As you scroll around you'll notice it'll turn all the images into jpegs with bad artifacting like you're back on dialup surfing the world wide web. That's dedication to detail.
We have reached an era where JPEG artifacts are used as an ornament - like artifacts from film photography, vinyls and more.
Perhaps spotting that in a demastering project is bending the rules a bit, but still - I like how it indicates that our tastes and internet speeds have changed.
npunt 41 days ago [-]
Yep. JPEG artifacts are now a signature of the medium.
"Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them." - Brian Eno
reaperducer 42 days ago [-]
vinyls
Stay away from my shellacs and waxes!
jesse__ 42 days ago [-]
I noticed this too. I love this kind of thing so much. I wish more people had the time, money and patience for polish like this.
punnerud 42 days ago [-]
It’s starting to get way easier these days with the help of Claude.ai and Cursor.ai.
I find it’s easier to pay much more focus to details when the iteration process is faster.
ddingus 42 days ago [-]
I did not see it at first. Once I did, I was entranced just scrolling about to see it again.
The whole site is polished to a high degree. Lqbor of love, just like all the quirky items rhey have to loved just as much.
quux 42 days ago [-]
Nice, I was wondering if they were actually making use of progressive JPEG or just switching between images.
dangsux 42 days ago [-]
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aaronbrethorst 43 days ago [-]
This is the best thing I've seen in a long time.
When an album hits a big milestone like its 30th anniversary
Oof, so this is what getting old feels like. Yikes.
Crank it as long as you want with “All By Myself,” arranged for the first time on a hand-cranked music box.
chef's kiss.
lelandfe 43 days ago [-]
> this toothbrush plays Green Day’s “Pulling Teeth” while you brush. Finally, you can put Dookie in your mouth (not recommended).
fragmede 43 days ago [-]
The mere mention by the title had the classic phrase "Do you have the time..." blaring in my head as if it were thirty years ago, even if the last time I listened to that was at least a decade a ago. The nostalgia, right in the feels.
hluska 43 days ago [-]
I hadn’t listened in Dookie in a very long time. Then my kid and I were talking about music and she wanted to know what kinds of music I streamed back in high school. :)
That turned into a talk about CDs and led into listening to Dookie with my eight year old. The album has aged very well. As an adult, I find that different songs are more appealing now than they were as a teen and in other cases, age has warped the meaning of the songs.
But as an album, it stands up really well. There are some other well known albums from the nineties that really haven’t stood up as well. I’d recommend another listen!
Though, “I declare I don’t care no more.” :)
iddan 42 days ago [-]
As someone who was a teen about ten years ago I can confess it was still very relevant and I even got its CD (though honestly I listened to it mostly on my iPod Touch)
rhinoceraptor 42 days ago [-]
I'm 30 now, there's nothing I wanted more than the iPod Touch but I think I made the sales pitch to my parents too hard because I was very excited it had a web browser. I grew up without even basic cable but I did eventually get an iPod classic which I still miss having. I think it eventually met it's fate in the washing machine.
throwup238 42 days ago [-]
> There are some other well known albums from the nineties that really haven’t stood up as well.
Some day Limp Bizkit will get the recognition they deserves.
akiselev 42 days ago [-]
A crimes against humanity tribunal at the Hague?
cloverich 42 days ago [-]
I will say I saw them in concert accidentally once (attending for the headliner, I had no idea they were also playing). I had no real interest in them musically, no hate or anything just no real interest, but wow. They were incredibly good performers compared to the 30 or so other rock bands I'd seen in my youth, easily top 3 performance wise. It really changed my view on the impact a live performance can have on your perceptions of a band and its music.
notjulianjaynes 40 days ago [-]
100 gecs is more or less a Limp Bizkit tribute band IMO.
09thn34v 42 days ago [-]
finally someone says it. nickelback too
KingMob 42 days ago [-]
"Nookie Demastered"?
rhinoceraptor 42 days ago [-]
American Idiot also had it's 20th anniversary, I ordered the CD/bluray box set that comes out later this month.
ssharp 42 days ago [-]
Another strange part of getting old:
The gap between Dookie and American Idiot seems significantly longer to me than the gap between American Idiot and today, yet it's half as long :/
icambron 42 days ago [-]
I notice this one a lot. My sense of time is attached to how much I’ve changed, and my rate of change—-at least for music consumption—-attenuates as I age, dilating time. A couple years can seem like an eon when you’re 14 and each new album transforms you. Now a decade of music feels static and irrelevant and I barely notice it go by.
Related: it sure seemed like the mid-90s were special for rock music; I was 13 when Dookie came out and I felt (still feel) like I was in a sort of alternative renaissance, just crammed with amazing new music. But I’m sure every generation feels that way about whatever happened to be popular when they were teenagers.
42 days ago [-]
aaronbrethorst 42 days ago [-]
Shockingly apt timing.
samplatt 42 days ago [-]
Well, the first time around was Bush's re-election.
pavlov 42 days ago [-]
It’s pretty wild that the Republican Party has transformed so much that GWB and Cheney don’t vote for it anymore. It’s only been 16 years since they left office. (Cheney is officially supporting Harris, and Bush clearly is not on Team MAGA either.)
asveikau 42 days ago [-]
This is off topic, but I don't see Bush/Cheney as very different from Trump, and there is a straight line between those. The biggest contrast is that Trump jettisoned decorum and politeness. Bush was outwardly polite as he enacted the same kind of policy. I mean, the appointment of Samuel Alito is a prime example. Look how the Bush court appointments are unleashed now that they've got a few more like-minded colleagues.
amy-petrik-214 39 days ago [-]
Well after Bush and his comrades Dick and Colon (nee Cheney; Powell), we had the TEA PARTY MOVEMENTS whose thesis was very simple: "politicians, as people, they suck, 400 million are suffering for their aggrandizing shittiness, lets get some people in there to fuck some shit up". And so they did, and they did. And this become the new norm. And now DC had been made even further ugly and toxic. Then Trump appeared, and he basically said the same exact thing as the tea party movement "Draiiinnn the Swap!!", and now - yes - even more ugly and toxic.
All of these has been fueled by social media, which to reduce some of the complexities, determined that "if we divide and polarize american politics we make boatloads of money"
krapp 42 days ago [-]
Yeah, I don't know why Trump is seen as such an iconoclast and anti-establishment type when politically he's a boilerplate establishment Fox News conservative. His personality is really the only thing that distinguishes him from the pack.
psb217 42 days ago [-]
There's a big practical difference between chewing coca leaves and smoking crack. Also, the shift in personality and tone from Bush to Trump are... not small. The inconoclast and anti-establishment things are intentional, effective and, as you note, somewhat hypocritical branding on the part of Trump's PR team. After sitting through a few of his full length >1hr "speeches", it's incredible (in the strongest, most literal sense of that word) that he can even exist as a viable political candidate. If he were magically teleported back in time to the GW Bush years, current Trump would be laughed out of the room in pretty much any political setting.
asveikau 42 days ago [-]
> If he were magically teleported back in time to the GW Bush years, current Trump would be laughed out of the room in pretty much any political setting.
That's really not how I see it. Trump sits on the shoulders of those who came before and set the stage for the Trump policy. My Alito example above is an instructive one. Bush can be seen as laying a 20 year foundation towards overturning Roe or the Chevron doctrine. I remember when Roberts was appointed, mainstream press talked up how moderate and reasonable he was, but I never bought it -- and how we see he isn't.
