Cultural impact: Blink vs Green Day

[thongrider]

20 minutes ago, daveyjones said:

i gave up TV in 1999, so no i did not see it. but i've seen the picture at the back of anne's book, with fireworks and little people being lowered on ropes and shit?

for me crazy was seeing the WMAA video debut. for that one we were all like What The Living Fuck... that's when we (when i say "we" i mean the socal / san diego scene) knew they were destined to become a TRL boy band. because they were being marketed directly to children. when they sing "no one likes you when you're twenty-three" they're clearly singing to 11 year olds who are dreaming of being twenty-three.

as opposed to the cheshire cat days, which was about "i'm 17, you're 17, girls don't like us, we are all the same."

sidenote: the bands that stayed in the scene and didn't go the MTV route never shot for younger. NOFX would go from "we're all in our twenties" to ...thirties to ...forties. same with descendents. listen to everything sucks, then cool to be you, then hypercaffium spazzinate. the lyrics are consistently written at the age of the songwriters, presupposing an audience of about the same age listening.

same thing goes for your new friends social distortion. which is why those bands tend to age better. it's really hard to listen to "kids can't vote adults elect them" sung by a 25 year old when you're middle-aged. i can't even imagine what it's like to perform it!!!

To be fair kids need something to listen to too. 

[daveyjones]

2 minutes ago, thongrider said:

To be fair kids need something to listen to too. 

see my reply to @Diddy Faplord... i in no way diss them for this.

[Shit Poster]

27 minutes ago, daveyjones said:

i gave up TV in 1999, so no i did not see it. but i've seen the picture at the back of anne's book, with fireworks and little people being lowered on ropes and shit?

for me crazy was seeing the WMAA video debut. for that one we were all like What The Living Fuck... that's when we (when i say "we" i mean the socal / san diego scene) knew they were destined to become a TRL boy band. because they were being marketed directly to children. when they sing "no one likes you when you're twenty-three" they're clearly singing to 11 year olds who are dreaming of being twenty-three.

as opposed to the cheshire cat days, which was about "i'm 17, you're 17, girls don't like us, we are all the same."

sidenote: the bands that stayed in the scene and didn't go the MTV route never shot for younger. NOFX would go from "we're all in our twenties" to ...thirties to ...forties. same with descendents. listen to everything sucks, then cool to be you, then hypercaffium spazzinate. the lyrics are consistently written at the age of the songwriters, presupposing an audience of about the same age listening.

same thing goes for your new friends social distortion. which is why those bands tend to age better. it's really hard to listen to "kids can't vote adults elect them" sung by a 25 year old when you're middle-aged. i can't even imagine what it's like to perform it!!!

I think it only got worse with Blink on recent albums. I don't know the lyrics of Nine very well, but lyrics like "take another Xanax, cheat on your boyfriend" just scream "is this what kids do nowadays?" to me. Like Mark is just guessing what is relatable to younger fans at this point lol. 

[BanJan]

Just now, Tom Bot said:

I think it only got worse with Blink on recent albums. I don't know the lyrics of Nine very well, but lyrics like "take another Xanax, cheat on your boyfriend" just scream "is this what kids do nowadays?" to me. Like Mark is guessing what is appealing to younger fans at this point lol. 

That was from a Cali song and it’s cheating on your girlfriend lol. But I get your point and I think I have to agree . But I don’t think it’s any worse now than it was in the Enema and TOYPAJ era 

[Shit Poster]

3 minutes ago, Diddy Faplord said:

That was from a Cali song and it’s cheating on your girlfriend lol. But I get your point and I think I have to agree . But I don’t think it’s any worse now than it was in the Enema and TOYPAJ era 

I agree. Enema and TOYPAJ were written to appeal to younger fans. Self-Titled through to DED seemed more genuine to me. 

[daveyjones]

2 minutes ago, Tom Bot said:

Self-Titled through to DED seemed more genuine to me. 

i actually find the lyrics on neighborhoods to be, for the most part, pretty on-point as adulting songwriting. which is why i return to that album more often than others.

also when your heart stops beating. which is why i think that's such a great album; best thing mark ever wrote. so genuine, so adult.

[daveyjones]

8 minutes ago, Tom Bot said:

I Enema and TOYPAJ were written to appeal to younger fans.

it just occurred to me that this is a major problem with the skiba era: increasingly older people don't want to listen to people quite older than them sing songs for increasingly younger people. if mark just leaned into shit and made skiba-182 a +44 type thing... that would give the band a much longer shelf life, imo. 

