Why Billie Joe Armstrong Hates the Phrase “Pop-Punk”

Green Day

Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day talked to Kerrang about why he was on a mission to “destroy the phrase pop-punk” – NME has the quote:

“I come from a scene where every band was different from the others; it was all so diverse,” Armstrong continued. “No two bands sounded the same. No-one was jumping on one particular sound. We were all different. Every good band was into what other good band were doing, and it didn’t matter that these bands were very different from one another. In fact, it was important that we were different from one another.”

“And now we have pop-punk. And I hate that phrase. It lacks diversity.”

But “defend diverse music” doesn’t sell as many TV shirts.

Magic: The Gathering is the True Soul of Rock & Roll

Magic the Gathering

Bear vs Shark were really into Magic: The Gathering:

For almost a decade, I was in Bear vs. Shark, a cold fusion of Loggins and Messina and Jem and the Holograms. We were like if Pantera was really into Michael Haneke — or a one-man band that was actually six druids from the future. We toured a lot and then we broke up — haunted Michigan and parts of New York, played steel drums in the desert. Our Constrobot deconstructed and we became lawyers, teachers, bounty hunters. Some made death masks for pets, others false teeth. One of us has a pushup academy.