The Beginning
Written By Courtney Smith
When it comes to The Green Day Authority, most people don't realize that the site was born from an extension of a personal website. When I was 13 years old (the year was 1995), I got my first computer and I immediately became interested in websites and how they worked. I taught myself HTML and was amazed at the fact that people all over the world could see what I wrote. The first website I had ever created was for an actor, Brad Renfro (may he RIP). It became one of the biggest sites for the actor at the time, but eventually, I got tired of it and gave it away. Then I started a personal site, about me and a place to store my photos. I added pages for my favorite bands at the time, Bush, the Smashing Pumpkins, and of course, Green Day. I had been a Green Day fan since 1994. Of course, shortly after, Green Day had taken over the entire site. It became Courtney's Green Day Pages, because, I don't know, it was the cool thing to name websites like that back in the 90's.
In the summer of 2000, Minority was released as a single, well before Warning's October release. I was in love with the song, and it had been awhile since we had a new Green Day song. At the time I was in college, but it was a summer semester, and I didn't have much to do. I changed the name of my Green Day page to The Green Day Minority. The site began to gain popularity, but that didn't come without criticism. A lot of other Green Day websites were reviewing my site and giving it bad reviews. But that didn't stop the visitors from coming, or from me desperately wanting to prove the haters wrong. Eventually, the site grew large and a lot for me to handle on my own, so I hired a co-webmaster, named Matt to help out (a different Matt than our current developer).
Almost a year had gone by of The Green Day Minority gaining popularity but not quite joining the ranks of popular sites such as GDUK and GreenDaySite.com, the 2 sites that I had looked up to the most. Then, out of no where it seemed, GreenDaySite.com decided to shut down. It broke my heart, because that site was huge at the time, and it was even mentioned by Mike in an interview they had done for MTV. It amazed me that someone could just give up on that site and leave it all behind. It was decided then that I would make the website that Green Day deserved.....and that their fans deserved. I thought about the name, particularly the "minority" part. Green Day fans aren't a minority, we needed a new name. I was watching TV one day, and a commercial came on for a local weather station. They said "we're your weather authority." Then it hit me. I want to be the fan's authority on Green Day news, information, and everything in between. We took a poll on GDM, and the fans agreed....we should be the Green Day Authority.
Now it was time to take it either further. I remember the hot July 4th day in 2001. I was sitting in our basement at our old house and my parents were having their annual 4th of July picnic. I bought the Green Day Authority domain name and began working on a redesign on the site, which I would officially launch on July 12th, 2001.
Over the next few years, co-webmasters gone and went. GDA's popularity was soaring for the time. The "time" meaning before the great American Idiot was released. We added news first, we added more sections and information about the band, and most importantly, we got the fans involved. There were sections people wanted to see that the official sites didn't give them. A forum was added and it became a place where people could connect to other fans. To this day, I still think that is the greatest thing about GDA. We have a place where fans can become friends and talk about a common interest. When I first became a fan, there was no one but me and a few of my close friends in which I had recruited to the Green Day world. There just was not a big outlet at that time to meet other people. I think in many ways, GDA had changed that for Green Day fans. By this time, we were competing with the huge Green Day sites, like GDUK and 409 Online (you know this site now as GreenDay.net). Other sites had sprung up online trying to follow in the footsteps of GDA.
When 2004 rolled around we had been waiting for 4 years for new material from Green Day, other than 2 new songs that were on International Superhits! ("Maria" and "Poprocks & Coke"). However, we knew that the wait wasn't going to be much longer. Green Day had a new album in the works, slated for September. Anticipation from the world was mounting, I could see it in the popularity that GDA was gaining. The site, however, could not hold on to a co-webmaster and helper for me. I was trying to juggle college, work, and personal life along with trying to keep GDA great. I would not let go on this site, much like my inspiration had done in the past. But it was becoming impossible for me to handle on my own and live up to expectations that I had put on myself.
Almost all of the co-webmasters I had either had left the site, were busy, or turned their back on Green Day entirely. I considered announcing on the site that we needed someone new to add to the team. One day, I came online to read my email from the site. There, in my inbox, was a letter from a 17 year old fresh out of high school kid, named Andres Martinez.
The Last Seven Years
Written By Andres Martinez
I discovered Green Day in high school when a friend asked me to download "Minority" for him. Till then I hadn't really listened to rock or punk or anything really close to it. But I heard these lyrics and they excited me. I told my friend I really dug the song, and he gave me his copy of Dookie to listen to. I was amazed. There was this band out there singing about stuff that I hadn't heard other bands sing about, saying things that I felt described parts of me like no other music or literature ever had. They wrote about things that made me feel like a normal person for being a little weird. This was around 2001-2002, and so begins my interest with this band.
I started searching around the net for information about these guys. I wanted to see what other music they had, I wanted to read interviews with them to see what kind of people they were, and that's how I landed at GDA.
In May 2004, shortly before I graduated high school, I remember about a month passing by with no updates on GDA. This made me paranoid. "What if Green Day is doing all this awesome stuff and I don't know about it!" I sent an email to Courtney asking if there was some way I could help. I didn't think I had an honest chance in hell. She was older, much cooler, and I was pretty much a random nobody. I remember when I got her reply though. I was sitting in the library at school, opened up my email and she told me I could help update the news, and she asked if I knew web design. I lied, said yes and got the job. I remember during my first week I fucked something up and the home page wouldn't load correctly. I panicked, sent an email to Courtney saying "I broke it", and she helped sort it out. I was having fun learning all this cool stuff, and getting a chance to talk about Green Day.
I became co-owner of the site that year, only because I offered to help pay the bills so we could expand the site. I wanted to add video and audio downloads but we'd have to pay for space. GDA's server bills back then cost about 6% what they do now, so it wasn't a huge investment, but something I wanted to do because I loved it. I started college, but was spending 10+ hours a day working on GDA, talking with people, learning how to code just enough to accomplish the projects I wanted to do. GDA was one of the more popular Green Day sites at this point, but what really pushed us over the top was American Idiot.
A couple weeks before that album was supposed to be released, American Idiot was leaked. Someone we knew worked at a radio station who got the album, and let us rip it. It was pretty much all over the internet already. We noticed other Green Day sites who put the mp3s up were getting legal notices from Warner Brothers. Yikes! We didn't want to get in trouble. So we decided to stream the music, people could only listen to them on our site, not download them. For some silly reason, we didn't get in trouble, and instead, we got a shit ton of traffic. With the albums release and Green Day's press tour, followed by their actual tour into 2005, GDA's popularity sky-rocketed.
We added Tyke Lewis to our team as our developer to help us create and run some new sections, as well as update the news. We'd spend way too much time on AIM talking about new ideas or the cool stuff we wanted to do. Up until this point, all the time we put into the site was simply because we loved it - interacting with Green Day fans and getting to do nerdy stuff alongside it. We didn't make money, didn't expect anything out of it, it was just fun. I got to meet Tyke and Courtney at Green Day shows that I flew out for. We watched one of Green Day's largest American shows to-date at Giants Stadiums in New Jersey, then drove all night to up-state New York to drop Tyke off at school the next morning (we pulled up at 8am), then me and Courtney drove back down to Courtney's place in Pennsylvania. Awesome, awesome times.
In 2006 we got an invitation to visit San Francisco and watch Green Day be honored by the San Francisco Recording Academy. This would be the first time we really got to see the band outside of a concert. We were sitting at a table right next to My Chemical Romance (who played a few Green Day songs as a tribute to the band at the ceremony), and we also got to meet a couple of the guys who work with the band. They recognized us, came over to our table and said hi. We were pretty much speechless at how awesome that was.
After the band released "Stop Drop & Roll!!!" I got to meet J'net Newton at one of the Foxboro shows. She was interested in helping the site, and joined the team in a similar fashion as I did - working on a couple sections and eventually becoming co-owner and business manager. Not only is she one of the most incredibly kind souls you'll ever meet, she's also a major reason GDA has continued to thrive.
During the release of 21st Century Breakdown we added some new team members to help us continue developing the site. Jimmy and Matt joined to help us keep the site updated and run some new sections, while Alex joined to help us run the forum. Tony joined the team in 2011 to help us manage the site, the team, and to continue pushing GDA with new ideas to grow. Together we've all been able to experience some really cool shit. From going backstage at a Green Day concert, getting invited to the after-party for the opening of the musical or having Billie Joe show up to one of our meet-ups in New York City. It's been an incredible experience and I'm lucky I've been able to work with and meet all these people who have contributed to GDA's success.
I've been a part of GDA for 7 of it's 10 years. It's been the single greatest opportunity I've ever had. When I joined the site it was relatively small, but we have always remained passionate about it. We didn't expect it would be the size it's gotten to, nor that we'd end up being able to meet Green Day as a result of our work. Green Day fans have come to know about GDA because we've always tried to be that place where fans can get together. We're not here because we expect anything out of it, but when we have the chance to go to a Green Day show or some kind of event, there are always people who stop us to tell us "thanks", or just that they like what we do. It's a pretty incredible experience that I don't think I would have been able to see otherwise.
On behalf of Courtney, J'net, Tony, Matt, Jimmy, Alex and the dozens of individuals who have come through and helped us in some way - thank you. Thanks to all of you who have been visiting the site for so long and to those of you who might just be finding us now. We've created friendships that will last a lifetime, and a site that we're incredibly proud of.
A huge thanks to Billie Joe, Mike & Tre for giving us your music and allowing us to be a small part of what you do. Also a huge thanks to Pat Magnarella, Bill Schnieder, Chris Dugan, Jason White, Jason Freese, Jeff Matika, Lorrin and the other incredible folks at Adeline Records, Reprise and Green Day's management. You've all been incredibly kind to us, and thanks for not suing the shit out of us.
Here's the to the next 10 years.
Andres and Courtney - San Francisco 2005
Written By Courtney Smith
When it comes to The Green Day Authority, most people don't realize that the site was born from an extension of a personal website. When I was 13 years old (the year was 1995), I got my first computer and I immediately became interested in websites and how they worked. I taught myself HTML and was amazed at the fact that people all over the world could see what I wrote. The first website I had ever created was for an actor, Brad Renfro (may he RIP). It became one of the biggest sites for the actor at the time, but eventually, I got tired of it and gave it away. Then I started a personal site, about me and a place to store my photos. I added pages for my favorite bands at the time, Bush, the Smashing Pumpkins, and of course, Green Day. I had been a Green Day fan since 1994. Of course, shortly after, Green Day had taken over the entire site. It became Courtney's Green Day Pages, because, I don't know, it was the cool thing to name websites like that back in the 90's. In the summer of 2000, Minority was released as a single, well before Warning's October release. I was in love with the song, and it had been awhile since we had a new Green Day song. At the time I was in college, but it was a summer semester, and I didn't have much to do. I changed the name of my Green Day page to The Green Day Minority. The site began to gain popularity, but that didn't come without criticism. A lot of other Green Day websites were reviewing my site and giving it bad reviews. But that didn't stop the visitors from coming, or from me desperately wanting to prove the haters wrong. Eventually, the site grew large and a lot for me to handle on my own, so I hired a co-webmaster, named Matt to help out (a different Matt than our current developer).
Almost a year had gone by of The Green Day Minority gaining popularity but not quite joining the ranks of popular sites such as GDUK and GreenDaySite.com, the 2 sites that I had looked up to the most. Then, out of no where it seemed, GreenDaySite.com decided to shut down. It broke my heart, because that site was huge at the time, and it was even mentioned by Mike in an interview they had done for MTV. It amazed me that someone could just give up on that site and leave it all behind. It was decided then that I would make the website that Green Day deserved.....and that their fans deserved. I thought about the name, particularly the "minority" part. Green Day fans aren't a minority, we needed a new name. I was watching TV one day, and a commercial came on for a local weather station. They said "we're your weather authority." Then it hit me. I want to be the fan's authority on Green Day news, information, and everything in between. We took a poll on GDM, and the fans agreed....we should be the Green Day Authority.
