Two posts in a row coming up... Part one starts at a Green Day rebuttal...
First off, I'm not a fan of Green Day. Yes I know a bunch of their songs (because I own a radio), have played a song or two in some band or two I was in, but ultimately, my cocky rock star side of me has always found them incredibly unoriginal.
Now that is just me being mean.
Green Day played at the Albert some umpteen years ago, saw a local band called Propagandhi, and copped their sound. Green Day eventually release Dookie and explode, using their Propagandhi riffs. Propagandhi change their overly poppy sound and go heavy.
No one makes the connection between the two bands.
Yeah that all makes a really good story. Propagandhi once bragged about their songs being rip-offs of Concrete Blonde. They always bragged about their own un-originality. I guess that was why I always liked them. And made me a little proud of the band.
So for someone to rip off their sound, well really none of that is neither here nor there. Propagandhi changed their sound because, as they say, they became too popular (the largest selling band on the label). Their song Ska Sucks, an anti-anthem about ska music, became a stupidly popular ska song and their most requested song. I've seen the band a number of times, and their disdain about the song is blatantly obvious.
The obvious fact that Green Day were inspired by Propagandhi is really not a bad thing. They took what Propagandhi was doing, repackaged it without all the expletives, and easier to swallow themes and made a mint of "their sound".
Everybody used to rip off the Beatles, and the Stones and Zeppelin (who were ripping old blues artists), and Alice Cooper, etc... Everything is inspired by something else. And throwing something out of left field, Twilight was blatantly inspired by Anne Rice and Romance Novels (which was inspired by Bram Stoker's Dracula, which was inspired by the legend of Vlad Dracul and old vampire stories).
It's okay to not like something because you love the material it came from. But something is always taken from something else. Something is always unoriginal, a blend of what came before. The only reason something sounds original is because you may not be familiar with the source material.
So, I am apologizing about my statements I have always made about Green Day in the past. I am apologizing about my statements about post Anne Rice vampire novels, I am apologizing to the Emo Kids... okay, maybe I take that back.
That being said Green Day ain't so bad. And I did honor my beautiful wife with going to a Green Day concert with her.