Today would have been a great day to post Touch of Grey by the Grateful Dead. I think it's physically impossible to be down when that song is playing, but I've already posted it. So I've been doom scrolling on YouTube for something to pick, with a few good ideas, and this came up. I mentioned it the other day (was it yesterday?) and yeah, this was Green Day for me back in the day. At the time I was not aware that they had albums before this, but Dookie dropped (pun intended) and they were all over MTV and rock radio.

Later I heard there was kind of a debate around them, "are they punk or aren't they?". I always understood that they were punk rock, so, rock that was punk flavoured. I didn't buy the argument that they were not qualified to be real punk. That never mattered to me — but, I was never a fan of punk. Didn't hate it, just didn't jam to it. So I didn't feel confident saying what was or wasn't punk. Green Day definitely dressed the part and played the music, but I always heard rock first and punk maybe second. My favourite Green Day album is actually 21st Century Breakdown which is more emo/pop punk — not that there's anything wrong with that, you could define my favourite band, ONE OK ROCK, the same way, and they're not really punk at all. They are a little emo, though. And so is Green Day, at times. And that's fine. You don't even have to agree on the labels. I don't think they really matter all that much. What matters (to me) is if the music moves you or not. And I definitely like listening to Green Day.

Saw them live once. Probably been 5, 6 years? It wasn't the 21st Century Breakdown tour, it was for the album after that. My niece loved the song 21 Guns and when I took her to her first concert, I jokingly said "who we going to see next?" She said Green Day. I didn't go to concerts when I was a kid (and she was 12 telling me this). So I was like hell yeah, next time they come round, we're getting tickets and we're taking you out of school if we have to. We didn't have to. We did have to take a bit of a road trip as they didn't come anywhere near us. We made a weekend out of it. It rained. The show did not suck. Even in the rain. Probably the best show I've been to, and I've been to Metallica. It's close between the two of them, but I gotta give it to Green Day. Take the rain out of the equation and it's no contest. (I've also been to ONE OK ROCK and Nightwish, as far as favourite bands go. Among other songs of the day, I've also seen Rise Against live a couple times. They were good, too.)