The rhetoric appeals to the base... But that base got radicalized by prior eras. Decades of complaining about big government. Fox News demonizing Pelosi and "San Francisco values". Karl Rove's permanent campaign mode. Much of that discourse was fully formed in 2004. The Bush people knew to reign it in sometimes, that is the difference.
psb217 42 days ago [-]
In this case I'm talking strictly about his persona, on-stage performance, and overall "vibe". To an extent, these traits are orthogonal to his claimed policy/politics in the traditional sense, which I agree are basically a continuation and in particular areas an amplification of earlier trends in the Republican party. Eg, I grew up in Houston in the 80s and 90s with parents that listened to Rush Limbaugh on a regular basis, so the general direction of intent isn't unexpected. The way in which that intent is expressed is however well outside what would have ever made it to the "main stage" 20-30 years ago. It's a culmination of decades of propagandic ground laying. I suppose "any political setting" was too broad a claim. I was implicitly ignoring anything short of running for national office.
vundercind 42 days ago [-]
Two things stand out:
1) Positions and messaging strategy. Trump tends to take up the positions you hear Republican voters talk about over a coffee at the diner or over a beer on an aluminum-hull outboard motor fishing boat. As with Democrats, typical Republican planks aren’t terribly close to what their voters want, so (Trump proved) you can win elections by targeting this unmet demand directly.
“Why don’t they just build a wall?”; “Fucking NAFTA, sold us all out”; “gotta do something about that trade deficit with China” and/or other comments on restricting trade with China; “Obamacare sucks” but also kinda vaguely supporting something to fix healthcare (this muddled set of positions came out rather directly in Trump’s speeches—sometimes it’d sound like he was about to advocate single payer); “we should stop being the world police for free” and/or “Europe’s freeloading on NATO”; lots of complaints about illegal immigration’s and crime generally; Washington corruption (“drain the swamp!”); et c.
If you know many Republican voters, not politicians, you may recognize that as stuff that’d inform their wishlist. Trump heard that, and just… did exactly that, turned around and said exactly those things instead of taking up the typical Republican platform. Got him elected. He even sort-of followed through on some of it. This is true for at least the first election, his positions this time seem to have gone a bit more tail-wagging-the-dog (creating issues and demand for a particular solution to the created issue, through messaging, rather than going to where voters already are on existing issues)
2) Relatedly, and especially because he did follow through on some of it, he’s the only big two party Presidential candidate since perhaps 1980 to not be fully on-board with neoliberalism. That’s definitely remarkable. Vance alluded to this at one point in the recent debate.
(Disclaimer because it’s a polarizing topic: observation without condemnation should not be taken as support)
Slava_Propanei 38 days ago [-]
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Slava_Propanei 38 days ago [-]
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agrippanux 42 days ago [-]
When “Out Come The Wolves” by Rancid hit 20 years I was starting to feel my age.
SmellTheGlove 42 days ago [-]
I just saw Rancid, Smashing Pumpkins and Green Day. All on the same tour. It was amazing to have that much of the first half of my life in one stadium.
Green Day are still in their prime in terms of a live show. Yeah it’s not 3 kids packing a basement anymore, but they absolutely crushed Dookie in their 50s. I felt not old for a couple of hours.
YuriNiyazov 42 days ago [-]
Me too (Oracle Park), and I also relate to the not feeling old for a couple of hours - except the few times when I saw parents bring their kids to this show, and the kids were definitely not older than like, nine or ten, and were (!) mouthing the words to songs from Dookie.
adfm 42 days ago [-]
"Energy" is 35. Feeling old yet? If so, go to the Punk Rock Museum in Vegas. They did us right.
pipes 42 days ago [-]
I love this album. So many catchy songs. I prefer it to dookie too.
SmellTheGlove 42 days ago [-]
Everything after it was kind of a disaster though. Although I do have a soft spot for Indestructible.
the__alchemist 42 days ago [-]
Life Won't Wait and 2000 were fun!
lawgimenez 42 days ago [-]
Easily top 5 punk album of all time.
iwaztomack 42 days ago [-]
Not punk. Punk is about being bad at your instrument and looking ugly and being the underdog and still creating a community. When Dookie came out, every highschool and college kid was lined up to buy it, it had constant airplay, and was blasting in every classroom and dorm room. That's not punk: that is 100% mainstream pop. Which is Green Day in a nutshell. Commidified dissent x100.
lawgimenez 41 days ago [-]
I was talking about And out come the wolves, and still punk to me. Pixies is punk, replacements is still punk to me. No need to be a purist.
iwaztomack 40 days ago [-]
College Alternative is not Punk.
I went to Pixies concerts when I was at BU in the 80's. They were a rich white kid college band.
Punk was a very specific movement.
It's like saying, "Yeah, impressionism is same as Cubism." No. It isn't. Don't rewrite history because it suits your invented personality.
codelikeawolf 42 days ago [-]
Oh wow, I realized it's turning 30 next year and my back just started hurting.
larodi 42 days ago [-]
we definitely gonna rediscover what de-mastering means, when AI finally gets to master everything instead of us. can't wait for a wave of punk-pixel-human-in-the-wrong-loop-nostalgy much stronger than vaporwave.
standardUser 43 days ago [-]
They really went all out on these...
"A preloved Teddy comes with a cassette tape featuring an eight-channel recording of “Chump” including synchronized eye and snout movements."
"This fully-playable version of “Welcome To Paradise” will immerse you in the world of a small apartment in Oakland, California. Search out the record to play the full 8-bit rendition of your favorite song."
Totally impressed and amazed.
sailfast 42 days ago [-]
Absolutely incredible product. I don't have the $99 to splurge on this but it was very enticing :)
joezydeco 42 days ago [-]
You enter a lottery to buy the 1 Ruxpin that was built. You can probably get more than your money back if you don't want to keep it.
jorvi 42 days ago [-]
Oh, that makes it slightly less cool, although still very cool.
It would have been nice if they made it a limited run (say, 100 copies) instead of singular pieces.
crtasm 42 days ago [-]
There's multiple copies of a number of the items.
notjulianjaynes 40 days ago [-]
>eight-channel recording of “Chump” including synchronized eye and snout movements
Am I understanding this correctly to mean that some of the audio channels on a Teddy Ruxpin cassette are silent tracks that control the motors in the toy? That's kind of interesting. I wonder if there are any other examples of a custom Ruxpin track being made . . .
Edit: comment directly below this one addresses this.
09thn34v 42 days ago [-]
unbelievable tbh this had to have been an insane amount of work
rob74 42 days ago [-]
Yeah, the teddy bear singing "I don't know you, but I think I hate you /
You're the reason for my misery" and the bass singing "I am one of those melodramatic fools, neurotic to the bone no doubt about it" are my favorites. "Longview" would have sounded... interesting too coming from the bear, but I guess they chickened out there and picked a device that couldn't reproduce the lyrics :)
runjake 43 days ago [-]
Yes, this is officially endorsed[1] by Green Day. Very cool.
Back when I thought it might be a fun side hustle to make cool youtube videos (long ago put to bed), I thought about making videos of Ruxpin singing death metal and stuff.
It's been years since it seemed like it was worthwhile to make Youtube videos... And the situation is getting worse for creators year over year.
planb 42 days ago [-]
> Back when I thought it might be a fun side hustle to make cool youtube videos (long ago put to bed), I thought about making videos of Ruxpin singing death metal and stuff.
It's been years since it seemed like it was worthwhile to make Youtube videos...
But should it? There used to be a time when people put this stuff on the internet for fun, not as a side huste or to "monetize" it... Maybe there's not so much money in this idea, but you can make people laugh for a few seconds.
smolder 42 days ago [-]
The potential for cute stuff to 'go viral' is severely diminished thanks to high production value click-bait and mainstream content. Big Content will drown out anything that hasn't gained tons of views already by promotion through other channels.
ramesh31 42 days ago [-]
I think OP's point is who cares. We weren't worrying about viewer engagement metrics on Ebaumsworld.
smolder 40 days ago [-]
That's fair. Though, monetization aside, I myself feel less inclined to put significant effort into a joke or something if the expected audience is tiny.
schlauerfox 42 days ago [-]
not 'beeps' so much as either Pulse-position modulation or FM to control the positions. I had a 'beta test' teddy before they were released, a friend of my father was a sculptor at WoW. I guess little me didn't want to give it back but had to, my Mom had to fight hard to find one at Christmas with a little inside info on delivery dates.
You can still make cool stuff for your own sake, you don't have to monetize every hobby.
