Green Day featured on the cover of Q Magazine's 20th anniversary issue alongside with a new interview

Some pretty big news for us Green Day fans this week is that Green Day is going to featured on the cover of Q Magazine's 20th anniversary issue, along with a brand new interview with the band.

At first glance of the cover I got extremely excited since I noticed the brand new photographs of the band that are featured. I am personally hoping that the new interview will focus on Green Day's "surprise" show at the Tiki Bar last month since the band has stayed relatively quite since then. I would also like to see the interview give us some insight into how far along Green Day are into making their next album, but that is all wishful thinking at this point.

The Green Day cover is one of 25 different covers of the magazine so, unfortunately it may take some digging around to find the copy with Green Day on the cover. I was unable to find out information about when their 25th anniversary issue will be out on newsstands, but we will keep you updated for when it is available for sale.

"Seven years has gone so fast" - American Idiot turns 7 today

Seven years ago today, Green Day released their epic seventh studio album, American Idiot, to the world. The 13-song masterpiece was produced by none-other than Rob Cavallo and won many awards including a Grammy for Best Rock Album. You can check out all the awards the album has won on our awards page.

Five singles were released off of American Idiot: American Idiot, Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Holiday, Wake Me Up When September Ends, and Jesus of Suburbia. According to an interview a few years ago, Give Me Novacaine was wanted by the band as a single but nothing every happened, obviously.

Let's make American Idiot trend on Twitter today. Tweet #AmericanIdiot.

If you can, please listen to the album at least once today and celebrate its release. In fact, wear out your fucking headphones or speakers listening to it.

Here is a very cool video celebrating American Idiot made by some of our members on our forum:

Mike Dirnt featured in Kerrang's "Unsung Heroes"

Mike Dirnt is featured in the latest issue of Kerrang. It's only a small blurb which talks about the "Unsung Heroes" in rock music and talks about Mike's contributions to the band. Below is a scan of the article courtesy of Raven0252 on the forum.


click image to zoom

Green Day nominated in Q Awards "Greatest Act Of The Last 25 Years"

Green Day have been nominated in the 2011 Q Awards for the category of "Greatest Act Of The Last 25 Years." Our favourite punk rockers are nominated alongside other legendary bands such as Beastie Boys, R.E.M and Nirvana, to name a few.

You guys can vote for Green Day on the Q Awards site. Anyone who enters to vote also has a chance at winning two tickets to see the award show in London which will take place October 24th at Grosvenor House in London. Green Day will most likely not be at the ceremony, since they are scheduled to perform at Will Ferrell's Mark Twain prize ceremony in Washington the day before.

Voting ends October 7, so sign up here and vote before then.

The full list of nominees can be seen over at Fanatix.com.

Green Day to perform at Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. to honor Will Ferrell

Will Ferrell will be honored next month at the Kennedy Center with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, and Green Day is one of the performers scheduled to salute the actor.

The show will take place October 23 and will air October 31st on PBS (check local listings for air time).

You can read more about the event on the Kennedy Center website or this article from USA Today.

Thanks to Oda and LChampion for sending this news.

Some of you may remember Will Ferrell joining Green Day during East Jesus Nowhere when they performed on SNL in 2009. Brilliant.

"My Pants Will Be Tight" - song parody by Lamont and Tonelli

This story just won't go away! Check out this song parody by Lamont and Tonelli on their podcast. They pretend to be Billie Joe responding the "pantsgate" incident, done to the song Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life).

It's highly amusing, listen to it here:



"My pants were unacceptable, and so I missed my flight..."

hahaha!

Ok, no more pantsgate stories (promise).

GreenDay.com releases photos from Green Day's "surprise" show in Costa Mesa

GreenDay.com has just released about twenty pictures from their recent surprise show at the Tiki Bar in Costa Mesa, California. These are the first pictures that are good enough quality to actually look at and not like the crapy camera phone pictures that we have received up until this point.

These pictures really give you a feel of how intimate of a show this really was. In the pictures we can tell that the stage was barely off the ground and there was no security pit between the stage and the audience like we see at most normal Green Day concerts. It is also really cool to look at the pictures of the audience and see some of our friends such as DJ Rossstar.

You can take a look at all the pictures over on GreenDay.com by clicking here.

