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The sunny coast of Southern California seems to breed a certain kind of punk band maybe it's the palm trees. It's hard to be angry all the time when you look out your window and see paradise. SoCal punks are more poppy and irreverent than their crusty, cold-climate piers (though often equally broke) and few epitomize the scene so well as East Bay's Green Day. Formed in the mid-80's when singer Billy Joe's guitar was bigger than him, Green Day paid their club dues, often sneaking out the back door of 21+ venues if the cops showed up. Their amped-up tunes hit you like a big pop loogie and they've mastered the three chord magic of a classic punk song. They released several independent albums on Look Out! Records in the early 90's, then signed with major label Reprise. Green Day instantly went from the local scene's favorite sons to despised sellouts. Kids in San Pablo may have been chucking beer bottles at them, but Green Day had the last laugh when they released the bombshell, 10X platinum Dookie in 1994. The boys themselves couldn't have dreamed that a record with a cartoon cover depicting the effects of an atomic sh*t-bomb would end up in nearly every high school student's collection. The songs were about disillusionment and life as a slacker catchy hits like "Welcome to Paradise" and "When I Come Around" found their way into constant rotation on MTV while the self-deprecating "Longview," with it's wonky, pot-infused bass line, chronicles Billy Joe's life on his mom's couch. Most people thought Dookie would be Green Day's only mainstream moment, but they've held on and even matured. Their follow-up, nimrod, featured the unexpectedly elegiac "Time Of Your Life" and their most recent hit record, American Idiot, completes their transformation into tattooed statesmen, criticizing the Bush Administration and rallying America's youth to get political. Green Day, the punks from Southern California, have the floor.

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