Smash!

Green Day, The Offspring, Bad Religion, NOFX, and the '90s Punk Explosion

By: Ian Winwood

Narrated by: Kevin T. Collins

A group biography of '90s punk rock told through the prism of Green Day, The Offspring, NOFX, Rancid, Bad Religion, Social Distortion, and more

Two decades after the Sex Pistols and the Ramones birthed punk music into the world, their artistic heirs burst onto the scene and changed the genre forever. While the punk originators remained underground favorites and were slow burns commercially, their heirs shattered commercial expectations for the genre. In 1994, Green Day and The Offspring each released their third albums, and the results were astounding. Green Day's Dookie went on to sell more than 15 million copies and The Offspring's Smash remains the all-time bestselling album released on an independent label. The times had changed, and so had the music.

While many books, articles, and documentaries focus on the rise of punk in the '70s, few spend any substantial time on its resurgence in the '90s. Smash! is the first to do so, detailing the circumstances surrounding the shift in '90s music culture away from grunge and legitimizing what many first-generation punks regard as post-punk, new wave, and generally anything but true punk music.

With astounding access to all the key players of the time, including members of Green Day, The Offspring, NOFX, Rancid, Bad Religion, Social Distortion, and many others, renowned music writer Ian Winwood at last gives this significant, substantive, and compelling story its due. Punk rock bands were never truly successful or indeed truly famous, and that was that -- until it wasn't. Smash! is the story of how the underdogs finally won and forever altered the landscape of mainstream music.

nostalgic

i like it. im a fan of all of these bands, so for me, it was very nostalgic and cool to know about somethings from behind the scenes.

Great content, poorly executed

I love every band in this book, but the audio book is poorly executed. The author is English, but the speaker is not. Certain titles and names are also mispronounced. I would recommend this book if you like the bands on the cover, but avoid the audio version.

condescending

The text provided some great memories, but something in the narrator's tone felt condescending. It may have been the text, but I just couldnt ignore the narrator.

Cool story - Bad narration

I found this book very interesting. Having lived during this time and listened to these bands. It’s was great taking a peak behind the curtains. 2 things I didn’t like were:
1 - the narration. The narrator sounds very robotic. I could be wrong but he sounds like he has no idea what and who he’s talking about. At point mispronouncing names. No good!
2 - I feel the book takes a focus on Green Day more than anything. Specially towards the end. Almost feels like the author ran out of things to talk about when it came to the other bands.
I still enjoyed the book. How some of these records came to be and some of the performances that changed how the world looked at Punk Rock

Dece

A pretty good history lesson that focuses a bit too heavily on Green Day. I'd much rather hear about the other stuff that was going on in the 90's. Not a fan of the reader. He makes the author sound like a pompous asshole along with the subjects. It was nails on a chalkboard to hear him repeatedly mispronounce "punk in droooblic". Overall, pretty interesting, though. The best parts were about Gilman St. Go read the Bad Religion book for the Other stuff.