Song of the Week: "J.A.R"

This week's Song of the Week is the poignant J.A.R, originally released in 1995 on the soundtrack for the movie 'Angus', and more commonly known as track number 8 off Green Day's 2001 greatest hits compilation album,International Superhits!. J.A.R was written by Mike Dirnt in memory of the band's close friend, Jason Andew Relva, who died in a car crash in 1992. Lyrically, it's probably one of the saddest songs in Green Day's catalogue - it's deeply poignant; all about realising the importance of seizing the moment as life is too short to be living for the distant future. It also has one of the best bass lines in any Green Day song, and is absolutely amazing to hear live, as we all can experience on the band's 2011 live album, Awesome As Fuck.

This week's video is a great front-row recording of Green Day's performance of the song on the 21st Century Breakdown Tour on August 12th, 2009 in Kansas City, Missouri.


(video credit: Rebel070)

American Idiot listed as one of the "top 100 songs that changed history"

Green Day's American Idiot is listed at number 68 in Time Out London's top 100 songs that changed history:

"In the early Noughties, this pop-punk trio were on the slippery slope to irrelevancy, but when an entire album's worth of recorded songs were stolen, Billie Joe and co went back to the drawing board. Drawing inspiration from the Bush's ham-fisted leadership, the band produced a career-rejuvenating punk rock concept record that went on to shift 14 million units. The title track was a rallying three-chord cry encouraging music lovers to question their neo-conservative government and the media's brainwash agenda. For the first time in decades, political pop was a mainstream mega-smash"

You can see the full list of songs that made the top 100 by clicking here.

American Idiot coming to Chicago!

It looks as though American Idiot: The Broadway Musical has begun adding dates to their nationwide tour.

Green Day's website announced yesterday that the musical will be in Chicago, February 7-19, just in time for the cities bi-annualBroadway in Chicago! That will likely be the start of the tour, and we'll be sure to let you know once they release the full tour schedule.

Larry Livermore's latest "Spy Rock Memories" include the time that Sweet Children became Green Day

In part 9 of Spy Rock Memories, Larry Livermore writes about Sweet Children growing up, and remembers the moment they told him they were changing their name to Green Day - just before they were about to release their first EP, 1,000 Hours.

From Spy Rock Memories (part 9):

"Everything did change, not all at once, not in an obvious, visible way, at least at first, but the wheels were already in motion. Life on Spy Rock unfolded peacefully and quietly through the rest of 1988 and into 1989. I barely noticed winter that year; spring was bright and full of promise. The Sweet Children record was nearly done; they’d gone into the studio at the end of the year, and by March we had the pieces in place for a 4-song EP.

Then they casually informed me, just as I was about to print the covers and labels, that they’d decided to change their name to Green Day. I blew a gasket. It was too late; there was no time to change all the artwork. Besides, I insisted, it was ridiculous to expect me to sell a record by a band no one had ever heard of. “Green Day?” I sneered. “What’s it even supposed to mean?”

But as was often the case with my best bands, they had decided what they wanted and that was that. Thanks to my copy shop connection, we were able to throw together a new cover, and the record came out on time. It didn’t sell much at first, but I’d expected that; Sweet Children/Green Day were a slight departure from the usual Lookout Records fare: poppier, more melodic, almost, dare I say it, a little mainstream."

You can read the rest of part 9 of Spy Rock Memories over on Larry's blog, larrylivermore.com here. As well as Green Day, the engaging piece takes readers back to a pivotal period for Lookout! and Larry, himself.

Green Day's American Idiot Musical website receives a facelift

Green Day's website for the American Idiot Musical has recently received a facelift in preparation for the upcoming tour of the show beginning this December.

No new information about the upcoming tour has been announced on the site as of now. Hopefully in the coming weeks as the show comes closer to opening we will find out who has been chosen as the cast and see if any of the Broadway cast has decided to tour with the show.

You can check out the newly revamped AmericanIdiotonTour.com by clicking here.

"On This Week..." A look back at what Green Day were up to on this week in previous years

On this week...

(click the year to watch a related video)

Last Year:

Green Day were on a short break between the final North American and South American legs of the 21st Century Breakdown tour. Billie Joe performed Wake Me Up When September Ends at the Stand Up 2 Cancertelevision fundraising event.

