As I posted last night on GDA, a trailer for the documentary film onenineninefour, about punk rock in the 90s, has been released. Billie Joe will be interviewed next week and will be in the final version of the film — be still my heart! Here’s the six minute trailer:

Well, I’m excited. It maybe be because I’m a geek who loves documentaries, it may be because I thoroughly enjoyed Punk’s Not Dead, which is another recent documentary about the rise and fall and rise again of punk, but I’m really looking forward to onenineninefour, a soon-to-be-released documentary film about the explosion of punk rock into the mainstream music scene in the 1990s, an explosion which of course has everything to do with Green Day, and also has a lot to do with the vibrant underground punk scene that allowed Green Day to get their start and which nurtured them when they were budding babes.

I’m old enough to have been around for the first wave of punk rock in the late 70s and early 80s, but I wasn’t into it then. It seemed too aggressive, too angry and decadent. I just didn’t get it. My boyfriend had some Dead Kennedys albums, which I loved, but I only listened to them when nobody was around, kind of like a guilty pleasure. I was nerdy and quiet; it just seemed out of character for me to be a Dead Kennedys fan.

Years later, Green Day came along (the first time I heard them was when they played on Conan O’Brien — I was no underground punk rocker!) and it was love, love, love!!!! I was overwhelmed by their wonderfulness. After that, I read up on the Gilman Street scene that had spawned them, and I was amazed by it too: this was punk rock that still had that aggressive edge and no-bullshit outlook, but it was kind of sweet and goofy. Bands like Crimpshrine, Fifteen, the Mr. T Experience, and many of the other bands that were around that scene when Green Day got their start were disarmingly earnest and self-effacing, and also loud and snotty at the same time. They cared about making the world more humane, having good melodies, playing good, hard punk rock, and being silly and funny. It was this somehow perfect and unlikely-seeming combination of attitudes.

The people interviewed in the trailer talk about the influence of skating and surfing on early 90s punk rock, but that’s what was happening in Southern California. Berkeley had a different sensibility, it seems to me. It had that sweetness that allowed songs like the ones on 39/Smooth — heartfelt love songs — to find a place, even if not everyone was thrilled about having them in what was more overtly a political scene. So I’ll be curious to see if that aspect of Gilman Street gets talked about in the movie.

I hope the final cut has some captions, but here’s some of the main people in the trailer identified if anyone doesn’t know who they are (I hope I got them right…):

Fat Mike of NOFX, Dexter Holland of The Offspring, Greg Graffin of Bad Religion

Larry Livermore, founder of Lookout Records, Tim Armstrong of Rancid, Lars Fredericksen of Rancid

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