Rock intro to the topic: Green Day – Welcome to Paradise!… Today it's rainin'. / in ENGLISH

Rock intro to the topic:

Green Day – Welcome to Paradise!… Today it's raining.

This month I wrote the text as part of the release of a new series of animated films on my youtube

channel, based on short extracts from my other novel "EUinc.", and there is no better rock band for the introduction than Green Day. When you look at these short youtube movies that give a basic insight into the content and characters of the novel, you will see that heroes of the novel, members of one punk rock group from Zagreb (the book is only by small part autobiographical), are fans of this Californian band, as I have been too. Since the '90s of the last century and their album "Dookie", that was crucial for the breakthrough on top of the popularity in the genre of punk music. Green Day is one of very few bands that I've been at the concerts for two times, what’s enough to tell how much I appreciate them. It was when they played near Croatia, in Ljubljana and Belgrade. Unfortunately, they’ve never played in Croatia by now, and regardless the fact that these 2 Green Day concerts were in the time span of 18 years, I remember the same freshness and energy of Billie Joe, Mike and Tre, which hasn’t deteriorated with mature years. Since I am one of those more critical listeners of rock music, most of those musicians launched to the stars by media, to whom I came to a concert after being impressed by some of their successful songs, actually disappointed me with their live performance. Their live play generally isn’t nearly as good as it sounds when it is recorded in ideal studio conditions. An experienced producer there, just like a sports coach, follows and listens their playing. He covers all the drawbacks of their play, highlights all what looks good and the final result on the album actually has little to do with the real way of playing of that band. At the live concert there are no more coaches who advise and give signs from another room "guys, give a little bit of bass here... speed up the rhythm of drumming, faster...", at the live concert there is no "hey, we made this wrong, let’s repeat that song from the start..." (With the Green Day undoubtedly important role was played by their constant producer Rob Cavallo, in emphasizing their authenticity without makeup and without pretending to be anything other then what they really are.) Maybe a large part of the concert audience doesn’t bother when they come to see their idols, but according to my experience the most of rock bands whether play badly and discordedly when it is to be shown at the concert, whether have one even worse flaw than this insufficient time spent on playing and exercising together. Somehow they have coordinated their playing to some extent, adapting to this what the worst band member can play, but usually among them there is a noticeable lack of passion and enjoyment in playing in front of the crowd.

AND GIVING TO THIS CROWD THE BEST WHAT THEY CAN. That’s why I usually don’t wish

to visit their concert one more time. Green Day in contrary, never had a problem with it. They are one of not many honest and fair bands that give back the audience even more than the audience “feeds” them, with passionate love and crazy screaming at their concerts. They will probably play for fans as long as they can give that audience even more, and when they couldn’t do that - they would simply stop playing, because they wouldn’t be able to pretend, like many experienced musicians do. I've read few Green Day biographies and I will not try to explain here what lies in these punks. Neither I get to understand where is the secret of this over-average passion and energy of Green Day, and what are those inner forces and demons that carry them. I will just list all what I like with them, so try yourself to evaluate who are these people actually. Members of Green Day didn’t have rich, careless childhood of course. They grew up in relative poverty but also in emotionally difficult conditions. Father of Billie Joe Armstrong died of cancer when he was 10 years old. The mother married again, for a man all six children didn’t like, and Billie talks about it in some of his songs. Michael Pritchard, or Mike Dirnt, was adopted baby whose biological mother was an addict to heroin, and after that he passed through the parent divorce too. In addition to both being classroom clowns at school, and already then being clear that they wouldn’t finish school because they were interested in some other things, instead of that traditional path through the system followed by the non-ambitious majority of people, those two kids were connected by certain health problems too, the occasional panic attacks caused by the slight form of tachycardia, what Billie Joe still today points out as an important source of inspiration for his songs. It can be assumed that this specific atmosphere of “electrified” tension in the music of Green Day comes from that, like some “suspense” uncertainty in a good thriller movie. Compositionally speaking their hyper-energetic music often moves in some strange, unexpected directions, as if dancing all the time on the edge of some disaster.