RajT88 42 days ago [-]
My thinking was, maybe turning one of my hobbies into not a money sink. I still have 0 of those, but many in the red.
JansjoFromIkea 42 days ago [-]
Had a bit of a look in a few places about the protocol, am I right in understanding the only way to do it with actual cassettes would be to find an 8 channel cassette recorder?
[edited to say 8 channel to avoid confusion with 8 track]
wibbily 43 days ago [-]
> answering machine
Tried and true distribution channel for hit music - see dial-a-song ((844) 387-6962) or the lovely "callin' oates" ((719) 266-2837)
bagels 42 days ago [-]
I love that... 13 years on that Callin' Oates is still alive.
"The hotline dates back to December 2011 and was created by Michael Selvidge and Reid Butler. Selvidge, who at the time worked for Twilio, told The Verge that he was required to build an app for the company and “Callin' Oates” was the result"
Hard to know if this was truly one of the best albums ever or if I just heard it at a super impressionable age, but the starting riff on When I Come Around gets me every time
DowagerDave 43 days ago [-]
It's very catchy, but not super-impressive musically IMO, however it had a huge impact on the scene and entire ecosystem at the time. Many other bands piggy-backed off their success, which I'm not sure happens as much in today's mega-single model. The band has gotten continually better while still staying relevant as well, which is really cool.
bena 42 days ago [-]
Green Day, especially the Dookie album, is kind of the epitome of "Yeah, you could have wrote it, but you didn't."
Not to mention, it's more than any single riff. It's the way the chorus ends then that little bass fill hits. And just the combination of the music with the lyrics. There's just that something that just gets everything right enough.
Take Basket Case, the song is pretty fucking simple musically. But it really serves as sort of click track to the vocals.
Taking simplicity and turning it into art takes skill.
hluska 43 days ago [-]
Everyone already said that about punk. We know it’s not Bach, but it’s not meant to be. It’s punk music - it’s not meant to be impressive musically.
geoka9 42 days ago [-]
Having said that... :)
... GD are very much above average musically when it comes to the popular music of the last 30 years. With those songwriting/performing chops, it's almost surprising they are a punk rock band.
aaronax 43 days ago [-]
Agree. Approximately rank 65 on best-selling albums of all time, but generally ranked in the 250-350 range on top 500 albums of all time. Such more subjective measures probably include sales/popularity as one of the ranking factors, so one could think that the album is of particularly below-expected "quality" to drag it down a few hundred positions.
godisdad 42 days ago [-]
It is both.
The story of Lookout Records being basically kept afloat by selling Kerplunk their first album after they left and blew up is also tragic/hilarious
bloopernova 43 days ago [-]
I personally prefer Insomniac. I used the opening riffs from Brain Stew as a ringtone during my on-call days, which ruined the track for a long time for me.
geoka9 43 days ago [-]
FWIW, when it came out I couldn't be bothered to listen to Green Day.
20 years later they became one of the favorites.
43 days ago [-]
lelandfe 43 days ago [-]
This site is unexpectedly AWESOME. The frontend is so nice! The audio perfectly syncs up to a video when you open up the accordion, and I love the giant fonts. The best part though is the bitcrushing image carousels omg. The images get higher res as they're scrolled into view! https://imgur.com/a/TIWA9FW
Kudos to the designers and devs on this.
farmeroy 43 days ago [-]
I mean, when I first tried to open the website it just wouldn't load on my iPhone, so I tried on the laptop. It took ~10 seconds to load. I just assumed the bitcrushing was more issues with bandwidth and badly compressed images rather than a design choice. But your comment made me sit through everything to see if i could really get it. I guess I can recognize the work that went into this and the concept behind it... having said that, I am definitely not the target audience for this website and am struggling not to write an extremely negative comment about green day and 90s nostalgia
fkyoureadthedoc 42 days ago [-]
Always at least one every thread.
> Sorry but this site is trash because it took 10s to load on my One Laptop Per Child running LFS connected to my 3g hotspot. I literally cannot imagine why anyone could ever like this.
iddan 42 days ago [-]
I physically chuckled
conductr 42 days ago [-]
I thoroughly enjoyed it, this is as iconic of an album as I could imagine especially given my age at the time it was released, but all to say yes my iPhone feels like it’s going to catch fire after a couple minutes on the site lol
mp05 42 days ago [-]
A few of their songs are really catchy, regardless of what you think of them (which I bet I agree with). Get over it.
drawkward 42 days ago [-]
Literal old man yells at cloud.
42 days ago [-]
kstrauser 42 days ago [-]
The struggle was in vain.
throwawaycities 42 days ago [-]
I love everything about this from the band, album, unique distributions of the songs, to the website.
The raffle style business model stood out, so I read the terms. The terms weren't any more clear, they sort of lump sweepstakes/raffle together in section 14. Sweepstakes and raffles are high regulated but they are legally distinct, and raffles are treated as gambling in many jurisdictions.
I hope they have it all worked out, it’s an awesome distribution of music.
i_am_jl 42 days ago [-]
The Teddy Ruxpin with the sync'd movements is crazy impressive.
Having to provide an address and a credit card before the drawing is obnoxious, but it's led me to realize that if I really wanted things that played Green Day, I could make most of these things myself.
appendix-rock 42 days ago [-]
…yes, well, it’s quite common for people to pay others to do things that they could do themselves but would rather just do something else. That is kind of how the world works.
throw10920 41 days ago [-]
I don't think that the GP was necessarily complaining about the money, but about the inconvenience of the payment.
> Having to provide an address and a credit card
You don't usually complain about providing an address if the only factor is the payment/price.
I suspect the GP would have been fine paying if they had an extremely low-friction payment system (e.g. one-click).
yard2010 42 days ago [-]
Also, in the case of pure art, paying for something trivial is like voting.
robg 42 days ago [-]
Basketcase on a Big Mouth Bass is exactly a world I want to live in.
No HitClip?? They could fit 2/3 of Coming Clean on one.
Edit: I completely missed it. Everything is now perfect.
bitwize 42 days ago [-]
What's missing is the PXL-2000 tape with a video for one of the songs.
GuinansEyebrows 42 days ago [-]
this is honestly the most impressive one here. i looked into doing hitclips with a friend and we basically tapped out once i found out how they work under the hood since there's no way they'd be cost effective.
idontwantthis 42 days ago [-]
Can you elaborate? I’ve always been fascinated by their existence.
Funnily enough, while I like the format and would be willing to get an official release of Dookie on it, it's not really worth the hassle for a single track, especially I could just as easily copy the album onto the format myself.
mdmdmd 42 days ago [-]
Same! I feel somewhat offended that the version from the site is so lo-fi. MDs had fantastic quality, to my ears indistinguishable from CDs!
Edit: Aha, I see now, this is a mic'd recording of an MD player with a built in speaker.
dangan 42 days ago [-]
I remember seeing this album on MiniDisc in a store in Sweden circa 2000. If you do enough Googling you might be able to find a copy.
l72 42 days ago [-]
If you win the answering machine, just beware!
> Deletion:
> Irreversible
gman83 42 days ago [-]
This reminds me of how the web used to be, before everything was on social media.
low_tech_love 42 days ago [-]
The floppy version of "Having a Blast" is extremely nostalgic, it almost brought tears to my eyes. It's not just that the bitrate is low but also the speakers that came with PC's back then were just not that good. That sounds a hell of a lot like it used to in the 90's when I downloaded it from Spotify in a dial-up...
And then followed by Chump in the teddy bear, which also sounds incredibly nostalgic. I'm starting to feel like Dookie actually sounds better on a lofi arrangement...?
