Green Day will toast the release of American Idiot on Tuesday, but perhaps an even bigger cause for celebration these days is the 10-year anniversary of their breakthrough LP, Dookie. The modern-day classic not only launched the Bay Area punk trio into the mainstream, it opened the door to a mid-’90s wave of popped-up punk and provided a launching pad for the current crop of melodic pop-punkers. “[Dookie] changed my life,” confessed Good Charlotte’s Joel Madden. “It made me want to start Good Charlotte…. Right after that record came out, we were like, ‘We have to start a band in… Read more »
“It’s our most ambitious album to date,” says Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day’s forthcoming American Idiot, a concept record the trio has dubbed a “punk rock opera.” The sprawling thirteen-song album, due in September, tells the tales of such characters as “Saint Jimmy” and an unnamed female protagonist “Whatzhername” living in a heated political climate. “I wanted to try to find some human relationship throughout it,” Armstrong says. “A lot of it is coming from trying to have a relationship between different people and yourself, but being surrounded by total chaos… I didn’t want to make people feel like… Read more »
Green Day’s first studio album in four years will be titled “American Idiot,” a spokesperson told Billboard.com. The set is tentatively due Sept. 14 via Reprise. It’s the follow-up to 2000’s “Warning,” which debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 and has sold 998,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Along with No Doubt, Foo Fighters, Bad Religion and others, Green Day is expected to lend a track to “Rock Against Bush Vol. 2,” the second in a series of politically minded compilations due this August. Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong will also contribute two songs to… Read more »
The Network might call itself a new band, but exactly how green is this masked group? On September 30, a mysterious five-piece group called the Network, a band “brought together by an ancient prophecy,” released its debut album, Money Money 2020, on the indie label Adeline Records. Now, Internet sleuths believe they’ve sniffed out the true identity of the Network, and all clues point to Green Day. Or so they think. First off, there’s no arguing the Network sounds like a new-wave version of Green Day, with such tunes as “Spastic Society,” “Supermodel Robots” and “Right Hand-A-Rama.” Plus, the band’s… Read more »
Ramones bassist Dee Dee Ramone died of an apparent drug overdose in Hollywood on Wednesday (June 5). When the group was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in March, some of modern rock’s biggest stars tipped their hats to the legendary band and Ramone himself. Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder said that the group’s arrival in the late-’70s was a monumental occasion. “They were visually aggressive, four working-class construction-worker delinquents from Forest Hills, Queens, who were armed with two-minute songs that they rattled off like machine-gun fire, and it was enough to change the earth’s revolution, at… Read more »
With nearly a decade of hits to their name and a command of large audiences that would put Tony Robbins to shame, Green Day are a hard act to follow. No wonder, then, that Blink-182 took a page from one of rock’s biggest bad boys Wednesday night in an attempt to avoid being overshadowed. Facing an opening-night Pop Disaster Tour crowd that had expended most of its energy during Green Day’s set, Mark, Tom and Travis found that even their onstage fireballs were no match for the ones their elder peers had singed the Centennial Garden with less than an… Read more »
After playing their final U.S. show of the year last week, Green Day are really getting down to work. They’re rehearsing new material for their best-of collection International Superhits, which comes out in the fall. At the same time, they’re fine-tuning a new batch of songs for their next studio album. Meanwhile, when he gets a free moment, bassist Mike Dirnt is finishing up the second record by his side-project, the Frustrators. Who said these guys were just a bunch of snotty, irresponsible punks? “We have a super-serious work ethic,” Dirnt said, an hour before heading to the first of… Read more »
Try as they might to display a more mature side as songwriters and lyricists, the members of Green Day – a third, fourth or maybe even fifth-generation punk band – are still working the same schtick that powered them to rock supremacy in the mid-1990s. It’s snotty and obnoxious, a blur of three- and four-chord rockers strung together in a manner that puts exclamation points after every barre chord and chorus. But when it’s working, Green Day is far and away the head of the class. Green Day delivered an involving, career-spanning show that included five tunes from the new… Read more »
Green Day dominated the California Music Awards Saturday night (April 28) at the Henry J. Kaiser Arena in Oakland by earning so-called “Bammies” in all eight categories in which the group was nominated; including artist of the year, outstanding group, and outstanding album for Warning. Bassist Mike Dirnt and drummer Tre Cool both bested all comers in their individual instrument categories, while frontman Billie Joe Armstrong earned outstanding male vocalist honors and songwriting props over Neil Young, Aimee Mann, and others. The group also grabbed the award for outstanding punk/ska album for Warning. Other winners at the 24th annual celebration… Read more »
Green Day fans, get ready! The iconic punk rock trio is gearing up to headline When We Were Young Fest in less than 2 weeks. Set to play both nights of the nostalgic festival, it’s safe to say that Billie, Tre, and Mike have some more surprises up their sleeves. In an old-school show flyer graphic posted to Instagram, the band teases fans with a scratched-out show date sometime before their appearance at When We Were Young Fest. Although whatever the surprise event is will be located in Las Vegas, Green Day’s followers are unsure of the day, time, or… Read more »
