Greg Graffin

Graffin during a Bad Religion concert (2018)

Gregory "Greg" Walter Graffin (born November 6, 1964 in Madison , Wisconsin ) is an American singer , songwriter and a doctorate in evolutionary biology.

Life

Greg Graffin was born in Madison and originally raised in Racine, Wisconsin . After his parents divorced, he and his mother moved to Milwaukee and then to Los Angeles in 1976 . There he founded the band Bad Religion in 1980 together with his high school classmates Brett Gurewitz , Jay Bentley and Jay Ziskrout , in which he is a singer and songwriter and which is still an institution in punk rock and has shaped the style of melodycore .

In 1997 he recorded his first solo album American Lesion , which was released by Atlantic Records and recorded all of the instruments on the Graffin except for the drums. Musically, as with his band, he puts a lot of emphasis on melodies, but it's far quieter than the music of Bad Religion. With Cease , the CD also contains a song that the band Bad Religion had released on their album The Gray Race in 1996 and which Graffin recorded as a ballad with piano accompaniment for this album.

He also studied at the University of California, Los Angeles , and later at Cornell University , where he received his doctorate in zoology in September 2003 from the Department of Evolutionary Biology . The dissertation is entitled Monism, Atheism and the Naturalist Worldview: Perspectives from Evolutionary Biology . He interviewed around 150 leading evolutionary biologists on topics such as free will , belief in a personal God , world views . One of the results of the work was that less than ten percent of the evolutionary biologists surveyed stated that they believed in a god . According to Graffin, this was not surprising, but he was amazed that the majority of evolutionary biologists stated that they still consider religion to be in principle compatible with the theory of evolution .

Graffin's second solo album, Cold as the Clay , was released on July 10, 2006 by ANTI- (a sister label of Epitaph Records ). Brett Gurewitz, one of Graffin's bad colleagues at Bad Religion, was the producer, and three members of the former Canadian indie rock band The Weakerthans were involved in the album as a backing band . Graffin says of Cold as the Clay it is "an honor to the legacy of American music."

In May 2006, the book also appeared Is Belief in God Good, Bad Irrelevant ?: A or Professor And a Punk Rocker Discuss Science, Religion, Naturalism and Christianity , mainly e-mail correspondence with the out Graffins Christian history professor Preston Jones is and was published by this. It documents their discussion on topics such as religion , God and evolution . Graffin also commented on naturalism several times . According to him, one should not stop at atheism , but should go further, to naturalism.

In 2008 Graffin was awarded the Rushdie Award for Cultural Humanism by the Harvard Secular Society , a student organization at Harvard University .

In 2012 Graffin made a guest appearance at the anniversary concert of the band Die Toten Hosen at Rock am Ring . Die Toten Hosen covered the bad religion songs Raise Your Voice (in which Campino originally appeared as a guest singer) and punk rock song. Graffin and Campino also sang the Ramones classic Blitzkrieg Bop in a duet and for the song Freunde der Toten Hosen, Graffin appeared rather spontaneously as a background singer.

In 2016 Graffin recorded his third solo album called Millport , which was released on March 10, 2017.

Political commitment

Graffin is said to have announced at several concerts during The Gray Race Tour 1996 through Europe that he would one day run for the post of President of the United States. In some interviews and conversations with fans, he is said to have confirmed that he was absolutely serious. However, Jungle World quoted him in 2007 as saying: “I never had this plan. I never wanted to be a politician. I only said once that if the majority of Americans were convinced that I was a good candidate, I would feel obliged to run for president. ”

Awards

• Sapio Prize (2015)
• Qiliania graffini (2011), a fossil in honor of Graffins (Ji et al. 2011: A new, three-dimensionally preserved enantiornithine bird (Aves: Ornithothoraces) from Gansu Province, north-western China. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 162, 201–219)

Discography

Chart positions Explanation of the data

Albums

Millport   DE 78 03/17/2017 (1 week)   CH 86 03/19/2017 (1 week)

With bad religion

see Bad Religion # discography

solo

• American Lesion (1997)
• Cold as the Clay (2006)
• Millport (2017)

Publications

• Gregory W. Graffin: Evolution, monism, atheism and the naturalist world-view ; Polypterus Press, Ithaca, NY. (2004)
• Greg Graffin; Preston Jones: Is Belief in God Good, Bad or Irrelevant? A Professor and a Punk Rocker Discuss Science, Religion, Naturalism & Christianity . (2006)
• Greg Graffin; Steve Olson: Anarchy and Evolution: Faith and Science in a World Without God . (2011)

Web links

Commons : Greg Graffin  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Greg Graffin in the catalog of the German National Library
• Greg Graffin at Epitaph.com
• Bad Religion's Greg Graffin - Wikipedia: Fact or Fiction? Loudwire interview from August 16, 2017 on YouTube

Individual evidence

1. ^ Greg Graffin, Steve Olson: Anarchy and Evolution: Faith and Science in a Godless World . 1st edition. riva Verlag  , 2011, ISBN 978-3-86883-158-0 , p. 19-20 .
2. ↑ Bad Religion's Greg Graffin - Wikipedia: Fact or Fiction? (Video with Greg Graffin on YouTube ). Retrieved August 28, 2019 (According to Graffin (from 4:03 in the video) he was (still) 15 years old when he co-founded Bad Religion in 1980 ). 
3. ↑ American Lesion on Discogs
4. ↑ Bad Religion's Greg Graffin - Wikipedia: Fact or Fiction? (Video with Greg Graffin on YouTube ). Retrieved on August 28, 2019 (Graffin explains the context of his PhD and in which department he did his doctorate from around 3:00). 
5. ↑ CornellEvolutionProject.org ( Memento April 15, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
6. ↑ Epitaph Records ( Memento of the original from March 20, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. - Greg Graffin - Cold as the Clay Album Info  
7. ^ Description of Millport on the website of the label ANTI-Records
8. ↑ Greg Graffin: "Punk and Science Question Everything". Interview in Jungle World No. 30, July 26, 2007
9. ↑ Chart sources: DE CH