P.S. Yes, it does. Basket Case and She just ended this argument. What a blast!
jasongill 41 days ago [-]
I actually won one of the 50 floppy copies of "Having a Blast"! If you send me an email at my HN username @gmail.com I'll send you a copy once I get it and rip it.
eemil 42 days ago [-]
US only? Really should have put that front and center... before I spent 20 minutes deciding which drawing to enter :/
ramenlover 42 days ago [-]
You could just proxy it through something like myus.com or the like
yapyap 43 days ago [-]
The prices are insane to me but to be fair the people that remember this from 30 years ago will probably have some spare money to spend if they’re still interested
Edit: well to be fair I see now that they are very limited
beloch 43 days ago [-]
There's a whole industry based on overpriced, "limited edition" nostalgic merch. Traditionally, "prints" (i.e. posters) for bands, movies, and even individual star trek episodes are huge. If you set the limit right, you're barely limiting sales at all while convincing people what they're buying is somehow more special and worth more money.
Art of the past is cheap and plentiful. Instead of doing multiple runs of an unlimited poster and bothering to keep it in stock, you do one run can call it "limited edition". Then you move on and mine the next anniversary.
This site is unusually slick for such a venture, but Dookie is a bigger deal than most albums, and the prices correspond to that.
dingnuts 42 days ago [-]
What they're buying _is_ more special and thus worth more. Green Day doesn't need more money but I love limited edition art from small artists.
Why? I know the art up in my home isn't up in everyone's home. I want my space to be unique. I want to be reminded of the tour, the festival, the album release, years later. I'm paying extra to support the artist I love, to have something more unique, and I'm pre paying for nostalgia in a decade.
My walls are covered in art you can't get anymore. I love it. I'll never walk into someone else's home and see that I have the same mass produced dreck up, and every piece of art on my walls is tied to a memory.
ToValueFunfetti 42 days ago [-]
And, doing the math, I can't imagine Green Day is making any money on this. sum(editions*price) = $3826 (though I'm not including the $20/item shipping). They probably spent more than that on the website. So they get publicity, some fans get some unique merch, and everybody else gets a fun joke
driverdan 42 days ago [-]
What exactly is insane about it? These are all hand created, very limited production items. They all took time to develop and test.
nervousvarun 43 days ago [-]
Apologies, a little slow here (probably because I was in high school when this album came out)...what are you actually buying for those listed prices?
hluska 43 days ago [-]
You get exactly what it says. For example, if you put $99 down and win the draw, you can get an actual Teddy Ruxpin that sings Chump. Or for $79 you can win a Big Mouth Billie Bass that sings Basket Case. If you click through to the previews, there are videos.
nervousvarun 43 days ago [-]
I mean I thought that at first, then thought no way because that's just a one off product but yeah, that's incredible.
If anything the prices are far too low.
hluska 42 days ago [-]
I just spent a stupid amount of money for a chance at getting Teddy Ruxpin. I’m feeling remarkably dumb right now but your words make me feel better.
fourseventy 42 days ago [-]
You only pay if you win
hluska 42 days ago [-]
I’m glad there are better adults on this site. In retrospect, I should really read.
Thanks for your help!
al_borland 42 days ago [-]
The price doesn't get you the item, it gets you an entry into the drawing. You're buying a lottery ticket for $19 - $99 with unknown odds.
It sounds like they aren't all one-off.
>QUANTITIES VARY BY TRACK.
The could probably produce as many floppies as they want, while the player piano... probably not so much.
crtasm 42 days ago [-]
>How do EQL launches work?
>Free to enter. You only pay if you’re selected to purchase.
Ah, that’s a much better deal. The wording on the main page was bad enough that I didn’t bother clicking through, since I wasn’t going to spend that much on a raffle.
samspot 34 days ago [-]
I sent this to my blind friend and found out this page is fantastically inaccessible. The only keyboard usable thing on the whole page is the mailing list signup. A few <button> tags would go a long way here, as well as general semantic html. Axe devtools can't even find the buttons to report violations.
eddieroger 43 days ago [-]
I'd take the whole album in 8-bit chiptunes in a heartbeat. Heck, I'd buy an old GameBoy if that was the only way to listen to it.
42 days ago [-]
ChrisArchitect 43 days ago [-]
This is officially sanctioned by Green Day? interesting
stronglikedan 42 days ago [-]
Gotta stay relevant somehow!
llamaimperative 42 days ago [-]
For real. Ever since they sold out Petco Park ummm... last week... they've been super irrelevant.
hildolfr 42 days ago [-]
A sold out Rolling Stones concert doesn't suddenly make them more relevant.. Green Day has the luxury of having a fan base that's not entirely dead of old age yet.
llamaimperative 42 days ago [-]
It doesn’t make them more relevant, but it does prove they’re not irrelevant, as GP suggested.
Idk, not many people can sell tens or hundreds of thousands of pricy tickets to see them do their thing for 90 minutes. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
randomdata 42 days ago [-]
To be relevant usually speaks to some kind of broad social impact or defining of a culture. You might argue Green Day did that back in the day, but do they really continue to? A lot of people willing to pay to be entertained by their performance does not imply relevancy.
42 days ago [-]
kridsdale3 42 days ago [-]
Rolling Stones had a kickass new album this year
MisterTea 42 days ago [-]
Remember recording the video for Basket Case off MTV on to VHS and recording it to PC using a Creative Video Spigot and SB16. Had to use postage stamp sized video at 10 or 15 FPS as my 486 could barley keep up. Wound up with a HUGE file in those days. My brother had a Teddy Ruxpin and I had a talking Alf. Was hilarious when you put some rock or metal tapes into them.
Re. the site - for some dumb reason I have to click on the page to get arrow and page up/down keys working as if the page needs to grab focus.
ddingus 42 days ago [-]
I LOVE everything about this! What a fun idea and a fresh look at a stand out album!
I should also take a moment to recognize how great the site design is as well.
TacticalCoder 42 days ago [-]
> The album that exploded punk rock 30 years ago, re-exploded onto obscure, obsolete, and inconvenient formats.
It's really strange. I probably don't get it.
I was there listening to punk rock and "grunge" rock in 1994. Back then nobody listened to music on his computer (the .mp3 format didn't even exist yet: at least not with that name) except if it was using the PC's CD drive, to play an audio CD.
1994 was kind "peak" quality: the loudness war on CDs just hadn't started yet and listening to music was often amazing for it was often played directly from CDs on actual stereos.
Crappy sound only arrived a few years when the first, lame, mp3 encoders arrived and became ubiquitous and everybody made lossy rip of CDs (because we didn't know how to rip losslessly yet from CDs) and then encoded them with poor encoders at shitty bitrates (like 128 kbps mp3 were really a thing in the late 90s, for Napster sharing).
So it's really strange to take music from 1994, which is precisely a year were nobody listened to "shitty format" music yet on his PC.
FWIW I had my first CD player in 1988 or so.
It's only in the late 90s that music quality for listening experience went seriously downhill, with people listening to shitty 128 kbps mp3 on their shitty, tiny, Logitech speakers.
Nowadays all is good and fine again: Tidal, Spotify, Qobuz... It's all good sounding again. And many acceptable soundbars and systems came out (like Sonos and whatnots).
So yup I don't get it: to me it's "fake retro" because 1994 music was enjoyed from CDs, on speakers hooked to a stereo (which were never as shitty as those tiny Logitech speakers and similar hooked to PCs).
I just don't understand what this is: I must be getting old... But then as I'm getting old, it means I was there in 1994 and it's definitely not the 1994 I remember. It's kinda fake retro for something that never existed.
kristianp 42 days ago [-]
Speaking of the loudness wars, remember when Californication came out? I thought my copy (on cdrom) had been ripped from a distorted tape. Still one of my favourites though.
tayo42 42 days ago [-]
128 isnt a thing?
What bit rate does Spotify use for streaming online regular quality?
vessenes 42 days ago [-]
While I grant you that nobody enjoyed music directly from a Teddy Ruxpin in the 1990s, I think you’re wrong about this. It is nostalgic. And I think you’re missing the point that it’s supposed to be fun - they have player piano rolls and wax tubes for goodness sake.
About the 90s though - people used gameboys. People used PCs. Those devices had tons of music and music culture. Chiptunes, mod music makers and players, the demo scene are all late 80s into early 90s. The very first sound blaster card wasn’t even launched until November 1989; before then it was all pc speakers.
