I appreciate Brighton McConnell’s reporting here at Chapelboro, so my interest perked when, as I happened to be driving, I heard a song over 97.9 The Hill dedicated to him. The tune was Green Day’s new one, “Look Ma, No Brains.” I had to laugh. I’ve been listening to that band for decades; in fact, their album, “Dookie,” dropped thirty years ago, which I suspect is older than McConnell.
The claim is often made that smell is the sense that evokes the most vivid memories, yet nothing takes me back in time like a song. While driving down 15-501 in my Prius, sipping sparkling water, I was suddenly back in the eighth-grade cafeteria with Cokes and Doritos. Grunge rock had faded in popularity with the death of the tragic genius Kurt Cobain, and Green Day filled the void with a mix of frenetic yet melodic rock. “Dookie” struck a chord between punk and pop. My friends and I hit #2 pencils on our desks in imitation of drummer Tre Cool and tried to sing like frontman Billie Joe Armstrong: “Do you have the time to listen to me whine?” Meanwhile, several hundred miles away, the woman I would one day marry bought “Dookie” as her first CD and wore it out in her Discman.
After my trip down memory lane, when I arrived home and told her about the thirty-year anniversary of the album, she laughed, “Makes me feel old!”
As far as the new single, “Look Ma, No Brains,” Green Day still has their signature sound. After thirty years, one thing has remained the same: I still only understand about half of what Armstrong is singing. Maybe youngsters, like McConnell, can enlighten me.
Just don’t call me old.
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of “Little Big Moments,” a collection of mini-essays about parenting, and “Tigers, Mice & Strawberries: Poems.” Both titles are available most anywhere books are sold online. Taylor-Troutman lives in Chapel Hill where he serves as pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church and occasionally stumbles upon the wondrous while in search of his next cup of coffee.
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