Here’s a new review of the Pinhead Gunpowder 7 inch that gets to the heart of it for me:

“I love everything about this band. I love that their songs rule. I love that they’re friends playing music for the love of music. I love that they easily could have a larger label release something for them, yet only release music on their friends labels. The brilliance in Pinhead Gunpowder has always been in their ability to write some of the best East Bay punk this side of late 80’s. As much as I like Billie’s other band (what’s their name again), his lyrics in Pinhead Gunpowder always strike a bigger chord with me.”

Read the full review here.

Pinhead Gunpowder not only has great music, with catchy melodies and driving guitars, and not only does it have great lyrics that grab your heart and paint vivid word pictures, but they also have never wavered from the independent spirit that makes punk rock such a personal and satisfying genre of music. Green Day has held on to that ideal as well, but it may be harder to make out in the harsh light of their enormous mainstream success. That Billie Joe took part in this latest project by Pinhead Gunpowder, playing tiny shows and putting out a record on a small independent label, is a testament to his unflagging connection to his roots in the DIY scene.

That got me thinking about the concept of DIY, and I came across a great definition of it, in a book about zines, which seems particularly appropriate since Aaron is known as much for his zine, Cometbus, as he is for his music and for the lyrics he writes for Pinhead Gunpowder.

From the book Notes from Underground, by Stephen Duncombe:

“Defining themselves against a society predicated on consumption, zinesters privilege the ethic of DIY, do-it-yourself: make your own culture and stop consuming that which is made for you.”

The culture of punk rock, with which zines are closely associated, has always been about doing it yourself, for yourself and your peers, so that the distinction between producer and consumer is blurred or even erased. Whether you start a band, make a zine, volunteer to help independent projects and venues, or knit your own mittens, any time you take on any personal endeavor, you are making your own culture instead of passively taking in a culture created for you, usually by commercial entities that are only after your money.

Green Day’s music now comes to us through commercial culture, but it doesn’t mean we have to passively experience it. The guys in Green Day have always encouraged fans to question, to be active, to act on their values on their creativity. Music can be an inspiration rather than a product, and one can contribute to creating an independent culture in many ways. Billie Joe has said (at 4:43):

“You end up meeting these people that were involved in a different way, like politics, creating a place like Gilman Street, having their own fanzines. I came more from the musical side of it, but there were these other people who were just as important and just as influential as far as the scene was concerned. They were even more important in a lot of ways. People that just put out stuff, they would do cartoons. There was this one one guy who did a cartoon of every single day of his life for like a year.”

And speaking of zines, Billie Joe has been known to contribute to zines now and then. These are his writings over time for Robert Eggplant’s zine, Absolutely Zippo. Highlights of that zine have now been compiled into a book, available here. Thanks to beatupcar for originally posting these scans. Click on the thumbnail for the full size image.

  
Jan. 1989; May/June 1989; around 1995.

It’s not news exactly… Okay it’s not news at all, but it’s a little tidbit. It seems Billie Joe was on a plane to San Francisco from L.A., and the flight attendant got his autograph, with encouragement from the blogger who posted the story and photo. The autograph is on Billie Joe’s boarding pass, and here’s a picture of it:

[ Source ]

A big thanks to Ville for sending in all this cool stuff. They’re magazine articles about Green Day that were published in Finland during the Dookie and Insomniac eras. You won’t be able to read any of them unless you can read Finnish, but I think they’re pretty great, even though I can’t read them myself.

I love all the bits of history about Green Day, and I’m especially fond of the Dookie period, which was such a heady time for the guys and their music. American Idiot was so huge that it may have dwarfed, in the eyes of current fans, how huge Dookie was. That Green Day were splashed on magazines the world over, including in Finland, is a testament to how much and how many people they affected with their music. And I never get tired of the cheeky, nose-picking, silly-faced poses in the old pics… (And who has cuter knees?) Click on the thumbnails for the full size image.

April 1995:
  
August 1995:
   
November 1995 and December 1995:
  

Green Day Chile put together a nice little historical document to commemorate Green Day’s visit to Chile to perform in concert, which took place exactly nine years ago today. The video posted on the site is a slideshow of photographs of Green Day posing with Chilean fans, photos of the band performing, plus posters and a concert ticket from the event, with Good Riddance played live in Chile as the background music.

More » » »

Bigfunction posted a set of really cool pictures on flickr: a nice collection of early Green Day and Sweet Children vinyls, plus — be still my heart! — a letter from Billie Joe dated April 27, 1990!

Below is a smaller version of the letter; click for the original size. Yes Billie, people are actually listening to your songs!

For those looking for Idiot Club concert ticket presales, head over to idiotclub.com. Membership is $20. Presales for US and Canada start May 6, 2009.
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I came across some old stuff I’ve had lying around, and mixed in with some old papers was an Idiot Club newsletter from 1994. I didn’t save it on purpose. In fact what makes it worth sharing is that it’s so lame it’s kind of funny. Ah, but sweet nevertheless, because well, it’s Green Day…

Idiot Club members these days are always complaining about not getting the q&a’s and exclusives they were promised. I might have been known to complain about it myself, though frankly I don’t really care. Green Day have given me so much, have made me so happy in so many ways, that it hardly matters to me if they give out little bonuses to fan club members or not. In a way I think it makes it more egalitarian that what everyone gets is pretty much the same, members or not. But folks, it could be worse: you could have been Idiot Club members in 1994, and this is what you would have gotten:

Idiot Club Newsletter: Front; Pages 1 and 2; Pages 3 and 4; Pages 5 and 6; Back.

The missing part on that last one is where I cut out the coupon to send away for all this stuff:

Official membership card:

I don’t remember the sew-on patch or tattoos. The postcard/pictures of the band were black and white pics of the boys as kids. I only have the Billie Joe one anymore:

This is actual size. What makes it a “postcard” is that there is a black line printed across the back of it.

The sticker was of the goofy face that’s also on the membership card. And the “periodic mailings” were one other newsletter, ever, slightly lamer than this one.

Ah, I love them. I even love that the stuff they send you is absurdly pointless.

From Despite Everything: A Cometbus Omnibus, a collection of selections from 20 years of the zine Cometbus, by Aaron Cometbus, real name Aaron Elliot. (Follow the link for some cool interviews with Aaron.)

This is a Green Day tour diary from 1990 by Aaron Cometbus:

Click on the image to see the full size page. Thanks to Mara for the scan.