On the streets in the 1990s, people used walkmans, listened to tapes; in cars eight track was nostalgic, people listened to the radio and their tapes a lot. I didn’t have my first portable CD player until 1997 or so.
jdalgetty 43 days ago [-]
Wow - what an amazing site!
cobertos 42 days ago [-]
Hmm, isn't this just a co-opting of things smaller creators are doing?
It's just done at a much larger scale, with the aim of making money instead of curiosity/funny memery
oreilles 42 days ago [-]
Smaller creators are also doing it for money, and Green Day and Brain are also doing this out of funny memery.
peoplefromibiza 42 days ago [-]
Am I going to listen to the whole album after seeing this?
Of course I am!
me_me_me 42 days ago [-]
I remember reading article about illegal western music in Soviet times.
Creating vinyls out of xray images sounded ingenious, its amazing to hear one now.
bagels 42 days ago [-]
These are all great. Unfortunately it would just be another thing to collect dust on the shelf, realistically.
swayvil 42 days ago [-]
This is green day?
I have no feelings.
90s? Ween of course.
motohagiography 42 days ago [-]
i liked the idea because it implies there could be an unlimited number of new art projects that can drive new streaming revenue of back catalog music.
then I saw the $0.003-0.005 per stream figure on spotify, and so your max upside for getting 1M plays is $50. At $50/M 10M plays might buy 1 dinner for the band.
they actually make more selling the teddy ruxpins. maybe someone had a warehouse full of them and this clears them?
vessenes 42 days ago [-]
To be clear, this is a raffle, and there are limited editions of each item. There is no way this is going to make money directly - it’s a fun fan engagement give away, and super creative. If I win one of 100 game boy cartridges, I will pay $39, which is probably close to the unit cost of making them, and will never pay back the software engineering time to create the cartridge. I assume most of the items are like that.
phonon 42 days ago [-]
That's $3,000 to $5,000 per million. Or did you mean the Roman M?
motohagiography 42 days ago [-]
walked right into that, as was thinking in terms of fractions of a cent instead of fractions of a dollar.
bitwize 42 days ago [-]
They are only offering one Teddy Ruxpin.
snickerbockers 42 days ago [-]
3 * 10^-3 * 10^6 == 3 * 10^3 == $3000 per million streams, not $30.
a3w 42 days ago [-]
Site does not load, but for that conclusion, it takes forever. What is supposed to happen? Firefox w/ ublock origin.
eigenrick 42 days ago [-]
I'm on Firefox with ublock origin and it works just fine.
Either way... the site is a store.. of sorts... for Greenday's "Dookie" album, where the songs are mixed down into various bizarre formats. They said de-mastered, and I was hoping that they were actually releasing the individual tracks. Sad.
42 days ago [-]
al_borland 42 days ago [-]
Here is a quick 30 second trailer of what's on the site, from Green Day's YouTube.
FF with ublock here, not seeing any difference between this and Chrome
toufique 42 days ago [-]
This album got me into music!
msephton 42 days ago [-]
Brilliant
jshchnz 42 days ago [-]
this is so freaking cool
DrNosferatu 43 days ago [-]
One of these tracks as an Opus file, 1.44MB long, shouldn't be that bad sound quality.
...but then, what would be the point? ;)
scosman 42 days ago [-]
amazing album. amazing concept.
pwenzel 42 days ago [-]
As someone who listened to music from this album on a shitty clock radio growing up, this feels perfect.
fitsumbelay 42 days ago [-]
Now this is hackin'
matltc 42 days ago [-]
Best shit I've heard in a while
sva_ 42 days ago [-]
A bit disappointing that the site itself requires 6.5MB to be transferred.
SirFatty 43 days ago [-]
I never really understood the 'punk' genre assignment for this band.
nunez 43 days ago [-]
Surprising take.
Their sound and ethos is undeniably pop punk.
They played Gilman St, a punk mecca in Berkeley. See some of their shows in the 90s and 00s. If you don't think that's punk, I don't know what to tell you.
They didn't do much fast skate punk type stuff like NOFX and No Use did, but punk is a super wide genre anyway; to me, it's about what you are, not how you play (see also: second wave ska a la Reel Big Fish and No Doubt, or country cow-punk, like Hank Williams III)
They leaned harder on the "pop" aspect of pop punk (American Idiot is widely considered one of the first punk operas ever made and is one of the best-selling rock albums ever) and experimented with their sound over the years (check out their stuff from the 2010s) but they never lost their edge, IMO (They dropped Saviors this year; incredible album.)
Regardless, they inspired a zillion punk bands of all kinds. Hell, FOD, one of my favorite pop punk bands from The Netherlands, was inspired by FOD, which is on this record!
jghn 42 days ago [-]
> See some of their shows in the 90s and 00s
I think this is part of the tension.
By the mid-90s, "punk" had evolved from something that was a small band of weirdos into something larger. For instance normal, run of the mill high school kids were shopping the aesthetic at Hot Topic. I'm not suggesting this was good nor bad. But there was a huge culture shift happening. At a minimum, the punk aesthetic had shifted into the mainstream and poppier acts like Green Day helped to make that happen.
So folks who had been used to getting made fun of and beat up for being punks in the 80s weren't always super happy to see this shift. Again, not suggesting they had the right to feel this way or not. But it happened.
In general countercultures built around nonconformity have these tensions. Participants preach the nonconformity, but then reject people who don't fit a certain aesthetic. Participants preach openness, but then get upset when too many people join. It's just how it goes.
lawgimenez 42 days ago [-]
Brett of Bad Religion said that Nirvana’s Bleach was the first punk album that lead the way of how Rancid and Green Day’s sound today. Or made punk rock mainstream back then.
boomboomsubban 43 days ago [-]
Wow, the "is Green Day punk" argument also turned thirty. Probably older, I'm sure someone had it before Dookie.
DowagerDave 43 days ago [-]
A lot of punk has always had an anti-success edge, which seems really unfair. It should be more about DIY and freedom outside what was (in the 90's) a very restrictive, fixed business model. NOFX are the best of example of the punk aesthetic, but Green Day (the pop-punk band, not the Celtic folk band^) didn't sell out while achieving stratospheric success.
^Community reference
rootusrootus 43 days ago [-]
> A lot of punk has always had an anti-success edge
I think you hit it on the nail. What makes some people uptight about Green Day being punk is not the music -- because objectively, punk's pretty much on point. It's the fact that they were wildly successful. Can't be punk any more when that happens.
jghn 43 days ago [-]
Sort of. Even before their commercial success this issue was coming up. Granted the commercial success turned the knob to 11. There were already debates about their sound, that it was too poppy and mainstream sounding.
Whether or not an ethos espousing rejecting authority should be applying authority on what other people sound like is another matter altogether :)
joekrill 42 days ago [-]
> didn't sell out while achieving stratospheric success.
Their Keurig "partnership" might suggest otherwise. And it's not just because they've partnered with a huge corporation. But mainly because their coffee company - "Punk Bunny Coffee" - puts a huge emphasis on "sustainability". And while Keurig says sustainability is important, their actions suggest the exact opposite.
hunter2_ 42 days ago [-]
> while Keurig says sustainability is important, their actions suggest the exact opposite
The term is loose enough to possibly refer to making the business (not human life generally) be sustainable, though the green[day]washing angle is more likely.
petesergeant 43 days ago [-]
> A lot of punk has always had an anti-success edge
Alternative take: punk, as enjoyed by the connoisseur, sounds terrible to people who don't like punk, which limits its success
jghn 43 days ago [-]
No it is much older. I remember longstanding debates on alt.punk in USENET on this very topic before Dookie came out.
slg 43 days ago [-]
There are few things more punk that spawning a 30+ year argument about them not being punk enough to be considered punk. They don't conform enough to the standards of the non-conformists?
hluska 43 days ago [-]
I haven’t participated in this conversation since Kerplunk was released!
