In his recent Rolling Stone interview about addiction, meltdown and hard-won recovery, Green Day singer-guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong recalled a show in Austin, Texas in the late Nineties when he decided to stop worrying about his punk credibility and finally act like a rock & roll star onstage: to give his band and songs the showmanship they deserved in concert. It took liquid courage, he admitted – a step with distant, ultimately disastrous consequences. On March 15th, a newly sober, supercharged Armstrong was back in Austin with bassist Mike Dirnt and drummer Tré Cool for a special SXSW appearance at the Moody Theater – a show that started with Armstrong bolting across the stage as if shot from a cannon, into the incendiary challenge of "99 Revolutions," then demanding that his audience respond in kind. "This is not a fucking party, this is not a first date, it's not a bar mitzvah – it's a celebration!" Armstrong yelled soon after, during an extended instrumental breakdown in "Letterbomb," accenting his impatience with rock-god action and comic relief: punctuating Cool's explosive downbeats with Pete Townshend-style leaps from a riser; playing part of his guitar solo in "Know Your Enemy" perched on one leg as if he'd suddenly become a member of Jethro Tull.
