PINHEAD GUNPOWDER: Goodbye Ellston Avenue Vinyl LP (Blue/Black split)

Before Fat Wreck Chords became shorthand for a genre and Green Day filled stadiums, there was a scrappier, more interesting version of this story, and Pinhead Gunpowder was part of it. Goodbye Ellston Avenue is the 1992 debut from Billie Joe Armstrong's other band, the one he's always maintained was never a side project, and it sounds exactly like what it is: a group of people who cared more about the song than the deal.

Leaner and more direct than anything on Lookout! at the time, this record sits at the intersection of Midwest punk and California pop-punk before that combination had a marketing department. Armstrong's melodic instincts are all over it, but Aaron Cometbus keeps things honest. It's a document of a specific moment in American punk when the underground still felt like a secret worth keeping.

Vinyl LP. Blue/black split pressing. Originally released 1992. Punk rock, pop-punk. USA.

Fans of: Green Day (Kerplunk era), The Lookouts, Crimpshrine, Operation Ivy.