San Francisco punk was always a little different but Green Day was part of the late 80s/early 90s punk scene in the Bay Area. It was all centered around 924 Gilman Street.
acomjean 42 days ago [-]
It’s kinda punk pop. It has the intensity of punk. It definitely had the mosh pit element to it. I remember it being more intense than the grunge that was popular at the time.
It was on MTV alot. But then again so were Primus and Faith No More. It was a different time.
I was at the attempted free show in Boston in the 90s that ended after just a few songs.
I thought I'd seen the end of the singing bass trophy, but if it has to come back this is a good way.
drcongo 43 days ago [-]
This is getting downvoted, but I'd never even heard them referred to as punk before. And as a British former punk, I don't understand it either.
mmastrac 43 days ago [-]
They were punk, just mainstream, pop punk. It was a common label for them in North America in the 90s.
a57721 42 days ago [-]
I think "pop punk" is a good term, for me it's about the sound and delivery, it has nothing to do with commercial success, being "posers" etc. I think it's kind of evident from the music itself why someone who likes Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, Big Black, or GG Allin may not appreciate Green Day, NOFX and the likes (and vice versa). It's in the sound itself, ignoring the lyrics and everything else. Many bands without any mainstream success still play pop punk.
jghn 42 days ago [-]
I think of punk as being three completely separate variables, and for any individual or band they're independent of each other:
1) Ethos
2) Aesthetics/look & feel
3) Musical sound
So someone could be punk as fuck ethos-wise but love listening to Yanni. Meanwhile a band could have a straight up anarcho-punk sound, but otherwise be white collar wage slaves
But this is the root of so much disagreement. When Green Day started ascending in the 80s, people were pointing out the poppy music as not being "punk". But that's just one variable.
doublerabbit 42 days ago [-]
You missed the fourth. Rebellion
Punk is about rebellion, pop-punk is a good umbrella term as they had rebellious vibes but to call Green Day punk is a bit of a stretch.
jghn 42 days ago [-]
I was including that as part of `Ethos`. DYI, anti-authority, etc.
hunter2_ 42 days ago [-]
> Many bands without any mainstream success still play pop punk.
The irony extends to the fact that while someone can play in the style of pop without being mainstream, they cannot literally be pop until they're popular. But if pop requires being popular and punk requires shunning the mainstream, pop punk couldn't exist. The fact that it does is therefore a bit of a paradox.
mattw2121 43 days ago [-]
As a former North American Punk, they were posers, not punks.
rootusrootus 43 days ago [-]
Ha! The amount of gatekeeping on the definition of punk that I've lived through makes me feel so old, but it also tickles me a little to see it come up again today. The more things change ...
DowagerDave 43 days ago [-]
Saying I'm punk, and you are not punk, is about the least punk thing you can do.
bryanrasmussen 43 days ago [-]
what about working for an investment bank? How punk is that on the scale?
baggachipz 42 days ago [-]
Given how often they break laws, ignore social norms, and thumb their noses at authorities... pretty damn punk.
criddell 43 days ago [-]
It could be very high on the scale. Like punks, bankers often don't ask for permission.
43 days ago [-]
mmastrac 42 days ago [-]
The classic No True Punksman fallacy.
ipaddr 43 days ago [-]
Anyone who releases an album for sale is a poser. Trying to make money from music is unpunk.
anthomtb 42 days ago [-]
As a self-confessed "former punk", do you really deserve to make that assessment?
micromacrofoot 42 days ago [-]
Gatekeeping isn't punk
barakm 42 days ago [-]
“One, two, three, four
Who’s punk what’s the score?”
Get outta here with the gatekeeping
elcomet 43 days ago [-]
Which band do you consider as punk?
burningChrome 43 days ago [-]
Misfits
Black Flag
Ramones
TSOL
SNFU
Dead Kennedy's
Bad Brains
Descendents
Minor Threat
I think Punk was in its heyday in the 80's. I think its evolved over time and many people don't believe "pop punk" is really considered "punk" even though a lot of the themes we saw in the 80's punk bands are very clear and present in Green Day's music.
Which then begs the question what really defines punk music? I'm honestly not sure because many of the hallmarks of the 80's punk was the poor production, guitars out of tune, singers who couldn't sing very well - all of which have been greatly improved when you consider Green Day's music.
Billy Joe Armstrong is a phenomenal singer. Even on Dookie, the producer said a majority of the songs he did in a single take - which is staggering to think about. Their musical abilities are unquestionably much better than any of the 80's punk bands. Tre Cool's drumming is just on another level and I'm not sure many 80's era punk band drummers could ever hang with his abilities. Even the production level of Dookie was light years ahead of many of the seminal punk albums that came out in the 80's.
Its easy to claim that Green Day isn't a "real" punk band, but when you start to compare them to the "prototypical" bands in the 80's, they sing about many of the same things, but have elevated the genre beyond what its really been known for. In the end, I have a harder time not calling them punk, there's just too many similarities to many of the most popular bands people know.
doublerabbit 42 days ago [-]
> Which then begs the question what really defines punk music?
Rebellion against the mass.
Sex Pistols, The Ramones, Joy Division are some of the leading pioneers of the movement.
The 80's I would say is more toward post-punk. This split off in to Goth with The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees then genres such as New Wave, Synth with the likes of Depeche Mode and Gary Numan.
The same as grunge did in the US with Nirvana and the likes. I would say that Grunge was America's post-punk phase.
90's then saw the age of pop, and pop-punk came from that. Media was more available.
While Green Day held strong lyrics it's wasn't it. It didn't have the true spirit of punk. It was more rebellious against your parents as a teenager type vibe rather than take down the nation like prior. But I stand to be corrected.
I've never really liked Blink, Offspring and Green Day. I was to busy being script kiddie, 13 listening to chiptunes and goth.
audiodude 42 days ago [-]
I saw a YouTube video from (I think) Punk Rock MBA that says that the difference between "Pop Punk" and "Punk" has nothing to do with the sound of the music, or even how popular the band is (The Clash played stadium shows), but more to do with the idea of the guys from Blink 182 hosting MTV Spring Break. It's about band members acting like legitimate pop stars instead of street kids.
This degraded image effect was done by moving image viewport around within source images like this: https://www.dookiedemastered.com/images/gameboy-3-sheet.webp
Perhaps spotting that in a demastering project is bending the rules a bit, but still - I like how it indicates that our tastes and internet speeds have changed.
"Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them." - Brian Eno
Stay away from my shellacs and waxes!
The whole site is polished to a high degree. Lqbor of love, just like all the quirky items rhey have to loved just as much.
When an album hits a big milestone like its 30th anniversary
Oof, so this is what getting old feels like. Yikes.
Crank it as long as you want with “All By Myself,” arranged for the first time on a hand-cranked music box.
chef's kiss.
That turned into a talk about CDs and led into listening to Dookie with my eight year old. The album has aged very well. As an adult, I find that different songs are more appealing now than they were as a teen and in other cases, age has warped the meaning of the songs.
But as an album, it stands up really well. There are some other well known albums from the nineties that really haven’t stood up as well. I’d recommend another listen!
Though, “I declare I don’t care no more.” :)
Some day Limp Bizkit will get the recognition they deserves.
The gap between Dookie and American Idiot seems significantly longer to me than the gap between American Idiot and today, yet it's half as long :/
Related: it sure seemed like the mid-90s were special for rock music; I was 13 when Dookie came out and I felt (still feel) like I was in a sort of alternative renaissance, just crammed with amazing new music. But I’m sure every generation feels that way about whatever happened to be popular when they were teenagers.
All of these has been fueled by social media, which to reduce some of the complexities, determined that "if we divide and polarize american politics we make boatloads of money"
That's really not how I see it. Trump sits on the shoulders of those who came before and set the stage for the Trump policy. My Alito example above is an instructive one. Bush can be seen as laying a 20 year foundation towards overturning Roe or the Chevron doctrine. I remember when Roberts was appointed, mainstream press talked up how moderate and reasonable he was, but I never bought it -- and how we see he isn't.
