Kind of a contradiction is it not? Mainstream is the antithesis of the punk ethos, so making popular music sound like a punk carbon copy is.... revolting to put it nicely.
I grew up on so much of this stuff. As a teenager in the mid-90s, Nirvana and Green Day led me to the Buzzcocks and Operation Ivy, then from Op Ivy to Rancid and NOFX and Screeching Weasel and everything that came out on Epitaph and Fat Wreck and Lookout. Some of it hasn’t aged so well, but the youthful energy and equal parts fun and venom still appeals to me. I liked the first few Blink records but they lost me on the self titled album, and then basically everything at a mainstream level bored me to tears. But a lot of cool stuff happened just below the surface (Fat Wreck especially kept putting out high quality poppy punk records well into the 2010s) and in basements all over the country.
Overall... meh. The "nyahh-nyahh-nyahh" vocals to me are like nails on a chalkboard, a lot of it is way too much pop, not enough punk. If I have to go in that direction, I'd rather listen to something that has some edge:
I’m pushing 50 so it does/did sound like cartoon music, perfect to soundtrack the Scooby Doo chase scenes.
LOVE pop punk. I'm 45 and have seen New Found Glory 1/2 dozen times and is the one band I'm dying to see again post-pandemic. I also feel that Paramore's S/T is a fantastic record. Green Day, Less Than Jake, Blink, NFG, Motion City Soundtrack are some of my favorites. Very infectios, energetic & fun music to dance to.
Less Than Jake has some ridiculously solid records. Losing Streak and Hello Rockview never get old for me
Huge fan of melodic punk and pop-punk since the mid-80's, when I fell madly in love with the Descendents. A few of my favorites: Descendents/ALL Green Day Samiam Big Drill Car Crimpshrine Mr. T Experience Screeching Weasel Chemical People G-Whiz NoFX
I happened to be watching music videos on TV back when this was current, a rare thing at that time, and saw this video and that’s what got me into the band.
In a remake of High Fidelity, You should be cast as an updated version of Jack Black's character in the original!?!?!
The funny thing about punk fans (and this applies to metal fans as well) is that they dont enjoy music per se, but rather they like to see how much the artist fits their perception of what the genre should be, and then they judge based on that.
You could say this about any genre purist. Folks complain all the time about what’s REAL country or hip hop or blues or rock n roll. Some people like genres to be very rigid and defined. Others appreciate it when bands stretch beyond the usual genre boundaries.
I see that same dynamic in virtually all the most rabid fan bases I encounter, from Phish to the Allmans to the Grateful Dead, as well as the two you mention. Music is indeed just a means to and end for theses zealots, but I cannot quite put my finger on what that end is: perhaps it varies with the artist in question?
I could do without pop punk. Though they improved with time, I could never get over my first impression that Green Day were poseurs. Blink 182 just never did it for me either. One notable exception is this band that came to a tragic end. However, you could argue they were power pop as much as pop punk. Or they were both? Either way, the Exploding Hearts were awesome.
I think a lot of it is too punked to pop, and some is too popped to punk... but either one is better than too pooped to peep or too peeped to poop. Anyway... Make mine Shonen Knife!
To secure the part in that hypothetical film, you need to submit a list of at least ten like this!?!?!
I like the first four Green Day albums, about three NOFX records, and not much else from the ‘90s. I generally prefer Buzzcocks or that sort of thing. I was a teenager in the ‘80s, so I was a little old for Blink and all them. That Sloppy Seconds record mentioned upthread is pretty great. But that’s an ‘80s record IIRC. But I was one of the kids in high school that Operation Ivy spoke to. So, I was at ska shows when I wasn’t at hardcore or metal shows in the ‘90s (or Phish shows in the second-half of the ‘90s). So, I guess the closest I get is a couple of Less Than Jake records and the first Suicide Machines record. And the first couple Rancid records? As mentioned above, Less Than Jake’s Hello Rockview is fantastic.
Absolutely horrible; I still have trouble thinking about it. Terry, the sole survivor, still performs with Terry and Louie. Not quite the same music, but they're great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKbRdWBzKDw