If you are a 90’s kid like me then you’ve likely heard of Green Day, and you likely own or have owned one of the best handheld game consoles of all time, the McDonald’s Nugget Boy… sorry, I mean the Nintendo Game Boy!
To celebrate Dookie’s 30th Anniversary Green Day has announced that they are “demastering” a wide number of their songs that were featured in their album that launched in 1994, an album I remember buying myself with my hard earned pocket money.
There are a total of 15 tracks, demastered into 15 iconic pieces of retro tech featured on their website, allowing Green Day enthusiasts to listen to their favourite songs in a way that was “not meant to be”. Here is the demastered track list, and what tech they can be played on:
- Burnout – Player Piano
- Roll Having A Blast – Floppy Disk Chump
- Teddy Ruxpin Longview – Doorbell
- Welcome to Paradise – Game Boy Cartridge
- Pulling Teeth – Toothbrush (very fitting)
- Basket Case – Big Mouth Billie Bass
- She – Hitclip
- Sassafras Roots – 8-Track
- When I Come Around – Wax Cylinder
- Coming Clean – X-ray Record
- Emenius Sleepus – Answer Machine (looking forward to this)
- In The End – Minidisc
- F.O.D. – Fisher Price Record
- All By Myself – Music Box
These will be released in limited bundles and only obtained by entering through a draw, the draws are available to enter now and close on Friday 17:00 GMT , 13:00 EDT or 10:00 PDT. There are a wide range of rarities, from the Big Moth Billie Bass being a 1 of 1, to the Game Boy Cartridge having 25 limited editions available, up to the most popular being 50 available Floppy Disks to snag.
Most of these products come in very limited numbers, many featuring only 1 unit being made, and many more with just 3 up for grabs, these will be highly collectible for sure, and likely hard to get hold of, but it does seem that it’s evenly and fairly managed with the draw system, hopefully keeping away eBay resellers.
Their website states: “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.
Unfortunately though this is only available to those with an address in the United States, so Green Day fans like myself across other parts of the world will find it very difficult to get one of these, unless you are willing to pay a premium on eBay once these get shipped later in the year.