The rhetoric appeals to the base... But that base got radicalized by prior eras. Decades of complaining about big government. Fox News demonizing Pelosi and "San Francisco values". Karl Rove's permanent campaign mode. Much of that discourse was fully formed in 2004. The Bush people knew to reign it in sometimes, that is the difference.
1) Positions and messaging strategy. Trump tends to take up the positions you hear Republican voters talk about over a coffee at the diner or over a beer on an aluminum-hull outboard motor fishing boat. As with Democrats, typical Republican planks aren’t terribly close to what their voters want, so (Trump proved) you can win elections by targeting this unmet demand directly.
“Why don’t they just build a wall?”; “Fucking NAFTA, sold us all out”; “gotta do something about that trade deficit with China” and/or other comments on restricting trade with China; “Obamacare sucks” but also kinda vaguely supporting something to fix healthcare (this muddled set of positions came out rather directly in Trump’s speeches—sometimes it’d sound like he was about to advocate single payer); “we should stop being the world police for free” and/or “Europe’s freeloading on NATO”; lots of complaints about illegal immigration’s and crime generally; Washington corruption (“drain the swamp!”); et c.
If you know many Republican voters, not politicians, you may recognize that as stuff that’d inform their wishlist. Trump heard that, and just… did exactly that, turned around and said exactly those things instead of taking up the typical Republican platform. Got him elected. He even sort-of followed through on some of it. This is true for at least the first election, his positions this time seem to have gone a bit more tail-wagging-the-dog (creating issues and demand for a particular solution to the created issue, through messaging, rather than going to where voters already are on existing issues)
2) Relatedly, and especially because he did follow through on some of it, he’s the only big two party Presidential candidate since perhaps 1980 to not be fully on-board with neoliberalism. That’s definitely remarkable. Vance alluded to this at one point in the recent debate.
(Disclaimer because it’s a polarizing topic: observation without condemnation should not be taken as support)
Green Day are still in their prime in terms of a live show. Yeah it’s not 3 kids packing a basement anymore, but they absolutely crushed Dookie in their 50s. I felt not old for a couple of hours.
I went to Pixies concerts when I was at BU in the 80's. They were a rich white kid college band.
Punk was a very specific movement.
It's like saying, "Yeah, impressionism is same as Cubism." No. It isn't. Don't rewrite history because it suits your invented personality.
"A preloved Teddy comes with a cassette tape featuring an eight-channel recording of “Chump” including synchronized eye and snout movements."
"This fully-playable version of “Welcome To Paradise” will immerse you in the world of a small apartment in Oakland, California. Search out the record to play the full 8-bit rendition of your favorite song."
Totally impressed and amazed.
It would have been nice if they made it a limited run (say, 100 copies) instead of singular pieces.
Am I understanding this correctly to mean that some of the audio channels on a Teddy Ruxpin cassette are silent tracks that control the motors in the toy? That's kind of interesting. I wonder if there are any other examples of a custom Ruxpin track being made . . .
Edit: comment directly below this one addresses this.
1. https://www.facebook.com/GreenDay/
IIRC - one audio channel is used for the speaker, and the other is a series of beeps which map to facial movements:
https://makezine.com/projects/chippy-ruxpin/
Back when I thought it might be a fun side hustle to make cool youtube videos (long ago put to bed), I thought about making videos of Ruxpin singing death metal and stuff.
It's been years since it seemed like it was worthwhile to make Youtube videos... And the situation is getting worse for creators year over year.
But should it? There used to be a time when people put this stuff on the internet for fun, not as a side huste or to "monetize" it... Maybe there's not so much money in this idea, but you can make people laugh for a few seconds.
Here's what I was reading http://www.illiop.org/workings.html
[edited to say 8 channel to avoid confusion with 8 track]
Tried and true distribution channel for hit music - see dial-a-song ((844) 387-6962) or the lovely "callin' oates" ((719) 266-2837)
"The hotline dates back to December 2011 and was created by Michael Selvidge and Reid Butler. Selvidge, who at the time worked for Twilio, told The Verge that he was required to build an app for the company and “Callin' Oates” was the result"
https://brain.wtf
Not to mention, it's more than any single riff. It's the way the chorus ends then that little bass fill hits. And just the combination of the music with the lyrics. There's just that something that just gets everything right enough.
Take Basket Case, the song is pretty fucking simple musically. But it really serves as sort of click track to the vocals.
Taking simplicity and turning it into art takes skill.
The story of Lookout Records being basically kept afloat by selling Kerplunk their first album after they left and blew up is also tragic/hilarious
Kudos to the designers and devs on this.
> Sorry but this site is trash because it took 10s to load on my One Laptop Per Child running LFS connected to my 3g hotspot. I literally cannot imagine why anyone could ever like this.
The raffle style business model stood out, so I read the terms. The terms weren't any more clear, they sort of lump sweepstakes/raffle together in section 14. Sweepstakes and raffles are high regulated but they are legally distinct, and raffles are treated as gambling in many jurisdictions.
I hope they have it all worked out, it’s an awesome distribution of music.
Having to provide an address and a credit card before the drawing is obnoxious, but it's led me to realize that if I really wanted things that played Green Day, I could make most of these things myself.
> Having to provide an address and a credit card
You don't usually complain about providing an address if the only factor is the payment/price.
I suspect the GP would have been fine paying if they had an extremely low-friction payment system (e.g. one-click).
Edit: I completely missed it. Everything is now perfect.
Funnily enough, while I like the format and would be willing to get an official release of Dookie on it, it's not really worth the hassle for a single track, especially I could just as easily copy the album onto the format myself.
Edit: Aha, I see now, this is a mic'd recording of an MD player with a built in speaker.
And then followed by Chump in the teddy bear, which also sounds incredibly nostalgic. I'm starting to feel like Dookie actually sounds better on a lofi arrangement...?
P.S. Yes, it does. Basket Case and She just ended this argument. What a blast!
Edit: well to be fair I see now that they are very limited
Art of the past is cheap and plentiful. Instead of doing multiple runs of an unlimited poster and bothering to keep it in stock, you do one run can call it "limited edition". Then you move on and mine the next anniversary.
This site is unusually slick for such a venture, but Dookie is a bigger deal than most albums, and the prices correspond to that.
Why? I know the art up in my home isn't up in everyone's home. I want my space to be unique. I want to be reminded of the tour, the festival, the album release, years later. I'm paying extra to support the artist I love, to have something more unique, and I'm pre paying for nostalgia in a decade.
My walls are covered in art you can't get anymore. I love it. I'll never walk into someone else's home and see that I have the same mass produced dreck up, and every piece of art on my walls is tied to a memory.
If anything the prices are far too low.
Thanks for your help!
It sounds like they aren't all one-off.
>QUANTITIES VARY BY TRACK.
The could probably produce as many floppies as they want, while the player piano... probably not so much.
>Free to enter. You only pay if you’re selected to purchase.
https://brain.runfair.com/en-US/us/brain-green-day-having-a-...
Idk, not many people can sell tens or hundreds of thousands of pricy tickets to see them do their thing for 90 minutes. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Re. the site - for some dumb reason I have to click on the page to get arrow and page up/down keys working as if the page needs to grab focus.
I should also take a moment to recognize how great the site design is as well.
It's really strange. I probably don't get it.
I was there listening to punk rock and "grunge" rock in 1994. Back then nobody listened to music on his computer (the .mp3 format didn't even exist yet: at least not with that name) except if it was using the PC's CD drive, to play an audio CD.
1994 was kind "peak" quality: the loudness war on CDs just hadn't started yet and listening to music was often amazing for it was often played directly from CDs on actual stereos.
Crappy sound only arrived a few years when the first, lame, mp3 encoders arrived and became ubiquitous and everybody made lossy rip of CDs (because we didn't know how to rip losslessly yet from CDs) and then encoded them with poor encoders at shitty bitrates (like 128 kbps mp3 were really a thing in the late 90s, for Napster sharing).
