Everybody likes pop punk... right?
I watched a serious amount of Much Music in the 90s and this sort of thing was all over the place.
It made it hard to be a fan of the stuff.
I struggled with hip-hop, but with pop punk the challenge wasn't about wrapping my head around music and a culture that was unfamiliar, it was about not going insane hearing stuff like Dookie on repeat almost everywhere, all the time—a buddy's sister got a hold of the album and it was all she'd listen to for years, on repeat, all the time.
I had most of the popular albums in my collection at the time, but because of above sort of thing I never really listened to much of it at the time. Nowadays it's fun to go back to (other people's) favourites, as well as stuff that I missed out on for one reason or another.
Let's get to the videos:
3. Longview - Green Day
My favourite part of this video how Mike and Tré are set up and playing in a very, very tiny room.
This is a good song for jiujitsu.
Add the track to your playlists on Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube Music or YouTube or listen on the Pop Punk Sampler no.1
2. Too Bad About Your Girl - The Donnas
Next up are the Donnas, who I never heard until well after the fact and I have a retroactive crush on all of them.
Too Bad About Your Girl is a top shelf song about homewrecking. The song in the video is slightly longer than it appears on the album, and the second verse is whispered, which is both cool and really creepy given the content of the song.
This video looks like they shot it in a vacant business park. Having people skateboarding around is an easy (and probably inexpensive) way to make a video more interesting.
This is a great song for jiujitsu. Listen to it on the Pop Punk Sampler no.1 or grab it for your own playlists on Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube Music or YouTube
1. Linda Linda - THE BLUE HEARTS
The Japanese like to capitalize the names of their bands; it's not the Blue Hearts, it's THE BLUE HEARTS.
No idea why.
Anyways, I was exposed to this song with Osu! Tatake! Ouendan! on Nintendo DS. It's a music rhythm game about an ōendan that appears in inappropriate spots when the characters in the game are struggling with some day-to-day task at work or school.
It's pretty great.
This is also the first time I heard osu used.
Osu = oss in BJJ.
It was explained to me, while standing on a subway platform somewhere in Tokyo, by an American guy, perfectly fluent in the language after growing up in Okinawa that osu is a greeting between men that you see uttered when standing next to each other waiting for the train to arrive in the morning.
Fast forward to moving back to Canada and I'm in my gym in 2008 and people, including women are walking around saying good morning to everyone in Japanese.
Anyways...
The same guy who explained all of the above to me, explained that THE BLUE HEARTS were his version of Green Day growing up, a band that's music was ever-present background music, and that he struggled to enjoy the same way later in life because of it.
Same guy put me onto the Zazen Boys. If you dig that song, this live version is pretty badass.
Back to THE BLUE HEARTS...
There's bad news...
This song isn't available on Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube Music or YouTube (as a song).
Sorry.
I have it because I had ripped the album to my hard drive back in the day. What a tease. It's a great song for jiujitsu if you can get it.
The other two tracks are available on the Pop Punk Sampler no.1