Green Day's "American Idiot" arrived on music store shelves everywhere last week, causing some of us to get a little misty-eyed. No, it's not because anyone was listening to "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" on repeat. Some, though, may have been reminiscing about the past - the good old days of punk rock, that is. Ah, remember the salad days of the Berkeley punk explosion of the mid-'90s, when Green Day, Rancid and the Offspring finally succeeded at neutering punk for the national market?
A trio of "dookie"-making, insomniac nimrods may have lead the pop-punk revolution, but many great bands from the same wave and of equal merit never achieved Green Day-level recognition. One such band, despite the rampant popularity of pop punk, remains woefully obscure. Luckily for their legacy, the members quit before heading into their "rock opera" phase. We're speaking about our hometown heroes, the best (punk) band in (Chicago) history, Screeching Weasel.
Unfortunately, most people were exposed to the band when it was in its extremely explicit "selling out" phase. In 1996, Screeching Weasel regrouped after one of its several break-ups to release "Bark Like A Dog." The band openly admitted that its motive was almost solely to make money and tour with its friends and former label mate Green Day. The ploy failed, but the album was still excellent. Presumably, there was only room enough in the national consciousness for one pop-punk band at that time, a position that would later be occupied by a Screeching Weasel rip-off band known as Blink 182.
Of course, Screeching Weasel originated as a sort of Ramones rip-off band, when lead singer Ben Weasel saw the punk rock titans play in 1986 and decided to start his own band. Together with guitarist and pal John "Jughead" Pierson (who you may have seen as an ensemble member at the NeoFuturists), Weasel took the Ramones' Beach-Boys-at-warp-speed formula and added his own style of self-deprecating, emotionally intense lyrical style ... with a dash of girlfriend-hating and methadone jokes for good measure.
Even though the band came of age in the latter days of a Chicago scene ruled by the venerable Naked Raygun and Steve Albini's wicked proto-industrial outfit Big Black, Screeching Weasel fit in more comfortably with the younger Gilman Street scene of Berkeley, Calif., where Green Day, the Mr. T Experience and Operation Ivy were turning mohawked heads. The band signed with the Berkeley label Lookout! Records, but ironically, the album that continues to be its biggest seller comes from its early suburban incarnation, the seminal (and always fun to say) "Boogadaboogadaboogada."
From 1986 to 2001, Screeching Weasel put out 13 full-lenghth albums. Most jaded ex-pop-punk fans, now grown up and safe in their horn-rimmed glasses and Modest Mouse T-shirts, will say that this expansive catalogue all sounds the same. And after they say this, they will continue to be tremendously aloof. Besides, the albums do all sound the same - they all sound awesome, fool.
Still, why offer up this mini-encomium to Screeching Weasel now? The reason is easy (though emo). There is always an element of ahistorical forgetfulness at work in popular culture, and especially in pop music, and most offensively in punk rock. Things have been done before, and better: Screeching Weasel exemplifies this principle. Those of us who grew up nodding our heads to Screeching Weasel, Green Day or other bands of that era invariably find it pretty difficult to stomach the tripe served up by Good Charlotte, Sum 41 and Yellowcard. If you think current pop-punk is actually cool (or you think it's always been awful), get yourself help: Get online or go to Reckless Records and look into the bands that invented and perfected the pop-punk music you love.
And for those pathetic mid-'90s punk enthusiasts among us, let's keep fighting the good fight. To quote the middle-aged punker who greeted this writer upon arriving at one of Screeching Weasel's last shows at the House of Blues, we should ask, "Who let the junior high kids in?"
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