DOG DAY: When Bay Area punk band...

DOG DAY: When Bay Area punk band Green Day’s major-label debut album, “Dookie,” hit the gold sales mark of 500,000 copies, Reprise Records decided to mark the occasion with an advertisement in the music trade magazines.

The ad congratulates the band “on selling a ----load of Dookie” and shows three anthropomorphic dogs smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and looking somewhat confused.

Billboard ran the full-page ad, as did the often tongue-in-cheek trade magazine Hits. But Variety refused, according to sources at Warner Bros. Records--not because of the language, but because of the drawings of dogs getting high. Variety editors didn’t want to encourage drug use, the sources say.

“I think it’s absolutely ridiculous,” said Jeff Gold, senior vice president of creative services for Warner Bros. Records, of the trade paper’s refusal to run the ad. “It doesn’t reflect any kind of reality. I’ve never seen dogs walk on their hind legs.

“I don’t think (Variety) is read by impressionable youth,” he added.

Variety advertising account executive Mike Evans, who handles the Warner Bros. account, said that the only person authorized to comment on the matter is President Jerry Byrne, who was out of the country and unreachable.

The label is preparing a “censored version” of the ad, according to Gold, that will have black bars over the “cigarettes,” as well as an asterisk in place of a vowel in the choice word.