feelings towards her. The number 2,000 is probably based on the actual distance between the lovers (it's also mentioned in another song about Armstrong's wife - Westbound Sign: "is tragedy 2,000 miles away?") - the actual location between their hometowns is a lot less than 2,000 miles*, but the author roughly approximated the distance because obviously, when you are apart from someone you love, it seems like they are worlds away, even if it's just a few hundred miles.

That was never an issue with Green Day. Other musicians would say things like, ‘We’re just a dumb punk band anyway, nobody’s gonna care what we do, so we might as well have fun.’ Green Day had plenty of fun, as anyone who knew them in those days can testify, but they also wrote and played music with the quiet, exuberant confidence of artists who didn’t need anyone else’s opinion to validate them.” Some call it slums, some call it nice" - it's only slums when you look at it from a distance. But when you live and breathe it - it becomes nice because it is your home. Not your parents' home, but one of your own - and it's Paradise. Light Years Away" (music written by Green Day, Jesse Michaels, Pete Rypins and Dave "E.C." Henwood) In this song, the narrator is wondering what will happen to him when he grows older. He starts off with thinking about an old man he saw - he sees that his man didn't succeed in life and realizes that this can happen to anyone. He wonders what this man was dreaming of when he was younger. Everyone has dreams of a great future, but it doesn't mean those dreams will come true - in fact, you might end up "wearing woman's shoes and being crazy" like this old man.

Originally released on December 17, 1991, Green Day’s second studio album, Kerplunk, was the first to feature drummer Tré Cool. Completing the band’s lineup and rhythm section along with Mike Dirnt, AllMusic praised the pair, saying that When it’s all said and done, Green Day could very well be the most important punk band of all time. While they weren’t around during the genre’s explosion in the late 1970s and were just ahead of the hardcore underground scene of the 1980s, Green Day was the key band in keeping punk in the public eye while grunge, hip-hop, R&B, and adult contemporary took over the 1990s. Jenkins, Craig (April 22, 2021). "The Best and Most Misunderstood of Green Day, According to Billie Joe Armstrong". Vulture . Retrieved April 28, 2022. I always thought that this song was about him going off to college. He’s left his home and moved off to college and he is unsure of himself and his new surroundings. The whole slums thing is about how most parents think that college housing is slums but the teenagers see it as paradise. I dunno, that’s just what i always thought he was talking about.” a b Raggett, Ned. " Kerplunk! Review". AllMusic. Rovi. Archived from the original on March 14, 2011 . Retrieved June 19, 2011.Larkin, Colin (2011). The Encyclopedia of Popular Music (5th conciseed.). Omnibus Press. ISBN 978-0-85712-595-8. Ranking: Every Green Day Album from Worst to Best". Consequence of Sound. 2016-10-07. Archived from the original on 2017-12-16 . Retrieved 2017-07-13.