Post 1-History

In the mid-seventies, rock music was getting older than most of its fans, and was almost becoming-plain. Suddenly, a new type of rock music developed: punk. Punk was a faster style of rock, with mostly teenage fans, due to it's rude and amateurish nature. Punk bands normally had amateur body piercings, tattoos, mohawks, and odd and colorful hairstyles. One early punk band was the New York Dolls, who emerged from New York, and then the Ramones, The Clash, and The Sex Pistols from England. These punk bands took rock to it's faster side, ripping distorted power chords, rude-sounding lyrics and crazy vocals. The early punk bands continued playing through the 80's, with other bands joining them, but in the late 80's, a new style of rock was born: alternative rock. One of the main alternative rock bands was Nirvana, and when they released their hit album Nevermind in 1991, alternative rock started dominating popular music. The sound of alternative was like punk, except maybe a little bit slower, with longer songs, and long electric guitar solos. But in the middle of the decade, a terrible thing happened: Kurt Cobain, Nirvana's singer, died. And when he died, Nirvana stopped releasing records, which caused alternative rock to start losing it's luster. There were still a few bands that were releasing records, like the Foo Fighters, a band with a man named David Grohl as their singer/guitarist. Dave Grohl had played drums in Nirvana, and the Foo Fighters were kind of the ghost of Nirvana, continuing alternative rock music.
Green Day was a little band that was starting to get popular right around the time that Nirvana stopped playing. Green Day was a mix of punk and alternative rock, with all the elements of punk (tattoos, nose rings, dyed hair, power chords, rude-sounding vocals) and all the softer side of punk, alternative rock. Some songs, for example, Welcome To Paradise, showed the more punk side of Green Day, and other songs like Boulevard Of Broken Dreams, show a softer side. Green Day still plays, and are now one of the most popular rock bands in the world, especially after the release of their 2004 album, American Idiot.