SONG OF THE DAY

“Brain Stew/ Jaded” by Green Day (Insomniac, Reprise Records, 1995). Lyrics by Billie Joe Armstrong, music by Green Day.

INTERESTING FACTS (a la wikipedia)

– “Brain Stew/Jaded” are two songs by the American punk rock band Green Day.

– They were released as the third single from their fourth album, Insomniac.

– The two songs were released as one single, as the songs are transitional, “Brain Stew” ending and moving right into “Jaded” without the music stopping. They are tracks 10 and 11 on both Insomniac (the band’s second major-label album, and fourth overall) and the 2001 greatest-hits album, International Superhits!.

– The composition of “Brain Stew” is relatively simple. The song contains only five power chords, five bass notes, and a relatively simple drum pattern.

– Many of Green Day’s fans consider it to be one of their first songs to appear in the repertoire of many garage bands.

– Billie Joe Armstrong has stated that he used as many as 10 guitar overdubs to achieve the scratchy dissonant sounds in the latter part of the song.

– The song’s chords have been said to have been modeled after the song “25 or 6 to 4” by Chicago.

– “Brain Stew”/”Jaded” was one of Green Day’s most popular singles, and was one of the biggest nineties rock hits.

– It is still played regularly on modern rock radio stations.

– A live version is featured on Bowling Bowling Bowling Parking Parking (recorded March 26, 1996 at Sporthalle, Prague, Czech Republic)

– Another live version is featured on Bullet in a Bible.

– A remix was made for the soundtrack of the Godzilla movie released in 1998.

– The band Weezer did a cover of the song for their EP called Happy Record Store Day.

– The “Brain Stew” part of the song has been played at almost every single one of Green Day’s concerts since its release.

– When they performed it at Goat Island, Armstrong famously mixed up the verses by accident.

– The “Brain Stew/Jaded” single was accompanied by a visually striking video which received heavy airplay on MTV which was split into two different halves that contrasted visual.

– The music video for “Brain Stew” is all in sepia for the “Brain Stew” part and shows the band lying on a couch being pulled through a landfill by a bulldozer. Several strange things appear, such as Hawaiian Hula dancers and an old lady with a chalkboard (both in the construction site). The video is meant to depict the effects that insomnia has on the brain, most likely with regard to the use of methamphetamine (for example, the hallucinations experienced, which correlate with Billie Joe admitting to being high during the filming to give the correct feel to the video).

– When the song transitions into “Jaded”, the color comes back and shows the band playing the song in a fast-cut, wobbly-camera style.

– Both videos were directed by Kevin Kerslake.

– Insomniac is the fourth studio album by the American punk rock band Green Day. It was released on October 10, 1995 through Reprise Records.

– Though it reached #2 in the United States and went double-platinum (According to the RIAA) by 1996, Insomniac did not have the sales endurance of its predecessor, Dookie, largely due to its slightly darker lyrical tone and heavier, more abrasive sound.

– The album is the band’s third-best selling album behind Dookie and American Idiot with sales at over 8 million worldwide and 2,076,000 copies in the US alone.

– Insomniac was reissued on vinyl on May 12, 2009.

– Before the name Insomniac, the band considered the naming the album Tight Wad Hill (after the track 13 on the album). After visiting collage artist Winston Smith for the album cover, Billie Joe Armstrong asked him how he managed to make such intricate pieces in such short times. Smith answered, “It’s easy for me. I am an insomniac.” Armstrong himself has said that the album title comes from his own insomnia, after having been woken up frequently during the night due to his baby’s screams.

– The collage on the album cover was created by Winston Smith and is called “God Told Me to Skin You Alive”, a reference to the Dead Kennedys song “I Kill Children”.

– Interestingly enough, the cover art contains an image (the dentist) that was originally used in a collage featured in the inside cover art of Dead Kennedys’ album Plastic Surgery Disasters.

– Smith knew drummer Tré Cool from Green Day’s time at Lookout! Records and told Tré that if he ever needed album artwork that he should call him.

– The cover art features several hidden images: a naked woman, 3 fairies, and several other ghostly faces in the flames. There are also three skulls on the entire album cover and back; one for each member of Green Day. One of the skulls requires you to view the piece at an angle. The hidden skull is taken from Hans Holbein’s 1533 painting “The Ambassadors”. Green Day’s version, however, is slightly different from the original, with the woman holding Billie Joe’s sky blue Fernandes imitation Stratocaster rather than an acoustic guitar.