[Nosferatu]

1 hour ago, daveyjones said:

because who a musician says are their influences and who actually influenced their music are two different things.

the shirt picture was a fucking joke. jesus. "mark approves of green day." HAHA.

i'll just speak to the foundational influences. listening to mark's early bass style, it's clear the influence is ned's atomic dustbin. i mentioned this on the podcast; the brit alt rock band with two bass players, one of whom plays two stringed chords while the other plays a standard line. his barre chord and two-note alternating open string strumming style (heard most distinctly during the intro to "carousel," the bridge to "M+M's," the verses of "cacophony," the intro to "TV," and the bridge of "ben wah balls") is ripped straight from the dustbin. listen to "happy" off 1991's god fodder. that song's chorus clearly is the foundation for the bass hooks on "carousel" :

and the intro for "nothing like" off that same album is clearly lifted by hoppus and injected into several blink tracks:

as for tom's early work, he definitely cites screeching weasel quite a bit. blink even covered a non-album track, "the girl next door." demoed it in 95 and played it live all that year. listening to his early guitar work, he's not lying; there is definitely the weasel going on. and the bass work too! "i wanna be a homosexual" could actually be on cheshire cat:

both mark and tom have claimed the descendents as a major early influence, but i can only see that in the lyrics really. tom does cite ALL specifically in terms of his guitar tones (though he's not even 1/32 of the player that stephen egerton is).

also tom was very into face to face in 93 and 94. check out "promises" off big choice, which tom basically rewrote into "touchdown boy" :

oh and let's not forget bad religion... the structure to "dammit" (lead riff by itself, then launch into full band behind the verse chord progression with the riff continuing on top) comes right from 1993's "american jesus" :

the point i'm trying to make is, if you want to actually talk about band influences, you need to listen to the actual music they were listening to and compare. fugazi? bullshit. not until tom was writing boxcar songs.

Yeah, those clips are good examples tbh.

But I definitely hear Fugazi way before BCR. The verses in this song could easily be mistaken for a blink song if it wasn't for the vocals

 

[Nosferatu]

1 hour ago, Diddy Faplord said:

It’s still incredibly stupid and arrogant to say Green Day wasn’t an influence on blink. Just because GD isn’t listed as an influence on blinks wikipedia page doesn’t mean they weren’t an influence. They so obviously were

I just don't find it anywhere near as obvious as NOFX, Descendents, Bad Religion, Beach Boys, the Cure, Fugazi, U2 or even Jimmy Eat World, although in the case of Jimmy blink existed before them, but they did have a part to play in blink's later sound. I still think blink would've existed without Green Day. It's whether they would've had the same success or not since Green Day basically put 90's punk rock onto the map.

[daveyjones]

14 minutes ago, Nosferatu said:

The verses in this song could easily be mistaken for a blink song if it wasn't for the vocals

if i squint, i can maybe see a little connection to the jacket-era. which was directly before boxcar. so, same bargain bin.

i'm pretty sure tom didn't even mention fugazi in interviews until after 2000. but you can't really trust who tom drops in interviews, anyway. in this august 1999 guitar world profile he's all about strung out and propagandhi, neither of which you can hear kilometers from blink's music. bonus points: the magazine completely misspells prop's name, so clearly no one on GW's staff had even heard of them...

[thongrider]

Didn't they put Don't Leave Me as the second song on Enema because of Green Day? 

[daveyjones]

Just now, thongrider said:

Didn't they put Don't Leave Me as the second song on Enema because of Green Day? 

that would be a hot take for sure if we had an interview quote or something.

[Nosferatu]

1 minute ago, daveyjones said:

if i squint, i can maybe see a little connection to the jacket-era. which was directly before boxcar. so, same bargain bin.

i'm pretty sure tom didn't even mention fugazi in interviews until after 2000. but you can't really trust who tom drops in interviews, anyway. in this august 1999 guitar world profile he's all about strung out and propagandhi, neither of which you can hear kilometers from blink's music. bonus points: the magazine completely misspells their name, so clearly no one on GW's staff had even heard of them...

Yeah Tom is a weird one. Although U2 clearly had a massive influence on blink, I never heard Tom ever mention U2 until that interview when he announced AVA as the next big rock 'n' roll band or whatever.

[RELEASE SOMETHING]

7 hours ago, Speedo said:

Ixnay and Americana are great as well.

They're good albums but they fit the more raw and grungey sound of smash better than the poppier route.  Smash was their sound, Americana forward was a bit samey and too bright 

[daveyjones]

3 minutes ago, Nosferatu said:

Although U2 clearly had a massive influence on blink

 i heard no U2 DNA until "the adventure" which is just tom being lazy with his major scales like he always has been, but with 14 effects slopped on top to make it sound "sophisticated" like the edge on wide awake in america or something. never mind that the edge is seriously a great fucking guitarist. tom doesn't even qualify to valet park his car.

[Nosferatu]

1 minute ago, daveyjones said:

 i heard no U2 DNA until "the adventure" which is just tom being lazy with his major scales like he always has been, but with 14 effects slopped on top to make it sound "sophisticated" like the edge on wide awake in america or something. never mind that edge is seriously a great fucking guitarist. tom doesn't even deserve to valet park his car.

Yeah I mean it on the more later work on songs like Disaster, PLG haha. I don't hear any U2 before AVA.

[thongrider]

12 minutes ago, daveyjones said:

that would be a hot take for sure if we had an interview quote or something.

I remember it from somewhere, but I might've made it up in my mind. I thought Mark said it. 

[daveyjones]

6 minutes ago, Nosferatu said:

I don't hear any U2 before AVA.

this is why i only commented on foundational influences; i.e. the beginnings of the band. for any band with a long enough career, you have to parse their influences by album era.

[daveyjones]

this is probably what tom was getting high listening to when writing AVA and neighborhoods material:

 

[Matt.]

1 hour ago, daveyjones said:

this is probably what tom was getting high listening to when writing AVA and neighborhoods material:

 

I can't fucking stand U2.