2 years ago:

It was confirmed that Prima Donna would be supporting Green Day for their upcoming european tour starting in October (or 'Rocktober' to some fans). Could this mean a Foxboro Hot Tubs show was on the cards...?

In 2006:

Green Day announced that they would be going in to the studio to record a cover of The Skidssong "The Saints Are Coming" with U2.

In 1994:

Green Day performed Armatage Shanks at the VMA's at Radio City Music Hall in New York, more than a year before the release of Insomniac.

The following day there was some controversy as the band scheduled a free concert in the Hatch Shell at the Boston Opera House. A larger than expected crowd of over 100,000 turned up and was the cause of some rowdy scenes. During the song Longview, Billie Joe jumped off the stage into a flowerbed and began ripping it up. The chaotic scenes eventually led to the police shutting off the power and bringing the show to a premature end.

(Source: Green Day - A Musical Biography) You can read more here.

In 1993:

On September 8th, Green Day performed at 924 Gilman Street for the last time before leaving independent label Lookout Records! to sign for major label, Reprise Records. Although the band would return to play at Gilman Street in later years, this would herald a period of Green Day being shunned by the venue and the local punk scene.

The saggy pants saga continues to make a buzz.

We recently reported that Billie Joe was kicked off of a Southwest flight due to his pants sagging too low. Besides being all buzz on twitter and tumblr, the news has made a small buzz amongst legitimate news sources, including CNN.

The article basically sums up the story with a few quips ("Talk about a fashion victim..."), but I think its nice to see our boys back in the news, even for something as ridiculous as this.

Just as a refresher, Billie did get on the next flight and was compensated by Southwest. Other than the twitter post heard 'round the world, he has not been available for comment.

The picture to the right shows Billie's story making big screen headlines at a shopping center.

Thanks to Jaymee for the photo.

Lil' Wayne mentions Green Day and Billie Joe in his new song "I Got Some Money On Me"

So to get down to the news, popular rap artist Lil' Wayne has recently released a new song titled "I Got Some Money On Me" in which he gives a shout out to Green Day and Billie Joe by .... singing (?) .... the line "I smoke that Green Day, I'm on my Billie Joe." The song can be listened to below. To make the listening experience a little more bearable, we have the video set to start at the mentioned line in the song so you don't have to cringe over everything else.



This isn't the first time Lil' Wayne has done something Green Day related. The first two lines of his 2009 track, "Hot Revolver," are the exact same as Green Day's "Basket Case." Also, Lil' Wayne is a big fan of rock music and has wanted to collaborate with Green Day before (I'm somewhat glad it hasn't happened).

Featured eBay Item: Collection of Green Day magazines 1994-present

One of our forum members is selling her collection of Green Day magazines, a total of 37, that she's collected over the years. This includes all kinds of magazines from 1994 to more recent ones. Each magazine has a starting bid of $5.

There are a couple real gems in here, like the 1995 Rolling Stone with Green Day on the cover (at time of this post, it only has 2 bids at $5.50) as well as the1996 Rolling Stone. There's also the Kerrang Legends edition which is a full issue of Kerrang dedicated to Green Day with photos and articles spanning their entire career.

View all the listings on eBay. She's also made a topic on the forum about this.

Taylor Swift covers "Good Riddance" at her concert in San Jose

A couple of nights ago, Taylor Swift covered Green Day's "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" at her concert in San Jose, California. Check out her rendition of the Nimrod classic...



Judging by the audience reaction, it seemed to go down pretty well.

Any Taylor Swift fans out there? Her story on taylorswift.com offers some interesting insights in to her outlook on life.

Some of our visitors will remember the spectacular Green Day San Jose show in 2009!

This is why Mike Dirnt should always fly with Billie Joe

Here are some new stories related to the incident. Los Angeles Times, SF Gate, NME, US Magazine, CBS News,The AP

and many more.

Billie Joe makes the news after being removed from a flight for his saggy pants

Billie Joe finally posted a new update on Twitter yesterday, much to the excitement of fans everywhere. Unfortunately it was to let us know that he had been kicked off a Southwest flight because his pants were too saggy.

The photo on the right is from Bullet In A Bible, but probably what the flight attendant felt was about to happen.

