Dave SparksI never quite got original punk music, I got all the rebellion and stuff, but maybe the sound was a thing of it’s time that just never appealed to me. I can listen to a handful of tracks by The Ramones or the Sex Pistols but there’s not much that ever pulled me back into listening to more. It’s not an old thing either, I love a lot of 70s music, just not that.
However I most certainly got into what punk rock had grown to be by the 90s. It was no longer a protest movement, it wasn’t so serious. Punk by then had grown into the playful outsider of Green Day, Blink 182 and later to bands like Sum 41.
Green day were for many many years the great outsiders, a band with little commercial success – their first greatest hits album “International Super hits” was rather short on chart successes. Yet they were a band who most people who listened to music knew. Not as main stream as the Green day of today but the domain of those who were wearing vans and baggy trousers before it became cool.
They also sat well with me for being so straight forward, there weren’t fancy guitar solos or intricate harmonics, there was guitar, drums, bass and singing – that was it. Not that I didn’t like solo’s or fancy stuff just that Green day sat so well with how I liked to play – just pick up a guitar and hammer a song out.
Basket Case is the pinnacle of Green Day of the time, short, snappy, straight forward listenable. There were other great tracks but ask anyone to name a Green Day classic of the 90s and most people will recall Basket Case, if they say “Time of your life” give them a light slap.
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