Best Bay Area Albums Of All Time: #8

This legendary East Bay group released one album during its short lifetime, and what an album it was. In addition to practically inventing what we now think of as ska punk, Energy helped kickstart the Bay Area punk scene that would find worldwide fame in the 1990s. Though Operation Ivy broke up less than a month after Energy’s release, their DNA is still present in nearly every punk band ever to call the Bay Area their home.

Zak Mandel-Romann of the Audiophiles and Tumbleweed Wanderers says: “Perhaps it is just a result of their brevity that Operation Ivy has not lost any of their credibility as an underground punk act despite their ultimate popularity. Only around for a few years in the late 80's, they in many ways created, or at least epitomized what would come of the East Bay's punk scene in the years to follow. Operation Ivy's only album, Energy, is packed with songs that are not only highly original and influential, but densely packed with lyrics confronting broad societal, political, and personal issues. Though not as well known as some of the bands that came in the next wave of the 924 Gilman scene (namely Green Day and Operation Ivy's spawn, Rancid) Operation Ivy and their one album are legendary in ways that those other bands can never be due to their purity of message and music.”