re: Old School Kenny Chesney

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yeah Kenny really sold out.

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Sure, that one band was great when they started out. You went to all of the shows, you followed them on Twitter, you wore the fricking T-shirts, all of that good stuff. But then something awful happened, a fate you could never see befalling your beloved band -- they got famous. Like, really famous. Green Day 2009 famous, not Green Day 2001 famous.

And with that last sentence, a lot of "true" Green Day fans just lost their collective mind, because comparing 2001 to 2009 in the Green Day catalog implies that everything up to 2001 never even happened. And that's some bullshite because, as everyone knows, Green Day was only a good band on those first two albums where all the songs sound exactly the same because they're all the same song. Those were the golden years. Then everyone heard "When I Come Around" and lost their shite and one thing led to another and now Green Day is the worst thing that ever happened to anyone.

Translation: "I only care about myself."

What people leave out when they start waxing poetic about the days when bands sold tapes out of a van after shows in dingy nightclubs is the part where their favorite musicians also keep a day job and die of a tooth infection because they can't afford health insurance.

Wanting to be part of your own little group is perfectly understandable; wanting the entity that brought you together to enjoy as little success as possible in life is not.

I get that some of it has to do with the timeless "indie label vs. major label" debate, but plenty of bands have made the leap to a major label with perfectly legitimate results. Some have spent their entire careers on major labels. It's one thing if the band of your early-days yearning just went on to make some shitty albums. That totally happens -- Google "The Replacements" for proof.

But hating a band just because they make a little more money than they used to doesn't mean you're a "real fan," it means you're a selfish prick.

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