Now it was time to take it either further. I remember the hot July 4th day in 2001. I was sitting in our basement at our old house and my parents were having their annual 4th of July picnic. I bought the Green Day Authority domain name and began working on a redesign on the site, which I would officially launch on July 12th, 2001.
Over the next few years, co-webmasters gone and went. GDA's popularity was soaring for the time. The "time" meaning before the great American Idiot was released. We added news first, we added more sections and information about the band, and most importantly, we got the fans involved. There were sections people wanted to see that the official sites didn't give them. A forum was added and it became a place where people could connect to other fans. To this day, I still think that is the greatest thing about GDA. We have a place where fans can become friends and talk about a common interest. When I first became a fan, there was no one but me and a few of my close friends in which I had recruited to the Green Day world. There just was not a big outlet at that time to meet other people. I think in many ways, GDA had changed that for Green Day fans. By this time, we were competing with the huge Green Day sites, like GDUK and 409 Online (you know this site now as GreenDay.net). Other sites had sprung up online trying to follow in the footsteps of GDA. When 2004 rolled around we had been waiting for 4 years for new material from Green Day, other than 2 new songs that were on International Superhits! ("Maria" and "Poprocks & Coke"). However, we knew that the wait wasn't going to be much longer. Green Day had a new album in the works, slated for September. Anticipation from the world was mounting, I could see it in the popularity that GDA was gaining. The site, however, could not hold on to a co-webmaster and helper for me. I was trying to juggle college, work, and personal life along with trying to keep GDA great. I would not let go on this site, much like my inspiration had done in the past. But it was becoming impossible for me to handle on my own and live up to expectations that I had put on myself.
Almost all of the co-webmasters I had either had left the site, were busy, or turned their back on Green Day entirely. I considered announcing on the site that we needed someone new to add to the team. One day, I came online to read my email from the site. There, in my inbox, was a letter from a 17 year old fresh out of high school kid, named Andres Martinez.
The Last Seven Years
Written By Andres Martinez
I discovered Green Day in high school when a friend asked me to download "Minority" for him. Till then I hadn't really listened to rock or punk or anything really close to it. But I heard these lyrics and they excited me. I told my friend I really dug the song, and he gave me his copy of Dookie to listen to. I was amazed. There was this band out there singing about stuff that I hadn't heard other bands sing about, saying things that I felt described parts of me like no other music or literature ever had. They wrote about things that made me feel like a normal person for being a little weird. This was around 2001-2002, and so begins my interest with this band.
I started searching around the net for information about these guys. I wanted to see what other music they had, I wanted to read interviews with them to see what kind of people they were, and that's how I landed at GDA.
In May 2004, shortly before I graduated high school, I remember about a month passing by with no updates on GDA. This made me paranoid. "What if Green Day is doing all this awesome stuff and I don't know about it!" I sent an email to Courtney asking if there was some way I could help. I didn't think I had an honest chance in hell. She was older, much cooler, and I was pretty much a random nobody. I remember when I got her reply though. I was sitting in the library at school, opened up my email and she told me I could help update the news, and she asked if I knew web design. I lied, said yes and got the job. I remember during my first week I fucked something up and the home page wouldn't load correctly. I panicked, sent an email to Courtney saying "I broke it", and she helped sort it out. I was having fun learning all this cool stuff, and getting a chance to talk about Green Day.
I became co-owner of the site that year, only because I offered to help pay the bills so we could expand the site. I wanted to add video and audio downloads but we'd have to pay for space. GDA's server bills back then cost about 6% what they do now, so it wasn't a huge investment, but something I wanted to do because I loved it. I started college, but was spending 10+ hours a day working on GDA, talking with people, learning how to code just enough to accomplish the projects I wanted to do. GDA was one of the more popular Green Day sites at this point, but what really pushed us over the top was American Idiot.
