Leaderboard

There were legit reasons not to record C&V, one being because it didn't exist. It was all a hype-gathering coverup. Let me explain. Green Day was in their worst commercial slump of their career and almost on the bring of breakup. When the eventually came together to write American Idiot, they knew it would be controversial, and past failure made them fear this change and the public reaction. So they devised this plan: make up an album that claimed to be similar to their roots and fake its disappearance. Now, if American Idiot flopped, they could say, "Look, we had this other great album, it was stolen, and we had to quickly put together something else, so yeah it isn't our best." If AI succeeded (which it did), they could tell this elaborate story about how they chose to say "fuck it" and make AI out of pure devotion and desire to make great music, and didn't rerecord C&V bc it wasn't "maximum Green Day." Thus we are left with a ghost album that causes lots of controversy, discussion, and attention now and then. We are left wondering what Green Day is hiding and feel like we are missing out on a great record.

I just meant what I said works either way, wasn't criticising your quoting I don't really think it is much of a mystery, they've said they realised the material they were working on wasn't up to scratch so decided to scrap it and try something more challenging instead. Pretty clear that's what they did. The only dodgy part is the bit about tapes being stolen, but whether that happened or not they still could've carried on with C&V if they'd wanted, either way they made the decision to abandon what they were working on and start again to make a better album. They're usually like when they talk about the tapes being stolen anyway, they don't seem to very secretive about it being made up or at least an exaggeration.

What's with making up things? My god...

Agreed Warning may have been a commercial failure, but it is not, artistically and quality wise.

Well, C&V exists so I'd say they acually worked on it. So yeah, I bet it sucked. CV itself is quality-wise on the same level as the Trilogy - they didn't want to release that after Warning.

I lean towards sucked but they don't want to just say it sucked

That was exactly my point. If the material was really "stolen" all they had to do was re-record it. That would have been easier than starting from scratch. Either the material didn't exist or it sucked.

Green Day have said that C&V was kind of the same type of style as Warning and they ditched it because it wasn't "maximum Green Day", in other words they realized they weren't pushing themselves or progressing and it was mediocre. I think the song Cigarettes and Valentines, the other songs we know were from it and other songs from the time like Maria, Poprocks and Coke and Ha Ha You're Dead show this. It was post Warning b side material, probably decent enough but I don't know why anyone thinks that we're missing out on something amazing. I don't think the story that they realised the material they were working on wasn't good enough and challenged themselves to do something better is implausible, just the "stolen tapes" part that they added to jazz it up, which they've always said in a bit of a nudge nudge wink wink way anyway. There's evidence that they were working on material that was mediocre compared to AI in the form of all the songs from between Warning and AI that have come out. Plus we know they did lots of experiments while making AI (The Network plus apparently loads of other kinds of songs and a whole album of dirty Christmas songs), they didn't just go in and make the album right away, they clearly made the decision to experiment and push themselves first.

Turned on Scuzz last night and it was showing the "100 Greatest Videos Of All Time", I was surprised to see Hitchin' A Ride at number 7. Very odd choice out of all Green Day's videos. But then again they had Kid Rock's American Badass at number 5 so it wasn't a particularly well put together list. Nice to see Hitchin' A Ride on TV anyway.

There was a market stall in town today called "BJ'S SPICY NUTS"