A Green Day Fan Site

I went digging through some old articles, which are among my favorite things to read about Green Day. In part I was inspired by this video interview (Part 1, Part 2) for a Mexican TV show, done at a concert stop in Florida during the Insomniac tour, which I hadn’t seen before. The guys are pretty sullen and cynical. The band is asked: “Is there anyone you admire, or would like to play with?” Answer from all three: “No.” “what band do yo think deserves to be signed to a major?” “Nobody deserves that.” (As in: we wouldn’t wish something so awful on anyone.) The video includes interviews with fans, which are pretty cringe-worthy.

At the end of Part 2 there’s also an interview with the opening band, The Riverdales (who were earlier, and then again later, Screeching Weasel).

This article also from the Insomniac period, also includes quotes from The Riverdales. But what I liked the most was the description of Green Day’s encore:

Mike and Tre return first, with ball caps pulled low over their faces. They sing the faux-hick song “Dominated Love Slave”. Later, Billie Joe runs out to join them, only now, he has no clothes on. With his guitar strategically placed, he is perfectly at ease. He sings “When I Come Around”. Last, before saying good-bye, BJ smirks at the crowd. He turns around and flexes his buttocks. Backstage, in a towel, he shrugs his shoulders, “I had to give them something to remember. The Replacements are one of the first bands I ever saw play. I saw them play the Fillmore when I was 15. My sister got me into them when I was really young, and I actually got a chance to meet Tommy Stinson. Paul Westerberg, I wouldn’t have a thing to say to him. He’s a fucking genius.”

This article too is from the Insomniac time, but the parts I thought are the most interesting are descriptions of the band’s 1991 tour.

The first time Green Day came to Alabama, in 1991, they arrived in the wee hours of the morning in an old van. The boys - all a year or two shy of legal drinking age at the time - had come straight from New Orleans. After an evening of revelry, they had returned to their van to find that it had been robbed. The bag containing their tour money was gone. That night, Green Day and several dozen college students crowded into the living room and kitchen of a rental house on Samford Avenue for a frenetic set of northern California punk rock. Earning the band enough money for food and gas, the show was considered a great success.

Warner Music did a promotional campaign in Australia for 21st Century Breakdown, and they hired a company to put up graffiti around Sydney with the album’s artwork, which drew criticism from the city and from local commentators. But the most direct criticism is from a graffiti artist, who spray painted the words “Cash Cow” on one of the images.

I’m sure the members of Green Day had nothing to do with the campaign, and none of the criticism is aimed specifically at them. But the issue points out the fundamental problem of having something that is genuine (the band and their music) in the hands of an entity (a huge corporation like Warner Music) that treats everything they control as a means to make money, without a real understanding of and respect for the genuine, real-life inspirations that contributed to its creation.

Graffiti is mentioned several times in the album’s lyrics as a fundamental yearning to declare one’s existence. “You blast your name in graffiti on the walls.” “She puts her make up on like graffiti on the walls of the heartland.” It’s a way of crying out “I am here!” in a visceral and very public way. Graffiti has always been a way for people who are invisible in society to — literally — make their mark. It’s especially important in a society like ours, where if you have a lot of money you can scream out your advertising messages on huge billboards, but if you’re just a poor working class stiff you face huge penalties just for hanging up a flyer on a telephone pole.

It’s pretty galling when a corporation appropriates something that has meaning for people, something whose popularity has been spread by people marginalized by society at considerable risk to themselves. The corporation just piggybacked on the street cred earned by graffiti artists with their own efforts, and exploited it as a marketing gimmick to make some cash.

Like I said, this is not a criticism of the band. But when they signed to a major label, this is the kind of thing that punks were very wary of. It just comes with the territory, I guess.

When it comes to Green Day graffiti, this is more to my liking… (thanks to Diana for sending it in).

~New German tour date: Dortmund, Oct 14. Tix June 19. [Via gd.com]

~Spinner has a short interview with Tre Cool about what will be in the 21 Guns video.

I don’t know why I’m so tickled by this, but it’s just so damn cute! It’s like a punk rock fairy tale.

As you know (I posted about this a couple times in the sidebar, and here’s the full story if you missed it), the Free Press of Mankato, MN has launched a campaign to bring Green Day to play in their town, where Green Day has a cool little history. They played there in their early days, before Dookie, and they went there primarily, it seems, because Adrienne lived there at the time, and uh, one of the boys just couldn’t stay away. I remember Tre mentioning this in Behind the Music (I think that’s where it was). He said Billie Joe kept suggesting that they should go on tour to Minnesota, and Mike and Tre were like, “Why Minnesota? Hmmm…? Oh… Adrienne!”

I’m nowhere near Minnesota so it doesn’t affect me personally if Green Day play there or not, though I’m certainly rooting for the folks in Mankato and hope they get their wish. What I think is just so sweet and interesting are all the stories that people have been sending in to the Free Press reminiscing about Green Day’s times in Mankato. You can read them all on Amanda Dyslin’s blog. One of my favorites is this one:

I guess my big Green Day story involved playing on a street corner with Billie Joe once while he was in town. I was actually playing Green Day songs with a few of my friends in front of the Barmuda Triangle trying to make a few bucks off of drunk people when he came out of a bar with Adrienne (who I only casually knew) and he jumped in and played along. He was so drunk that he couldn’t hit the high notes in the chorus of “Christie Road” — that was funny.

I can imagine Billie Joe doing that even now if he got the chance.

There are also some terrible-quality videos (hey, it’s more punk rock that way, right?) of a show Green Day played at a farm in 1992, and stories about that event as well. You can see enough to tell that the crowd — and it was quite a crowd — is absolutely loving it. The videographer tried to take some close ups of Tre, but all you can see is a funny halo of green hair.

And in the latest post, Amanda Dyslin got an email from Adrienne. Keep up the good fight Mankato!

~Green Day released a behind-the-scenes video for the 21 Guns video, which will premiere on MySpace June 21. Photo on Video Static. Update: Video.

~Rolling Stone has a really good interview with Billie Joe and Michael Mayer, the director, about the American Idiot musical. Mayer: “There is a purity of humanity deep inside Billie’s songs. And it’s also his voice.”

[ Source ]
There are some cool new-ish Green Day pics by photographer Ross Halfin. I’m not sure what the deal is with the giving-the-finger-backwards. Maybe Billie Joe feels ambivalent about giving us the finger…? Anyway, I love to see pics with no eyeliner.

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