A couple weeks before that album was supposed to be released, American Idiot was leaked. Someone we knew worked at a radio station who got the album, and let us rip it. It was pretty much all over the internet already. We noticed other Green Day sites who put the mp3s up were getting legal notices from Warner Brothers. Yikes! We didn't want to get in trouble. So we decided to stream the music, people could only listen to them on our site, not download them. For some silly reason, we didn't get in trouble, and instead, we got a shit ton of traffic. With the albums release and Green Day's press tour, followed by their actual tour into 2005, GDA's popularity sky-rocketed.
We added Tyke Lewis to our team as our developer to help us create and run some new sections, as well as update the news. We'd spend way too much time on AIM talking about new ideas or the cool stuff we wanted to do. Up until this point, all the time we put into the site was simply because we loved it - interacting with Green Day fans and getting to do nerdy stuff alongside it. We didn't make money, didn't expect anything out of it, it was just fun. I got to meet Tyke and Courtney at Green Day shows that I flew out for. We watched one of Green Day's largest American shows to-date at Giants Stadiums in New Jersey, then drove all night to up-state New York to drop Tyke off at school the next morning (we pulled up at 8am), then me and Courtney drove back down to Courtney's place in Pennsylvania. Awesome, awesome times.In 2006 we got an invitation to visit San Francisco and watch Green Day be honored by the San Francisco Recording Academy. This would be the first time we really got to see the band outside of a concert. We were sitting at a table right next to My Chemical Romance (who played a few Green Day songs as a tribute to the band at the ceremony), and we also got to meet a couple of the guys who work with the band. They recognized us, came over to our table and said hi. We were pretty much speechless at how awesome that was.
After the band released "Stop Drop & Roll!!!" I got to meet J'net Newton at one of the Foxboro shows. She was interested in helping the site, and joined the team in a similar fashion as I did - working on a couple sections and eventually becoming co-owner and business manager. Not only is she one of the most incredibly kind souls you'll ever meet, she's also a major reason GDA has continued to thrive.
During the release of 21st Century Breakdown we added some new team members to help us continue developing the site. Jimmy and Matt joined to help us keep the site updated and run some new sections, while Alex joined to help us run the forum. Tony joined the team in 2011 to help us manage the site, the team, and to continue pushing GDA with new ideas to grow. Together we've all been able to experience some really cool shit. From going backstage at a Green Day concert, getting invited to the after-party for the opening of the musical or having Billie Joe show up to one of our meet-ups in New York City. It's been an incredible experience and I'm lucky I've been able to work with and meet all these people who have contributed to GDA's success.
I've been a part of GDA for 7 of it's 10 years. It's been the single greatest opportunity I've ever had. When I joined the site it was relatively small, but we have always remained passionate about it. We didn't expect it would be the size it's gotten to, nor that we'd end up being able to meet Green Day as a result of our work. Green Day fans have come to know about GDA because we've always tried to be that place where fans can get together. We're not here because we expect anything out of it, but when we have the chance to go to a Green Day show or some kind of event, there are always people who stop us to tell us "thanks", or just that they like what we do. It's a pretty incredible experience that I don't think I would have been able to see otherwise.
On behalf of Courtney, J'net, Tony, Matt, Jimmy, Alex and the dozens of individuals who have come through and helped us in some way - thank you. Thanks to all of you who have been visiting the site for so long and to those of you who might just be finding us now. We've created friendships that will last a lifetime, and a site that we're incredibly proud of.
A huge thanks to Billie Joe, Mike & Tre for giving us your music and allowing us to be a small part of what you do. Also a huge thanks to Pat Magnarella, Bill Schnieder, Chris Dugan, Jason White, Jason Freese, Jeff Matika, Lorrin and the other incredible folks at Adeline Records, Reprise and Green Day's management. You've all been incredibly kind to us, and thanks for not suing the shit out of us.
Here's the to the next 10 years.
Andres and Courtney - San Francisco 2005