The story made the local ABC news in San Francisco as a reporter for the station was on the same flight. Here's what happened according to them:

""Basically, all the passengers were already seated, we were ready to go, they had already told us to start to turn our cellphones off," she said.
Qiu said that Armstrong was approached by a flight attendant and told to pull his pants up. Armstrong initially dismissed the request, asking, "Don't you have better things to do then worry about that?" When the flight attendant repeated the request and threatened to have Armstrong removed from the plane, Armstrong relied "I'm just trying to get to my f**king seat."

Armstrong and the person he was traveling with were then removed from the flight."

It's a 2004 article from Spin, where the reporter joins the band who was flying coach on Southwest Airlines, and talked about how different that was compared to other rock stars. He mentions briefly a story with the Backstreet Boys who bought out the entire first-class area, then waited till the last minute to board the plane so they wouldn't have to talk to anyone. It's a good article that fits with this event.

As for this incident, Southwest Airlines replied to Billie Joe on twitter shortly after his tweet:

"@SouthwestAir Very sorry for your experience tonight, someone from our Customer Relations Team will reach out to you to get more details."

Oh yeah, we decided to change the message in our chat so that when someone is kicked out it says "You've been kicked because your pants are too saggy!" So, there's that.

Billie Joe mentioned in Gibsons "20 Facts about the J-180" acoustic guitar

Gibson has listed 20 Essential Facts about the J-180 and mention Billie Joe twice in the article, talking about his signature version of the guitar.

"17. The Billie Joe Armstrong J-180 is the latest version of this legendary guitar. The Green Day leader has always favored Gibson acoustics, and his signature model is sumptuous indeed. It features a modified V-profile neck to Armstrong’s specifications.

18. The Billie Joe Armstrong J-180 also adds a Fishman Matrix VT preamp and piezo pickup system; an under-saddle acoustic pickup along with active volume and tone controls in a soundhole-edge-mounted preamp. It also has a traditional pin bridge."

The Billie Joe J-180 was released earlier this year, only 100 were made for 2011, and they cost a cook $4,000. More info about his guitar can be read at Gibson.com

Thanks to desertrose for posting on the forum.

Video about Billie Joe & Jason White's guitar rigs and stage equpiment

For all of the guitar-tech fanatics in GDA-land, we've just seen a great tour of Billie and Jason's guitar rigs during the first 21st Century Breakdown tour in 2009. The band's guitar techs give away a lot of great information about the technicalities behind producing Green Day's live sound. Check it out here, it really is a great watch:

Featured Download: "Look For Love" sung by Billie Joe at age 5

When Billie Joe was just five years old he used to go around to hospitals and nursing homes with his dad to sing to the patients in hopes of making him feel better. This soon led to Billie recording his first song, "Look for Love" with a local recording company, Fiat Records.

The song was originally released as a single on 7" vinyl with a bonus interview with Billie at the studio on Side B. A clip of this recording can be heard at the start of the song "Maria". The original 7" was sold for only $1.25. Today with only a limited amount still in existence, I have seen these go on Ebay for almost $500.

For this Featured Download we are letting you download both the song "Look For Love" along with the interview with Billie Joe that was featured on the B side of the original recording.

You can head on over to our Featured Download page to download the song and interview now.

"On this week..." A look back at what Green Day were up to on this week in years gone by

On this week...

(click the year to watch a related video)

Last Year:

Green Day were at the tail end of the 2nd leg of their 21st Century Breakdown North American tour. The band stopped in Dallas, Phoenix, Denver, LA and San Diego, before closing with a homecoming show in the Bay Area. The band pulled out some real surprises, none more so than the Denver show where they played unreleased songs Cigarettes And Valentines and Olivia.

Take a look back at this story for Matt's recap of the Denver show.

2 years ago:

Swiftly following Green Day's 1st leg of the 21CB tour, the band were stoking fires all over the place, with theAmerican Idiot Musical opening at the Berkeley Rep Theater in San Francisco. The band also announced that they were joining forces with Marc Webb to produce the video for the single and album title track, 21st Century Breakdown. In this fans opinion, one of Green Day's best music videos.

In 2005:

Green Day were the highlight of the 2005 MTV VMA Awards, sweeping 7 of the awards and performing the song that won best video, Boulevard of Broken Dreams. The trio arrived at the awards in grand manner, rolling up in the green car from the Holiday/BOBD music video!


In 2000:

Green Day released Minority, their first single from the upcoming album Warning, a song that would become a firm fan favourite and a staple in the Green Day live show to this day. Not to mention, a strong influence for this site :}

Live Version of "Words I Might Have Ate" from 1992

A video has surfaced of the band performing "Words I Might Have Ate" in East Orange, NJ, way back in 1992. Apparently, Billie broke a guitar string right before this, leaving Green Day no choice but to improvise. The result was a unique version of the song, that relied more on the vocal harmonies between Billie and Mike than the instrumentation. Honestly, I hadn't heard this song played live before the 21st Century Breakdown tour. Please enjoy.



Thanks for the updates in the comments, this recording is taken from the bootleg record, Radio Daze.

Song of the Week: "16"

This week’s Song of the Week is the timeless 16, off Green Day’s first album,1039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours. 16 is Green Day at their beautifully simplistic best – it’s a universally relatable song for any teenager approaching adulthood; the yearning for the care-free years of childhood, and the looking forward with trepidation at the responsibilities and pressures of growing older. Lyrics aside, 16 is also great musically, with catchy guitar and drum parts and a very funky bassline – it’s very upbeat, despite its lyrical woes.

This is a remarkably good quality recording of Green Day’s performance at Billie and Mike’s high school, Pinole Valley High School, at the annual Foreign Foods Day, May 10th, 1990.


(video credit: soldamerican)

This is 16’s Song of the Week thread on the forum. Feel free to stop by and post your opinion, or nominate next week's song

Article - The rise and fall of the Lookout Records empire

Continuing our current theme of taking a look back at Green Day's early history, fansite greenday.net posted an article from the East Bay Express from 2005, which talks about the rise and fall of Lookout! Records, the label that released Green Day's first 2 albums, 1,039 Smoothed Out Slappy Hours and Kerplunk.

The article is an in depth and well balanced account of the trials and tribulations that Lookout faced, which eventually led to Green Day's disbandment from the label in 2005.

"Lookout is notorious for giving the band its start, while Green Day's sales are notorious for keeping Lookout afloat. Signed in the late 1980s by label cofounder Larry Livermore, the trio put out a few EPs and two full-length albums --1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours and Kerplunk -- on Lookout between 1989 and 1991. Three years later, major label Reprise unveiled Dookie and made Green Day a household name, and Lookout, which suddenly controlled the back catalogue of one of alt-rock's biggest sensations, found itself atop a gold mine."

The article goes on to talk about the mismanagement which led to the downfall of the label. At the time of writing, co-founder Chris Appelgren was looking to rebuild Lookout! Records again, saying that the aim was to "bring Lookout to a place that is truer, truer to the size of label that we are, truer to the number of records I can reasonably expect to sell."

If you want to learn more about Lookout! Records history and Green Day's association with the label, take some time to read the article here.

Larry Livermore writes about the first time he met Sweet Children in 'Spy Rock Memories'

Lookout! Records co-founder Larry Livermore writes about the first time he met 'Sweet Children' - who of course went on to become Green Day, in part 8 of his Spy Rock Memories. In this installment of Larry's blog, he recollects his time living and working in the Bay Area, the early days of Lookout! Records and how he came to meet the teenagers that would go on to make up one of the biggest bands in the world today.

Larry writes about seeing Sweet Children play as 16 year olds in "a cabin up in the mountains" of Willits on a winters night in the late 1980's (yes, there was good music being played in the 80's!):

"Once we were inside and beginning to thaw out, it seemed only logical to go ahead with the show.  The cabin had no lights, but there were plenty of candles, and while there was also no electricity, we found a generator out back to power the bands.  Sweet Children took the “stage” – a cleared-out space between the kitchen and front door – and played for the five high school kids sitting politely on the floor in front of them.

I watched from the back, only half paying attention as I changed my guitar strings, until suddenly I couldn’t not pay attention.  I had seen this level of performance before, but usually only in giant arenas, delivered by bands at the peak of their careers and playing for tens of thousands.  16 year old Billie Joe exuded a casual self-confidence, only partially offset and belied by his shy, self-effacing humility.  He stopped several times to thank his minuscule audience for being there, but mostly he sang and played as if he’d been doing this all his life.  Which, I would learn later, was not so far from the truth.

