The Alternative Number Ones: Green Day’s “Longview”

In The Alternative Number Ones, I'm reviewing every #1 single in the history of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks/Alternative Songs, starting with the moment that the chart launched in 1988. This column is a companion piece to The Number Ones, and it's for members only. Thank you to everyone who's helping to keep Stereogum afloat.

"My pals and I experienced a potent combo of shock, mirth, and disgust that provided months of entertainment. You know that feeling you get when a giraffe in leopard-print panties comes roaring down the street on a unicycle? Same deal here, only more so." That's Sam McPheeters, a writer whose work I deeply enjoy, discussing what it was like to watch Green Day explode in 1994. (It's from his book Mutations: The Many Strange Faces Of Hardcore Punk, which I recommend without reservation.) At the time, McPheeters was the leader of Born Against, a raw and noisy punk band that played the same DIY venues as the pre-explosion version of Green Day -- including 924 Gilman St., the collective-run Berkeley nonprofit venue that the band accidentally made famous. He was also a columnist for Maximumrocknroll, the all-important Bay Area zine that presided over Green Day's excommunication from the punk scene that had nurtured them. Like so many others, McPheeters was not into this Green Day shit.

To guys like McPheeters, the Dookie experience was a surreal mindfuck, a thing that should not be. Green Day were a Gilman band, and now they were on the radio? And reporters were showing up to Gilman to ask questions about them? Something had gone terribly wrong in the universe. Honestly, I should not summarize the viewpoint of a man who can lay it out just fine for himself. This is how McPheeters describes the experience of watching a bloc of Green Day videos long after the band's global takeover: