Green Day's "Shenanigans" Album Review

Green Day is one of the most successful rock and roll bands of all time, and they have long been among my favorite artists. Their latest three releases, Uno, Dos, and Tres were a massive disappointment to most fans, and most especially to me. I was never much of a fun of 21st Century Breakdown, either. But with everything before that, Green Day had a standard of quality that few other bands had. In fact, they were so good, that even a compilation album of their B-sides, rarities, and a couple of covers ended up being almost as good as most of their other albums.

Blender and Rolling Stone were not kind to Shenanigans when it was released in July of 2002, although Allmusic gave it four out of five stars. Fan reaction over the years has been generally positive, however. Especially considering that it wasn't really an official album release, Shenanigans actually has two of my favorite Green Day tracks of all-time, "Desensitized" (the B-side from the "Good Riddance" single) and "Suffocate," a song that didn't quite make the final version of their studio record, Nimrod.

There are three covers on the album: "I Want to Be On TV" from Fang, "Outsider" from the Ramones, "Tired of Waiting for You" originally performed by the Kinks. The "Outsider" cover is absolutely excellent and I daresay I actually prefer it to the original. The other covers are solid enough, as well, although I'm not a huge fan of those songs in question. 

The rest of the songs are a combination of songs that didn't quite make Nimrod or Warning or B-Sides from their various singles up until that point. "Ha, Ha, You're Dead," which was yet another song that didn't quite make Nimrod, was actually later released as a single due to positive reception from fans.

Green Day did actually team up with Blink 182 on the Pop Disaster Tour to help promote the album, yet they didn't play any tracks from it. It's too bad, as the album is pretty solid for a compilation album. It did peak at #27 on the Billboard 200, which isn't bad for a collection of B-Sides and covers. I do recommend that if you're a fan of Green Day or bands like them, you should definitely check out this album. It's very underrated.

Photo credit: "Green Day - Shenanigans cover" by http://www.amazon.com/Shenanigans-Green-Day/dp/B000068OT2/ref=ntt_mus_ep_dpi_12. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia.