“I can hear the music all around me.” -Dudley Moore, British actor
Usually when I travel, plane, bus, train or car, I always have something audio going on. Usually, it’s podcasts and then between the podcasts, I listen to a little music to break up the talking then go back to another podcast. However, today, I spent about 7 hours on a train today and I was consumed by music the entire time. My music preferences go from Pop-Punk to German Rap or Scandinavian Hip-Hop and all kinds of things in between. However, today, all I could find the desire to listen to was the band that really started all my independent musical preferences.
Before I listened to Green Day when I was much younger, the majority of the music I listened to was the stuff my family or friends listened to. I was never a big music person but like many, you hit the 11/12-year-old range and you start having a bit of stuff for yourself and one of the first things for me was Green Day music. I was introduced to Longview, Basket Case, Welcome to Paradise etc and while they were great and I enjoyed them, it wasn’t until I was 11 and American Idiot came out when I became completely engrossed with Green Day. Not only did I fall in love with the band, the new album, and their older stuff, but it also opened up a huge library of music to me because when I had enough Green Day to listen to, I wanted more music like it so I found bands in the same genre of Green Day.
Anyway, today, I spent about 5 of the 7 hours just listening to Green Day. I listened to albums, front to back, American Idiot, Dookie, 21st Century Breakdown and Revolution Radio. It was a nostalgia hit that relaxed me, motivated me to do something, brought back some really dark memories but also, and more importantly the memories of how things changed and what in my life made things better.
Green Day was the first band I ever saw in concert. It was something that I will never forget. Now I go to concerts relatively regularly and luckily, 13 years after I started listening to them, Green Day are still around and I got to see them at the beginning of the year when they went on tour for Revolution Radio.
This is really just an appreciation post for Green Day. They have been there for me in the good times, the bad times and the times when there is no real strong emotion to be associated with the time that I had them with me.