Walking up to me afterward, he offhandedly asked, “What did you think?”

“I want to make a record with you guys,” was all I said."

Tre Cool was playing drums with The Lookouts at the time, but soon replaced John Kiffmeyer (aka Al Sobrante) and Sweet Children were renamed Green Day. Lookout! Records went on to release Green Day's first 2 albums,1,039 Smoothed Out Slappy Hours and Kerplunk.

Larry goes on to describe his first impressions of the band that night:

"They’d been together a couple of months – this might have been their third or fourth show ever – but I’d seen and heard all I needed to.  To be honest – and I’ve been saying the same thing to interviewers ever since – they were like a modern, updated, punk rock version of the Beatles.  They could seriously be that big, too, I caught myself thinking.  This was crazy talk, of course, and yet at that moment it made perfect, undeniable sense."

To read more from Spy Rock Memories and other blog entries from Larry, visit larrylivermore.com.

Vote for Green Day to play in Indonesia

Recently, we posted that Indonesia has been campaigning for Green Day to play in their country. Well, Big Daddy Polls has created a poll to see which American bands, TV shows, and movies the Indonesian people want played there. According to our source, Green Day is currently 2nd behind Blink 182 in the bands category.

Personally, I think the whole thing is kind of cool. As Tony mention in the previous post about this, Green Day has not played their since 1996. Let's try and make it happen for Indonesia. If nothing else, let's try to stop Green Day from losing to blink-182 in any poll. Ever.

Just go to this site to vote for Green Day in the poll.

The source that sent us this from Indonesia is very grateful for all the help Green Day fans have given them. Now, let's hurry this up before I get all choked up inside. Damn...too late.

http://bigdaddy.co.id/?page_id=3339

Thanks to miftahul for sending this news.


Finally,The Winner Is Green Day (34%, 2.840 Votes. )

 Rolling Stone recently published a picture of a new book by Bob Gruen, calledRock Seen. The New York based photographer has taken pictures at many Green Day shows and events, as well as The Foxboro Hot Tubs. The book is described in Rolling Stone as...

"A special gallery of iconic images from the New York Dolls, The Clash, Led Zeppelin, Green Day and more.

...covering current stadium rockers such as Green Day, Gruen has always been at the right place at the right time—and he’s always gotten the shot.

In Rock Seen, Gruen has curated his favorite photographs from his career and paired them with intimate captions and behind-the-scenes anecdotes."

You can read more from the article here

Thanks to Alan86 for posting this on the forum


There is a video of Billie Joe talking about Bob Gruen, for a programme about the photographer that recently aired on the Sky Arts channel, in England. Gruen also talks about what it's like working with Green Day and other great bands throughout his career, it's well worth a watch.


Check Back On Previous Post.

Green Day in MTV's 18 More Perplexing Band Names Explained

Green Day are featured in MTV's 18 more perplexing band names explained...

"According to internet lore, the name Green Day was simply borne of the band's fondness for marijuana. And now they're Broadway stars entertaining gray-haired tourists. Weird how things work out."

It's just a brief quote, but sums up quite well the unique journey the band has travelled so far, although i don't know about the grey-haired tourists bit!

The origins of other acts titles such as Lady Gaga, Depeche Mode and Kings of Leon are also featured in the article.

Court agrees that Green Day's use of artwork in "East Jesus Nowhere" backdrop did not violate artist copyright

In 2009, Green Day used a work of art (pictured right) for their own creative use which caught the angry attention of artist David Seltzer.
The artist sued the band for "stealing" hisscream icon for their own professional use.

Green Day presented the image on their 21st Century Breakdown tour video backdrop during the song "East Jesus Nowhere." Set designer Richard Staub added a large red cross and brick background as well as other visual elements to the scream icon.

At the hearing, the court found that Green Day's use of the image was "transformative" and therefore "did not violate his (Selzer) intellectual property rights."

You can read The Courthouse News Service for further details on the hearing.

The case was also reported in The Hollywood Reporter and Perez Hilton, for further reading.