So it's really strange to take music from 1994, which is precisely a year were nobody listened to "shitty format" music yet on his PC.
FWIW I had my first CD player in 1988 or so.
It's only in the late 90s that music quality for listening experience went seriously downhill, with people listening to shitty 128 kbps mp3 on their shitty, tiny, Logitech speakers.
Nowadays all is good and fine again: Tidal, Spotify, Qobuz... It's all good sounding again. And many acceptable soundbars and systems came out (like Sonos and whatnots).
So yup I don't get it: to me it's "fake retro" because 1994 music was enjoyed from CDs, on speakers hooked to a stereo (which were never as shitty as those tiny Logitech speakers and similar hooked to PCs).
I just don't understand what this is: I must be getting old... But then as I'm getting old, it means I was there in 1994 and it's definitely not the 1994 I remember. It's kinda fake retro for something that never existed.
What bit rate does Spotify use for streaming online regular quality?
About the 90s though - people used gameboys. People used PCs. Those devices had tons of music and music culture. Chiptunes, mod music makers and players, the demo scene are all late 80s into early 90s. The very first sound blaster card wasn’t even launched until November 1989; before then it was all pc speakers.
On the streets in the 1990s, people used walkmans, listened to tapes; in cars eight track was nostalgic, people listened to the radio and their tapes a lot. I didn’t have my first portable CD player until 1997 or so.
It's just done at a much larger scale, with the aim of making money instead of curiosity/funny memery
Of course I am!
Creating vinyls out of xray images sounded ingenious, its amazing to hear one now.
I have no feelings.
90s? Ween of course.
then I saw the $0.003-0.005 per stream figure on spotify, and so your max upside for getting 1M plays is $50. At $50/M 10M plays might buy 1 dinner for the band.
they actually make more selling the teddy ruxpins. maybe someone had a warehouse full of them and this clears them?
Either way... the site is a store.. of sorts... for Greenday's "Dookie" album, where the songs are mixed down into various bizarre formats. They said de-mastered, and I was hoping that they were actually releasing the individual tracks. Sad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziZ8SLooNx8
...but then, what would be the point? ;)
Their sound and ethos is undeniably pop punk.
They played Gilman St, a punk mecca in Berkeley. See some of their shows in the 90s and 00s. If you don't think that's punk, I don't know what to tell you.
They didn't do much fast skate punk type stuff like NOFX and No Use did, but punk is a super wide genre anyway; to me, it's about what you are, not how you play (see also: second wave ska a la Reel Big Fish and No Doubt, or country cow-punk, like Hank Williams III)
They leaned harder on the "pop" aspect of pop punk (American Idiot is widely considered one of the first punk operas ever made and is one of the best-selling rock albums ever) and experimented with their sound over the years (check out their stuff from the 2010s) but they never lost their edge, IMO (They dropped Saviors this year; incredible album.)
Regardless, they inspired a zillion punk bands of all kinds. Hell, FOD, one of my favorite pop punk bands from The Netherlands, was inspired by FOD, which is on this record!
I think this is part of the tension.
By the mid-90s, "punk" had evolved from something that was a small band of weirdos into something larger. For instance normal, run of the mill high school kids were shopping the aesthetic at Hot Topic. I'm not suggesting this was good nor bad. But there was a huge culture shift happening. At a minimum, the punk aesthetic had shifted into the mainstream and poppier acts like Green Day helped to make that happen.
So folks who had been used to getting made fun of and beat up for being punks in the 80s weren't always super happy to see this shift. Again, not suggesting they had the right to feel this way or not. But it happened.
In general countercultures built around nonconformity have these tensions. Participants preach the nonconformity, but then reject people who don't fit a certain aesthetic. Participants preach openness, but then get upset when too many people join. It's just how it goes.
^Community reference
I think you hit it on the nail. What makes some people uptight about Green Day being punk is not the music -- because objectively, punk's pretty much on point. It's the fact that they were wildly successful. Can't be punk any more when that happens.
Whether or not an ethos espousing rejecting authority should be applying authority on what other people sound like is another matter altogether :)
Their Keurig "partnership" might suggest otherwise. And it's not just because they've partnered with a huge corporation. But mainly because their coffee company - "Punk Bunny Coffee" - puts a huge emphasis on "sustainability". And while Keurig says sustainability is important, their actions suggest the exact opposite.
The term is loose enough to possibly refer to making the business (not human life generally) be sustainable, though the green[day]washing angle is more likely.
Alternative take: punk, as enjoyed by the connoisseur, sounds terrible to people who don't like punk, which limits its success
San Francisco punk was always a little different but Green Day was part of the late 80s/early 90s punk scene in the Bay Area. It was all centered around 924 Gilman Street.
It was on MTV alot. But then again so were Primus and Faith No More. It was a different time.
I was at the attempted free show in Boston in the 90s that ended after just a few songs.
https://youtu.be/O7cJUUZIvNk?si=Yr7ivWCICTC0MTi7
I thought I'd seen the end of the singing bass trophy, but if it has to come back this is a good way.
1) Ethos
2) Aesthetics/look & feel
3) Musical sound
So someone could be punk as fuck ethos-wise but love listening to Yanni. Meanwhile a band could have a straight up anarcho-punk sound, but otherwise be white collar wage slaves
But this is the root of so much disagreement. When Green Day started ascending in the 80s, people were pointing out the poppy music as not being "punk". But that's just one variable.
Punk is about rebellion, pop-punk is a good umbrella term as they had rebellious vibes but to call Green Day punk is a bit of a stretch.
The irony extends to the fact that while someone can play in the style of pop without being mainstream, they cannot literally be pop until they're popular. But if pop requires being popular and punk requires shunning the mainstream, pop punk couldn't exist. The fact that it does is therefore a bit of a paradox.
Who’s punk what’s the score?”
Get outta here with the gatekeeping
Black Flag
Ramones
TSOL
SNFU
Dead Kennedy's
Bad Brains
Descendents
Minor Threat
I think Punk was in its heyday in the 80's. I think its evolved over time and many people don't believe "pop punk" is really considered "punk" even though a lot of the themes we saw in the 80's punk bands are very clear and present in Green Day's music.
Which then begs the question what really defines punk music? I'm honestly not sure because many of the hallmarks of the 80's punk was the poor production, guitars out of tune, singers who couldn't sing very well - all of which have been greatly improved when you consider Green Day's music.
Billy Joe Armstrong is a phenomenal singer. Even on Dookie, the producer said a majority of the songs he did in a single take - which is staggering to think about. Their musical abilities are unquestionably much better than any of the 80's punk bands. Tre Cool's drumming is just on another level and I'm not sure many 80's era punk band drummers could ever hang with his abilities. Even the production level of Dookie was light years ahead of many of the seminal punk albums that came out in the 80's.
Its easy to claim that Green Day isn't a "real" punk band, but when you start to compare them to the "prototypical" bands in the 80's, they sing about many of the same things, but have elevated the genre beyond what its really been known for. In the end, I have a harder time not calling them punk, there's just too many similarities to many of the most popular bands people know.
Rebellion against the mass.
Sex Pistols, The Ramones, Joy Division are some of the leading pioneers of the movement.
The 80's I would say is more toward post-punk. This split off in to Goth with The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees then genres such as New Wave, Synth with the likes of Depeche Mode and Gary Numan.
The same as grunge did in the US with Nirvana and the likes. I would say that Grunge was America's post-punk phase.
90's then saw the age of pop, and pop-punk came from that. Media was more available.
While Green Day held strong lyrics it's wasn't it. It didn't have the true spirit of punk. It was more rebellious against your parents as a teenager type vibe rather than take down the nation like prior. But I stand to be corrected.
I've never really liked Blink, Offspring and Green Day. I was to busy being script kiddie, 13 listening to chiptunes and goth.
https://wmbr.org/cgi-bin/show?id=8533
"It's like sewing your ear to a vacuum cleaner. "
though they include metal now.
RIP in peace
Looks like a cool art project.