Rancid! The nineties continue to come back in full force, and the East Bay's party punkers are still the best at what they do.

Although Let The Dominoes Fall - their first effort since 2003's Indestructible - doesn't light the same fireball as the group's match-in-the-gas-can early days did, this is by far the best good times record of the year (I beg of you; get this Flo-Rida junk off the radio). It's not dense, direction changing, or career defining; just 19 roaring party starters to help you forget America is in a not-so-great depression. Or rather, a romping reminder you don't have to be a sucker just because everyone else is.

If summer music is supposed to be about good times with good friends, good family and shooting the crap about the good times, Rancid are swinging - and connecting - with the jaw on this one. "Up To No Good" and the title track are personal favs.

On the other hand, there's that other East Bay group of punk rockers from the 90's - Green Day - who put out a new record this summer.

I have more love in my heart for Green Day than any other, but 21st Century Breakdown is just too jarring and too dense for the summer of 2009.

While Rancid's record is a rejuvinating reminder that you can still have good times during the tough times, Green Day's record dives into the hole the world is in, wallows in it, and never truly gives us the rally cry it promises to explode us out of it. They swung for the stands and wiffed.

Though it's cleverly themed and has an admirable poetry about it, the Day has made the mistake of taking themselves too seriously here. That's what Radiohead is for. You can stick to a theme (Springsteen's Born In The USA, for example), but you don't need to be The Who when you're Green Day. For Townsend's sake!

They even ape Coldplay a little here. Coldplay! Listen to the opening and closing of the record. Sounds like the opening and closing of Viva La Vida to me. Not to mention a song titled "Viva La Gloria!"

Still, 21st Century Breakdown has a handful of outstanding songs. "21 Guns" and "See The Light" are instant classics. But the size of this record's stick isn't as big as it would like to think it is, and Rancid's much simpler outing outshines because of it.

But in terms of artistry, the best all-around rock album so far this summer is Jets Overhead's No Nations which borrows thematically from Green Day's 21st Century Breakdown with much less grandeur.

And it pays off beautifully. It's a day-dreamy, lazy Sunday afternoon listen, ripe with indie rock of the highest order for the pickings. "Weathervanes (In The Way)" says everything Green Day were trying to say on Breakdown in just 4 minutes and 37 seconds.

It has some shining care free moments on "Headed For Nowhere" and "Always A First Time." It's the type of the album to let your hair down to, even if you don't have long hair.

Definitely check this record out. It's a keeper, and I'm sure it will be cropping up on plenty year-end lists.

What about you? What have your summer listenings been like this year? What's hot in your juke box?

Since it's YouTube Monday here at The (back on schedule) Scene & Heard HQ, it'd be crazy dumb silly to ignore the fact that Chocolate Rain won a YouTube award last week. It'd also be self-defamation of blog character (not to mention, lame) to post a video we've all already seen. So instead, let's sit back and relax to the many wonderfully whack offshoots inspired by Mr. Zonday's froggy baritone. (But what I really want to know is, are The YouTubies becoming more popular than The Academy Awards?)

Chocolate Rain by Tre Cool (of Green Day)


Chocolate Rain (Best Week Ever remix) - by John Mayer


Chocolate Rain - by worst American Idol auditioner ever


Chocolate Rain - by Chad Vader


Cherry Chocolate Rain - By Tay Zonday

I'm a bit of a music magazine junky. No secret there if you've by some odd chance seen my cramped living quarters.

But I've spent the past few weeks pouring--and repouring--through the pages of Rolling Stone 1039, which is the third of 3 commemorative 40th anniversary issues this year, and also one of the greatest volumes of anything I've ever read to do with anything. Frankly cause it has to do with everything I care about, which is more than just music and the entertainment world.

There are in depth interviews with everyone from Al Gore to Jon Stewart to Kanye West to Dave Eggers, right on down to the fella most responsible for the internet (I'm not talking about Gore). And they all discuss where we--as a people, as a country, as a world, as a community--are all going, in terms of politics, technology, music, and more. I have literally re-read some of these pages over and over again, to throrougly instill the hope beaming from between the words crammed into this massive issue. It's a very warm read that molds a wonderful sense of future and purpose out of a present that gives us little reason to. It makes optimism of pessimism. Silver out of dust. Rock out of air.

But the one quote I'd like to lift comes from the man who reached from out of a set of headphones when I was 16, grabbed me by the spine and shook my head into the colorful whir of rock and roll--Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day. The quote is nothing spectacular, but it's one that reached from off a magazine page and said, "Yeah dude, I know."

"We need music, and we need it good. I took it very seriously. There's a side of me where music will always send chills up my spine, make me cry, make me want to get up and do Pete Townshend windmills. In a lot of ways, I was in a minority when I was young. There are people who go, "Oh, that's a snappy tune." I listen to it and go, "That's the greatest f cking song ever. That is the song I want played at my funeral."

Amen.