Their member on the early albums was drummer John Kiffmeyer as well. He probably regrets today

that he's no longer with them, as later he tried to get back, but after a couple of years of life in relative anonymity at the Bay Area rock scene, and unprofitable concert wanderings around the USA up to the east coast, Kiffmeyer concluded that it is better to follow the academic path that most citizens want. He has enrolled at a College north of San Francisco, instead of continuing to deal with this rebellious punk where he has no perspectives, because “punk has been dead" for a long time anyway, right? And even though Green Day had already recorded two albums for a local record label, Kiffmeyer could hardly plan any future career with these two frivolous rascals. The rascals who have dropped out of high school, left their family home, and when they do not play small unnoticed gigs as crazy, stoned clowns for some dozen students at local campuses, they spend their free days wandering around, smoking pot and drinking heavily. By the way, the name of the band Green Day most likely stems from the local slang expression for a day spent in smoking marijuana. As far as leaving the family home after his mother has been remarried, the song "Welcome To Paradise" is the most direct example. This song is a letter to his mom telling that Billie Joe is now living in miserable conditions, but that's still a paradise of freedom in relation to that life with much hated step-father. Regarding his wandering and vagabond character, it is best described in their favorite songs "Good Riddance" (aka Time of Your Life) and "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" of course. Do you remember the video for that song, in which members of Green Day come out of the old limousine that stopped in the middle of nowhere like they are some modern Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady in search of the truth about their life or perhaps their destiny? The picture says everything. I wonder how it looked like these unrealized, broken dreams of somebody who did achieve so much in his life?

However, from Kiffmeyer's point of view in 1992, it seemed like this. So when these 2 guys start

getting bored to these remaining fans who like their pop punk, they are on a predictable way to become just simple bums with no prospect in life. So the drummer John Kiffmeyer left the band, even without formal farewell drink. Can you recognize in this description Billie Joe and Mike from the band Green Day in the year 1992, less than two years before the release of Dookie album? The album that will sweep up the world rock scene with its incredible power, energy and optimistic enthusiasm, and sell in multi-million copies, more than any other punk album in history. An incredible 20+ million copies for a punk band that not only acts anarchically, but also constantly provokes and mocks the silent majority of those good and decent Americans. So, who will then buy their albums? I still can't recognize them, but just so biographical books write about them and their story of the world success out of nothing, is one more proof that in life everything is really possible, if you are young and crazy enough to think that you can succeed, despite all the predictions of smart, rational people around you. The only thing that resembles this Green Day from a biography is their auto-ironic ridicule of their own losership, present in many of the songs that became big hits at the time, from "Basket Case" to "Longview". It’s like they've become a favorite band of MTV generation of kids of the 90's just because they’ve never really taken themselves very seriously, nor their music as something very important and socially engaged. When Kiffmeyer left, Billie and Mike the driving force of Green Day brought today's drummer Frank Edwin Wright III, aka Tre Cool, realizing that Tre has two good qualities, not only a good drumming rhythm, but he even has a van, and is ready to use it for concert tours, what was at that time quite large and problematic expense for one poorly known group of punkers.

All the rest after the breakthrough album Dookie is actually the story of an extremely successful punk

band Green Day, with ups and downs in album quality, ups and downs in popularity (these 2 things are usually not timed with each other in rock music) but the band is still breathing and living its life at full power, judging by the latest album “Revolution Radio” from 2016. They have retained the character of the idealistic wanderers who are always talking about some revolutions and rebelliously attacking all the politicians they don't like (most obviously in the “American Idiot”) and so they live one strange life, seemingly in paradise but feeling thousands of miles away from it. Life what their European punk brother in arms Manu Chao is singing about too, being the same thousand miles away from them. Manu just adds his own commentary to the end of Billie's verse: "Welcome to Paradise... today it's rainin'".
In some way this is how Croatia as well lives in the EU today, but this is theme of my next article.
The final question. So you know all about them, and if Green Day were a capitalist corporation they would be: 
a) Erasmus Student Exchange
b) Facebook
c) MTV

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