– Insomniac earned four out of five stars from Rolling Stone, which said “In punk, the good stuff actually unfolds and gains meaning as you listen without sacrificing any of its electric, haywire immediacy. And Green Day are as good as this stuff gets”.

– Entertainment Weekly gave the album a B with particular praise for Billie Joe Armstrong, stating that: “Fans needn’t worry about Armstrong, a new father, rhapsodizing over the joys of changing diapers or whining about being a wealthy rock star. Once more, the songs relate the travails of a pathetic, self-loathing goofball whose sense of self-worth is continually reduced to rubble by sundry jerks, authority figures, and cultural elitists.”

– However, Green Day was slightly criticized for not progressing as much as their predecessors. Entertainment Weekly stated that: “Insomniac does make you wonder about Green Day’s growth, though. Between albums one and four, The Clash, to take an old-school example, branched out from guitar crunch to reggae, dub, and Spectorized pop. By comparison, Green Day sound exactly the same as on their first album, albeit with crisper production and, ominously, a palpable degeneration in their sense of humor. The few hints of growth are fairly microscopic: a tougher metallic edge to a few of the songs … and lyrics that are bleaker than Dookie’s.”

– Allmusic similarly noted that “they kept their blueprint and made it a shade darker. Throughout Insomniac, there are vague references to the band’s startling multi-platinum breakthrough, but the album is hardly a stark confessional on the level of Nirvana’s In Utero. … While nothing on the album is as immediate as “Basket Case” or “Longview,” the band has gained a powerful sonic punch, which goes straight for the gut but sacrifices the raw edge they so desperately want to keep and makes the record slightly tame. Billie Joe hasn’t lost much of his talent for simple, tuneful hooks, but after a series of songs that all sound pretty much the same, it becomes clear that he needs to push himself a little bit more if Green Day ever want to be something more than a good punk-pop band. As it is, they remain a good punk-pop band, and Insomniac is a good punk-pop record, but nothing more.”

– Green Day is an American punk rock band formed in 1987. The band consists of lead vocalist and guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong, bassist and backing vocalist Mike Dirnt, and drummer Tré Cool. Cool replaced former drummer John Kiffmeyer in 1991, prior to the recording of the band’s second album, Kerplunk, and has been a member of the band ever since.

– Green Day was originally part of the punk scene at 924 Gilman Street in Berkeley, California.

– The band’s early releases for independent record label Lookout! Records earned it a grassroots fanbase.

– Green Day was widely credited, alongside fellow California punk bands The Offspring and Rancid, with popularizing and reviving mainstream interest in punk rock in the United States.

– Green Day has sold over 65 million records worldwide and 24.639 million in the US alone. They have won four Grammy Awards: Best Alternative Album for Dookie, Best Rock Album for American Idiot, Record of the Year for “Boulevard of Broken Dreams”, and Best Rock Album for the second time for 21st Century Breakdown.

– In 2010, a stage adaptation of American Idiot debuted on Broadway. The musical has been nominated for several Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Scenic Design, and has received generally positive reviews.

– Green Day’s sound is often compared to first wave punk bands such as the Ramones, The Clash, Sex Pistols, Stiff Little Fingers, The Jam, and the Buzzcocks. Billie Joe Armstrong has mentioned that some of his biggest influences are seminal alternative rock bands Hüsker Dü and The Replacements, and that their influence is particularly noted in the band’s chord changes in songs. Among other influences, Green Day have also cited The Who and power pop pioneers Cheap Trick.

– The band has generated controversy over whether the band’s musical style and major-label status constitutes as “true punk”. In reaction to both the style of music and the background of the band, John Lydon, former front man of the 1970s punk band the Sex Pistols commented: “So there we are fending off all that and it pisses me off that years later a wank outfit like Green Day hop in and nick all that and attach it to themselves. They didn’t earn their wings to do that and if they were true punk they wouldn’t look anything like they do.”

– Armstrong himself has discussed their status of being a punk band on a major label, saying “Sometimes I think we’ve become totally redundant because we’re this big band now, we’ve made a lot of money – we’re not punk rock any more. But then I think about it and just say, ‘You can take us out of out a punk rock environment, but you can’t take the punk rock out of us.'”

– Green Day released a cover of the John Lennon song “Working Class Hero”, that was featured on the album Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur. The band performed the song on the season finale of American Idol. The song was nominated for a Grammy in 2008, but lost to The White Stripes’ “Icky Thump”.

VIDEO OF THE DAY

Here’s the link to youtube! (Embedding was disabled)