The 500 - #193 - Dookie - Green Day

 I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by Los Angeles-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. 

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Album: #193

Album Title: Dookie

Artist: Green Day

Genre: Punk Rock, Pop Punk, Skate Punk

Recorded: Fantasy Studios, Berkley, California; and Music Grinder Studios, Los Angeles

Released: February, 1994

My age at release: 28

How familiar was I with it before this week: Very

Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at position #375, dropping 182 spots

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Longview

I once bought a birthday card for a friend that read: "Don't you wish you were as old as the first time you thought you were old?" It is a sentiment that lodged in my head and has stuck with me for many years.

The first time I felt old, I was turning 25 in 1990 – certainly the result of life choices. Foolishly, I had left my university studies to take a job as a restaurant manager. I presumed a career in the service industry would lead to financial and emotional satisfaction. That was dead wrong. Instead, I found myself living in a boring townhouse in Mississauga, Ontario, commuting through heavy highway traffic to Toronto six days a week so I could work long, frustrating hours earning less money than I'd made as a bartender and server. The only plus was that I worked with fantastic people who regularly made me laugh. Our softball team even made it to the finals of the North Toronto restaurant league and I fondly remember those warm, summer nights on the schoolyard diamonds of Thornhill, Willowdale and North York.

Tucker's Tornados - I'm #17 on the right.

Fast forward three years and I'd left the management world to return to university. By then, I had completed my baccalaureate degree but was still working in restaurants, slinging cocktails in my hometown of London, Ontario. However, I was making buckets of money and continuing to  play  restaurant league softball with a different group of fantastic people. I was in the best shape of my life. It was a great situation -- but I knew it was unsustainable. I knew I needed to figure out a permanent career and, with the big 3-0 looming, that had to be sooner than later.

Sidelines of a London, Ontario Restaurant League game with the
Kelsey's South crew. (I'm behind the camera on this shot).

Then, in 1994, Green Day came along with their third studio record, Dookie, and triggered my age anxiety. The album marked the start of a pop-punk revival and I was around for the original wave of this melodic, up-tempo sub-genre of music. To me, the reprise felt like it should have been the music of the next generation -- and I was working alongside them at the restaurant. With each passing year, more of my contemporary co-workers moved on with their chosen paths, while the cooks, servers and support staff got younger. I started to feel ancient.

Bussing a table at Kelsey's restaurant in September, 1994.
The song Basket Case from Dookie was charting in the Top 10.

However, feeling old didn't stop me from purchasing the Dookie album on CD. I made a cassette copy and it accompanied me to the gym throughout the summer of 1994. It, along with the Rage Against The Machine debut record and Soundgarden's BadMotorFinger, got me through many cardio workouts. However, the lyrics on Dookie weren't doing my mindset any favours. The songs address themes that include anxiety, apathy, panic attacks and failed relationships. At the time, my future wife and I were working our way through a rough patch that threatened to end our relationship. The lyrics to the Dookie's tenth track, When I Come Around, seemed custom made to reinforce my insecurities and amplify my melancholy.

Album cover for the single When I Come Around. 

Time passed and life sorted itself out. By 1995 I was in Teachers College and working toward a fulfilling career that I have now loved for nearly 30 years. My wife and I navigated the choppy waters of our late-twenties and, for a little while, I stopped feeling old. When I re-listened to Dookie ahead of this post, the emotional effect it had on me  in 1994 simply wasn’t there. It's just a record of catchy, up-tempo pop-punk that, it turns out, was part of my generation after all.

Addendum:

Former guest blogger, Steve "Lumpy" Sullivan, was also one of those terrific people I worked with in 1993 at Kelsey's Restaurant. In fact, he hired me. He recently attended the Green Day show in which they played Dookie in its entirety. He shared one of his trademark "Big Head" shots with me and I think this post is made better because of it.