In 1994 I attended the Lollapalooza Festival in Charlestown, West Virginia.  At age 17, I was excited to see my favorite band “Smashing Pumpkins” perform at the end of the night, but would have to sit through the day long festival of bands including the opening band for the day— a band called “Green Day”. “Okay”, I thought, “This should be a good show”.  I knew that the cheesy cover band at my senior prom had sung one of Green Day’s songs about masturbation, so these guys must be cool. Three guys, not much older than me, walked out on stage.  One of them had blue hair, one of them had green hair, and one of them looked and acted like the hyper active kid that I always saw in class at school.  There was no real introduction to them and they had no commanding stage presence about them.  The one with blue hair had an old beat up blue guitar with stickers plastered haphazardly all over it and had the letters “BJ” in big bold red letters on the pickguard. Read more→