The Alternative Number Ones: Green Day’s “Basket Case”

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.

Mike Dirnt hasn't played anything on his bass yet, but he's already stomping around the stage like a caveman. Then he's wandering up to his mic and banging it into his forehead. He's got on a Screeching Weasel shirt and one of those choker necklaces that dudes used to wear in the '90s. He turns to the soggy, gigantic crowd and waves hello. Over to his right, his bandmate Billie Joe Armstrong -- purple hair, black button-up with safety pins all stuck through it, red tie with a question park drawn on in magic marker -- asks a rhetorical question: "What is all this free fuckin' hippie love shit?"

This is a good question. It's August 1994, and we're at Woodstock '94, which is promoted as "two more days of peace, love, and music." It's the 25th anniversary of the first Woodstock festival -- or it's somewhere around there, anyway -- and the baby boom generation is here to celebrate itself. The bill is crammed with veterans of the first Woodstock: Country Joe McDonald; Santana; Joe Cocker; Crosby, Stills & Nash. Green Day have no business on this bill, and they clearly find the entire ordeal to be a vast cultural blank. But they can't act like they're too far above it because they're still here.