Green Day have hit upon an inspired, and fabulously pointless, way of celebrating the 30th anniversary of their wildly successful Dookie album, by releasing each track on the album on an obscure, obsolete or frustratingly inconvenient format.
Ever wanted to own a copy of a deep cut from Dookie on a wax cylinder, a floppy disc, an 8-track cartridge or one of those embarrassing Big Mouth Billie Bass plaques last seen when clearing out your dead great-grandmother's house? Of course you haven't, that would be insane. But now, thanks to the Californian punk superstars teaming up with LA art studio BRAIN, that opportunity could be yours.
Explaining the concept on the Dookie Demastered website, the band say, “When an album hits a big milestone like its 30th anniversary, it gets the usual remasters on the usual formats. But Dookie isn't a usual album.
“Instead of smoothing out its edges and tweaking its dynamic ranges, this version of Dookie has been meticulously mangled to fit on formats with uncompromisingly low fidelity, from wax cylinders to answering machines to toothbrushes. The listening experience is unparalleled, sacrificing not only sonic quality, but also convenience, and occasionally entire verses.
“The result is Dookie Demastered: the album that exploded the format of punk rock, re-exploded onto 15 obscure, obsolete, and otherwise inconvenient formats, the way it was never meant to be heard.”
The website also carries two 'warnings', as follows:
UNFAITHFUL REPRODUCTIONS
Those deeply familiar with the originals may experience existential disquietude.
LOW FIDELITY AUDIO
Extended listening has been known to provoke rage-nausea in audiophiles
With that in mind, check out the demonstration video below, at your own risk.
Each of these individually reformatted tracks are available in very limited editions on the website. Oh, and there's a further twist: in order to have a chance to buy a song, you have to submit a drawing of the format you wish to purchase.
As Spinal Tap once noted, there's such a fine line between stupid and clever, and Green Day have absolutely nailed it here.
Expect achingly pretentious articles about Dookie Demastered being a subversive and provocative commentary on capitalism, art, and punk rock's capacity to transcend generational shifts in the consumption of music coming to a broadsheet near you very, very soon.
