Operation Ivy, sometimes called "Op Ivy," (op Iv) was an American Ska punk band, from Berkeley, California formed in May 1987. The band was stylistically important as one of the first bands to mix the elements of hardcore punk and ska into a new amalgam called ska punk and was critical to the emergence of Lookout Records and the so-called "East Bay Sound."
The band's name was derived from the Operation Ivy series of nuclear tests in 1952. Although the band released just one full-length album before breaking up in May 1989, Operation Ivy is well remembered as the direct antecedent of the popular band Rancid and for wielding a lasting stylistic influence over numerous other bands.
History
Formation
Operation Ivy was formed in May 1987 and was named after the code name of a 1952 American nuclear weapons testing program. The name had previously been the original name of the contemporary Berkeley punk band Isocracy.
The band consisted of Jesse Michaels (lead vocals), Tim "Lint" Armstrong (guitar, vocals), Matt "McCall" Freeman (bass, vocals), and Dave Mello (drums). Songs were primarily written by Josh Bell and Brock Masterson, who would later leave and form the seminal punk rock group 'The Telly Addicts' with known Kansas City artist Ethan Osman on lead vocals and guitar. Prior to the formation of Operation Ivy, Armstrong and Freeman had played together in the Berkeley ska punk band Basic Radio.
The first Ivy shot, Mike, was the first successful full-scale test of a multi-megaton thermonuclear weapon ("hydrogen bomb") using the Teller-Ulam design. Unlike later thermonuclear weapons, Mike used deuterium as its fusion fuel, maintained as a liquid by an expensive and cumbersome cryogenic system. It was detonated on Elugelab Island yielding 10.4 megatons, almost 500 times the yield of the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. Eight megatons of the yield was from fast fission of the uranium tamper, creating massive amounts of radioactive fallout. The detonation left an underwater crater 6,240ft (1.9km) wide and 164ft (50 m) deep where Elugelab Island had been. Following this successful test, the Mike design was weaponized as the EC-16, but it was quickly abandoned for solid-fueled designs after the success of the Castle Bravo shot.
Energy is the only studio album by the American ska punk band Operation Ivy. It was originally released only on vinyl and cassette in March 1989 through Lookout! Records (LK 010). It was remastered and re-released on CD by Lookout! Records in 1991 as an eponymous release with an additional 8 tracks from the band's Hectic EP and the Maximumrocknroll double 7-inch compilation Turn It Around!. Energy has been cited as one of the most important albums of the ska punk genre.
Hellcat Records re-released the original album as a 12-inch LP picture disc in 2004, and in 2007 re-released a remastered version of the self-titled CD.
Hellcat reissued the original album again with a digital download code on April18,2012(2012-04-18).
Recording and style
Operation Ivy originally intended to record Energy at 924 Gilman Street but because of problems, they set out to record at Sound and Vision in San Francisco, California in January 1989. As did Hectic, Energy had outtakes that were later put onto the album Unreleased Energy. Energy has been said to be more mature and less hardcore than Hectic.
... album by California-based band The Calamatix. The band are ... Rancid and Operation Ivy’s Tim Armstrong has a connection to the band that runs deeper than the musical partnership he formed with Raylin.
Operating from 1994 to 2002, Ivy were one of several tremendous power-pop bands that featured the services of the late, great Fountains Of Wayne co-leader Adam Schlesinger. The band’s 2000 album ...
Also, Green Day aren’t the first band to get their own Keurig Machine; the Rolling... But Green Day are the first band to play with Operation Ivy and get their own Keurig machine, as far as I know.
... in its propulsion, “Giving Up the Gun” was probably the band’s most convincing remake, alternating between bouncy verses and a breakneck double-time chorus that would have made Operation Ivy proud.
The singer attributes his progressive politics to what he calls the "reeducation" he happily received at 924 Gilman, the legendary all-ages Berkeley club where Green Day came up in the late '80s alongside bands such as Operation Ivy and Samiam.
However, Operation Ivy’s music endured since their split, with Green Day regularly covering the band’s track ‘Knowledge’ during their live shows (and often inviting members of the crowd on stage to ...
The band keeps touring, and its members keep themselves busy; just last month, Tim Armstrong reunited with his old Operation Ivy bandmate Jesse Michaels to form a new band called Bad Optix and to ...
In recent years, there have been a lot of calls for Operation Ivy — one of the few great American punk bands who have never done the reunion thing — to get back together and headline Riot Fest or whatever.
The pandemic took a major toll on the music industry, prompting some creatives to switch gears and leave the grind and hustle of playing in a band behind ... “Operation Ivy was probably the first punk band that really got me,” Rose said.
But compared to other ska bands from the ’90s, Mustard Plug’s music — such as Evildoers Beware! released in 1997 — followed a more punk-oriented slant in the vein of Rancid or Operation Ivy ... The band’s producers were Jenison’s punk rock heroes.
As the band headlined one of San Francisco’s largest music festivals, it made one thing for sure ... I need a guitar-ish,” Armstrong said during Green Day’s cover of “Knowledge,” a song by fellow Berkeley-born band Operation Ivy.
Hastings Tribune
16 Jan 2024
Hastings Tribune
16 Jan 2024